The National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (NEC), the highest decision-making body of the ANC between National Conferences, met in ordinary session at the Protea Hotel at OR Tambo Airport in Ekurhuleni on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 May 2026.
The NEC had a successful and productive meeting. The NEC is fully united on the conditions that obtain in our country today, and fully united on what lies ahead. We leave that meeting with a single line of march — focused on the Local Government Elections of 4 November 2026, focused on fixing local government, and focused on the work the ANC owes the people of South Africa in this season.
It received the Report of the National Working Committee, the Report of the Electoral Committee, the Consolidated Provincial Weekly Status Reports, the Report of the Integrity Commission, and other housekeeping matters.
The NEC took decisions on every substantive matter the Reports placed before it.
The central frame of the period before the African National Congress is the Local Government Elections of Wednesday 4 November 2026 — one hundred and sixty-three days from today.
The President’s Political Overview placed the matter squarely before the NEC, and the NEC adopted decisions on every operational front. I turn to those decisions now.
The NEC has confirmed the priority of the eight municipalities under active Inter-Ministerial Committee on the Management and Performance Turn-Around Strategy intervention, and has directed the North West Provincial Executive Committee to table a North West Stabilisation Plan.
The Local Government Action Plan, six months in operation, has been ratified in its current pillar ratings. The NEC Subcommittee on Local Government Interventions has been directed to segment the work into short-term, medium-term and long-term horizons within fourteen days.
On infrastructure, the NEC has directed every deployee of the African National Congress in government to prioritise the delivery of infrastructure projects in roads, water and electricity. These are the immediate things that touch the lives of our people. Where water scarcity is highly felt, the NEC resolved that there should be no community without water and the immediate implementation of underground (borehole) and spring water connections must be rolled out with immediate effect.
The pressures of the international situation translate, in this country, into rising prices at the petrol pump, rising prices on the supermarket shelf and rising stress in our communities. The National Executive Committee is alive to this reality and to the daily strain it places upon the working and the unemployed people of South Africa.
The ANC commends Cde
Enoch Godongwana, Minister of Finance, for the boldness and the immediacy with which he read the conjuncture arising from the war on the Islamic Republic of Iran, and for the decisive intervention he took on the fuel levy. That decision has cushioned the consumer at the petrol pump, has cushioned the taxi-commuter on the way to work, has cushioned the small trader at the loading dock, and has cushioned every household for whom transport and fuel are a major contributor to the cost of living.
This is the African National Congress government at work — reading the international conjuncture in real time and acting in defence of the working and the unemployed people of our country.
The National Executive Committee further resolved to redouble the work of the African National Congress in government on the
Ten-Point Plan for the economy — to drive the South African economy from its present growth path onto a job-creating growth trajectory.
The Ten-Point Plan is the operational programme that carries the economic policy direction of the 55th National Conference and of the National General Council 2025 Base Document into the work of the State. Its pillars — fixedinvestment acceleration, infrastructure delivery, industrial policy, township and rural economy development, the just energy transition, the digital economy, food security, BRICS-plus and continental trade integration, skills and the demographic dividend, and macroeconomic stability — are the work of the period.
The African National Congress will measure itself, in this conjuncture, by the speed and the seriousness with which the Plan moves from paper into lived improvement in the conditions of the people.
ON ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION AND BROAD-BASED BLACK ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
The National Executive Committee commends the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development for the boldness with which she has heard the line of march set by the January 8 Statement of 2026 — that this is the year to fix local government and to push harder on the transformation of the economy — and for the directness with which she has acted upon it in the legal sector. Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment is the law of the Republic. It applies to every professional sector — to legal practice, to medical practice, to engineering, to accounting, to architecture, to the consulting professions, and across every domain in which the economy of our country is conducted.
Income equality and the equity of ownership are not optional ornaments of our constitutional order; they are the substance of the second radical phase of the National Democratic Revolution, as confirmed at the 55th National Conference at NASREC in 2017 and reaffirmed in the National General Council 2025 Base Document.
The African National Congress carries this work forward without apology and without retreat.
