News24.com | ANC has to target 'decisive victory' in 2024 because coalitions are unstable - Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa.

• The ANC's NEC instructed members to work hard to ensure a majority victory during next year's elections. 
• The party will be hosting a strategy workshop "to prepare the organisation for a decisive victory".
• Cyril Ramaphosa described coalition governments as a "disaster". 

Opposition parties may be joining forces to remove the ANC from power, but the party's national executive committee (NEC) has instructed members to go for an outright victory and not place its hopes in failed coalition governments.

President Cyril Ramaphosa announced this during his closing address after the party's four-day NEC on Monday. 

"We have decided that, in May, we will hold our elections strategy workshop, so that our organisation prepares itself for a decisive victory in the 2024 elections," said Ramaphosa. 

The ANC has formulated and adopted a framework of engagement for when it goes into coalition governments, with recent polling suggesting the party might drop below 50% in next year's elections. 

Ramaphosa said the party's 55th national elective conference mandated the elected leadership to adopt a framework for managing coalitions at the local government level, but it should rather prioritise getting an outright majority because coalitions have proved unstable. 

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"These frameworks are about ensuring that local governments across the country are about the people, are functional, and they prioritise the provision of basic services to our communities," said Ramaphosa. 

The ANC has tasked its secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, with engaging other parties and attempting to get their buy-in in terms of this framework ahead of next year's national elections. 

NEC member David Makhura said the difference between the ANC and the rest of the political parties was that the party still had a realistic chance of getting a majority, while the rest had pinned their hopes on coalitions.

"What has happened in the past is that, because of various reasons, our electorate has chosen to stay away from voting because of unhappiness over some of our failings. 

"We then have to fix those challenges and prove to our people that their trust was not misplaced," said Makhura.

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Ramaphosa said the ANC needed to make it clear that it was working hard to regain the trust of the majority of South Africans. 

"As the ANC, we need to regain our people's trust through addressing their immediate needs, such as the electricity crisis, so that our country does not find itself in the unfortunate position of being governed by unstable and incoherent coalitions," said Ramaphosa. 

He added that these unstable coalitions were eroding structural reforms which his party had attempted to put in place. 

Ramaphosa said: "Right now, SA cannot afford this disaster, and our people cannot afford it as well."

The ANC announced that not just anybody from its ranks would be selected to represent the party at national level.

"A road map for the selection of candidates for Parliament and provincial legislatures was tabled by the electoral committee and was adopted," said Ramaphosa.