By Sheriff Bojang Jnr

 

JOHANNESBURG, 20 Jan. - (ANA) - South African billionaire businessman Patrice Motsepe’s campaign for the presidency of the African National Congress goes mainstream, according to Sheriff Bojang Jnr of The Africa Report.

 

As South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) confronts its steepest political decline since 1994, speculation is growing around a possible leadership bid by Patrice Motsepe.

 

Motsepe, the founder and executive chairman of African Rainbow Minerals and president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), has not declared his intention to seek the ANC presidency. As recently as October, he told public broadcaster SABC that leading a country such as South Africa was a calling he was not prepared to accept.

 

“I love people who say that South Africa does not need a rich man to be president. They are so correct,” he said. “There are many people in this country who are enormously talented and committed.”

 

Yet the persistence of succession chatter – and the growing visibility of campaign-style lobbying and campaign material branded PM27 Savumelana, as reported by Sunday World – has elevated Motsepe from hypothetical contender to political symbol, reflecting the ANC’s unease about its future leadership.

 

 

 

 

The context is unforgiving. The ANC’s national vote share has fallen steadily over the past 15 years, from 65.9% in the 2009 general election to 40.18% in 2024, when it won 159 of 400 parliamentary seats and lost its outright majority for the first time since the end of apartheid. Forced into a Government of National Unity, it now leads through fragile coalitions rather than dominance.

 

The erosion has been even more visible at local level. In the 2021 municipal elections, the ANC slipped below 50%, losing control of major metropolitan councils and exposing weakening branch structures that once underpinned its electoral machine.

 

With President Cyril Ramaphosa in the final term of his ANC leadership and expected to step aside at the party’s 2027 elective conference, attention has shifted sharply to succession. Yet the party lacks a clear heir.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/20 January 2026 - - -