Where the law is in place, it must be applied.
Where the law requires sharpening, it will be sharpened. The ANC commends the Minister, and we commend every comrade in government and in the institutions of the State who is now placing this line of march into effect.
ON THE CLEANING UP OF STATE INSTITUTIONS
The Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee on the Allegations related to the
South African Police Service continues its work. The African National Congress reaffirms, in the clearest terms, the leading role of the ANC in the cleaning up of the State institutions of our Republic.
The Madlanga Commission was established by the President of the Republic; the Ad Hoc Committee is led by Members of Parliament of the African National Congress; the National Prosecuting Authority, the Investigating Directorate against Corruption, the Hawks, the South African Revenue Service, the Asset Forfeiture Unit, the Financial Intelligence Centre, and the Auditor-General with its expanded material-irregularity powers, are all doing the work that the country requires of them.
It is the African National Congress that is the principal author of the laws now fighting corruption in our country — the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act of 2004, the Prevention of Organised Crime Act of 1998, the Financial Intelligence Centre Act of 2001, the Protected Disclosures Act of 2000, the Public Audit Amendment Act of 2018 with its material-irregularity powers, the National Strategic Intelligence Act, and many others.
It is the African National Congress that continues to strengthen these laws and not weaken them. It is the African National Congress that is prepared to have matters which may be reputationally damaging aired in public — because we are serious about renewal, and because we are serious about ridding ourselves and our country of all forms of corruption and unethical conduct. It is the African National Congress, at times alone and at times together with the people of South Africa, that has built this country, that has built its constitutional framework, and that has built its democratic institutions.
We say openly that the ANC will return the South African Police Service to a constitutional footing as a service department of and for the people of the Republic. The demilitarisation of the structures and the uniform of the South African Police Service is the agenda the ANC carries into the period ahead, and into the work of the criminal justice system reform that the Madlanga Commission and the Ad Hoc Committee will speak to.
ON THE NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE
The Constitutional Court delivered judgment on Monday 18 May 2026 in Solidarity Trade Union and Others against the Minister of Health, declaring the certificate-of-need provisions at sections 36 to 40 of the National Health Act, Act 61 of 2003, unconstitutional. The NEC has reaffirmed, in the clearest terms, the ANC’s full support for the
National Health Insurance Act, Act 15 of 2024, and for the phased and lawful implementation now under way. The Comrade Minister of Health, Cde Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, is commended for the disciplined manner in which the Department continues with the implementation. The certificate-of-need provisions sit in a different Act from the National Health Insurance Act.
The unconstitutional declaration of certain provisions in one Act does not, in law or in fact, displace the constitutional validity and the lawful implementation of the National Health Insurance Act, Act 15 of 2024. The National Executive Committee commends the Minister of Health and the entire National Department of Health for the steady, disciplined work being carried out across the public health system in this period — on the rollout of the National Health Insurance; on the country’s vigilance against the regional outbreak of Ebola in the equatorial countries to our north; on the tuberculosis programme, which remains the largest national tuberculosis programme in the world; and on the continuing gains in the combat against the human immunodeficiency virus.
The ANC reaffirms the historic position of the African National Congress, drawn from the Freedom Charter of 1955 and given constitutional form in section 27 of the Constitution of the Republic: a publicly funded, universal, equitable system of healthcare for all who live in our country.
ON MIGRATION, PEACE AND STABILITY — THE GOVERNMENT IS AT WORK
The NEC spent substantial time discussing and evaluating the question of the present mobilisation against unlawful migrant communities in our Republic. The NEC finds that the issues raised by the activist community are, in the main, genuine complaints and genuine demands. The movements that have emerged across our country are, in the main, demanding a visible government and a visible State.
The movements are calling for our government to act with a sense of visible purpose on the issues that touch our people directly. The NEC does not characterise the majority of these activities as xenophobic in their general character. The NEC understands the pressures on our economy and on our communities arising from unlawful immigration, and the NEC shares the concerns of the people of South Africa on these matters. The NEC, however, cautions the organisers and the leaders of the movements to be vigilant against third-force infiltration of their ranks.
