Real Politics: Ramaphosa’s New Dawn is over
Scrolla | 17.08.2026 14:52
Eight years of the New Dawn ends at the ballot box, as Ramaphosa enters November weaker than ever, surrounded by Zuma, Phala Phala and a fractured alliance, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics.
Cyril Ramaphosa enters the 4 November municipal elections weaker than at any point since he became ANC president.
The New Dawn is dead. The alliance is fractured. Jacob Zuma’s MK Party is advancing on ANC strongholds. Ramaphosa’s main lieutenant in KwaZulu-Natal has been compromised by evidence before the Madlanga Commission. And his Phala Phala impeachment battle is still alive.
The numbers are even more damning. The ANC won 57.5% in the 2019 national election, fell to about 46% in the 2021 municipal elections and collapsed to 40.18% in 2024. It has not recovered in a single election under Ramaphosa.
November will therefore be more than a contest for control of municipalities. It will be a referendum on eight years of the New Dawn — and on Ramaphosa’s promise to rescue the ANC from corruption, division and decline.
A poor result will not automatically remove him from the Union Buildings. But it could destroy what remains of his authority, accelerate the succession battle and leave him serving out his term as a lame-duck president.
This could be Ramaphosa’s Waterloo.
When he took over from Zuma in 2018, Ramaphosa offered moral relief after a decade of state capture. The language of the New Dawn, Thuma Mina and renewal persuaded voters that a respectable businessman with liberation credentials could clean up the state and restore the ANC. The party received 57.5% in 2019. It was already down from the 62.15% achieved under Zuma in 2014, but Ramaphosa’s personal appeal helped the party avoid a more severe punishment.
That was the high point.
In 2021, ANC support fell to about 46%, taking the party below 50% nationally for the first time. In 2024 it collapsed to 40.18% and lost its parliamentary majority. No election conducted under Ramaphosa has produced an ANC recovery. Each one has established a new electoral floor.
It would be inaccurate to describe his presidency as achieving nothing. His administration supported the Zondo Commission, restored some credibility to institutions damaged by state capture and introduced important reforms in electricity, logistics and public administration. Load shedding has eased and parts of the state are more stable than they were under Zuma.
But elections are not decided in government reports or at international investor conferences. They are decided by voters who cannot find work, businesses forced to provide their own water and electricity, and township families surrounded by sewage, potholes, crime and uncollected rubbish. The New Dawn promised ethical government and renewal. Instead, South Africans have watched commissions produce reports while politically connected officials remain in office. Ramaphosa may have repaired parts of the state. He has failed to restore public trust in the party controlling it.
He also enters this campaign without the political machinery that supported previous ANC presidents.
The SACP will contest the municipal elections independently and has been excluded from ANC campaign structures and candidate lists. The ANC has warned members who also belong to the SACP that they may not campaign against ANC candidates. Cosatu is trying to hold the alliance together, but loyalties inside the labour federation are divided. For the first time, an ANC president must campaign not only against opposition parties but against sections of the political machinery that once campaigned for the ANC.
The biggest threat comes from another former ally.
The MK Party is not simply an opposition party. It is a rival version of the ANC, built around Zuma, liberation history and resentment of Ramaphosa’s leadership. MK offers disillusioned ANC supporters a way to punish the current leadership without abandoning the political tradition with which they identify. The party destroyed the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal in 2024 and is now attempting to expand in Mpumalanga, Gauteng, the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. Its elevation of Duduzane Zuma may be designed to reach younger voters while preparing the movement for life beyond his father.
An angry voter does not need to believe MK will govern better. The voter needs only to believe the ANC deserves punishment.
Ramaphosa’s problems are particularly severe in KwaZulu-Natal. Neither he nor ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has demonstrated an ability to compete with Zuma’s emotional hold over significant parts of the province. Senzo Mchunu, who was supposed to be one of Ramaphosa’s strongest provincial lieutenants, has been seriously compromised by allegations before the Madlanga Commission — including interference in policing, the disbanding of an investigative team and sharing a confidential report in violation of protocol. Mchunu denies wrongdoing and the commission has not made final findings. But the ANC cannot deploy him as the face of Ramaphosa’s clean-government project while a judicial commission examines whether he undermined law enforcement.
Ramaphosa’s own claim to ethical leadership is again threatened by Phala Phala. The public impeachment hearings remain temporarily suspended while the Western Cape High Court considers his attempt to review and set aside the independent panel’s report. He has won time, not exoneration. The court battle could accompany him into the campaign — a president who promised accountability, fighting to prevent an impeachment inquiry from proceeding.
The ANC’s response is to rely again on Ramaphosa’s personal stature and the party’s liberation history.
But this is a municipal election. It should be fought on the records of local candidates who can point to clean audits, reliable water, repaired roads and growing local economies. The ANC has not made the excellence of its mayoral candidates the centre of its campaign. In many municipalities, it cannot campaign on a successful record.
The party therefore returns to its oldest argument: trust the ANC because it liberated you.
That appeal becomes weaker with every election. Millions of young voters were born after apartheid. They respect liberation history but do not experience it as an answer to unemployment, unaffordable transport or a broken sewer outside the family home. Liberation history explains why the ANC was trusted. It cannot indefinitely explain why it should continue to be trusted after the services stop working.
The ANC’s crisis is not a shortage of plans. Its new manifesto will probably promise professional municipalities, better-qualified officials, ring-fenced revenue and action against corruption. Its problem is that voters have heard all of this before. The crisis is the disappearance of reasons to believe the next plan will actually be implemented.
Ramaphosa arrived as the man who would save the ANC from Zuma. Eight years later, Zuma leads the movement taking ANC strongholds from him. The communists are campaigning separately. Organised labour is divided. His most important KZN lieutenant is compromised. His own impeachment process remains unresolved.
The New Dawn did not end in a dramatic sunset. It faded election by election.
November 4 will show whether Ramaphosa can finally arrest the decline — or whether this is the battlefield on which his authority inside the ANC disappears.