The discipline of lawful protest is the discipline of every South African in our democracy. The conduct of vigilantism, hate speech and intimidation that the country has seen in some of its streets, at some of its clinic doors, at some of its school gates and at some of its factory floors over the past period is, in the proper legal characterisation, conduct that falls within the
Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Act, Act 16 of 2023.
A child that seeks education must be supported by all of us, a child that seeks immunisation against measles or polio must be given the necessary support – we are not a cruel people. A child that does not get these vaccines will be a danger to the community.
The ANC supports the application of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Acts by the National Prosecuting Authority and by the South African Police Service on every act that meets its provisions.
When we protest and when we mount pressure movements — which is our constitutional right and the standing tradition of our struggle — we urge our people to balance their actions with the discipline of legality. We cannot fight unlawful conduct in a democracy by ourselves engaging in unlawful conduct. We must, together, safeguard the reputation, the image and the stability of our country, so that we do not end up causing more harm than the harm we set out to address. We are a great people among the peoples of the world. We are called upon by our forebears to make demands but to remain humane; to protest but to carry ubuntu in our hands; to agitate progressively but to remember our own long road to freedom — and the road our continent walked with us on that journey.
To leave weapons at home and not carry them in public. To respect our traditions like the traditions of amabutho and not misuse these great heritage instruments in a manner that causes disrepute to our pride as South Africans.
Let me be clear: the demands placed on our government to act decisively on the question of border management, on the national-security issues that arise, on the strain on our people and our communities at the coalface of unlawful immigration and all its manifestations — from human trafficking to illicit trade, from crime to the corruption of government officials in Home Affairs and the South African Police Service — these demands are genuine and these demands are real. And the government is at work on every one of them. The National Executive Committee further calls upon the private sector — upon the employers, upon the recruitment agencies, upon every enterprise operating on the soil of the Republic — to adhere, without exception, to the labour laws and to the immigration laws of the country.
The recruitment of undocumented workers in order to suppress wages, to circumvent the Labour Relations Act, to evade the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, to undermine the Sectoral Determinations of the Minister of Employment and Labour, and to displace the rightful claims of South African workers and of legally resident workers on the job market is criminal. It is unpatriotic. It is a direct subversion of the laws of our country and of the spirit of national reconstruction that the Constitution of the Republic enjoins upon every actor in our economy.
The ANC places the private sector squarely on notice: the African National Congress in government will pursue, through the Department of Employment and Labour, through the National Prosecuting Authority, through the South African Revenue Service, and through the labour inspectorate, every enterprise that profits from this practice. The cost of compliance with the law is borne by the lawful employer and by the lawful worker; the African National Congress government will ensure that those who externalise that cost onto our communities and onto our country pay the full weight of the law.
The President of the Republic announced the rolling out of ten thousand additional posts in the Department of Employment and Labour. These ten thousand new positions will be filled and trained as labour inspectors. They will be South African inspectors, empowered to intercept the unlawful employment of any person not authorised by South African law to be employed by enterprises operating in our country. Where an employer is found undercutting our labour laws, the inspectorate will act.
We ask our people once again, to refrain from taking the law into their own hands – when we do so, we allow critics to call us names, shame us as vigilante society. The Border Management Authority has commenced a build programme to upgrade at least six of our principal border posts and the surrounding infrastructure. The upgrade introduces technology and a modernised interface capable of tracking and tracing any tourist who overstays the lawful period of stay and any person who enters for a short-term stay and then declines to leave.
The technology includes smart drone capability operating in real time, monitoring every kilometre of the South African border. The Special Investigating Unit continues its mandate to rid the Department of Home Affairs of officials who place our people at risk by selling undeserved official documentation.
The Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority continue their cases. The work on the South African Police Service is publicly before the country on the television screens — to rid the Service of bribe-takers and of officers involved in syndicate crime, and to move them from the Service directly into the cells of the Department of Correctional Services.
The NEC further urges the Department of Home Affairs to consider, with appropriate urgency, the reintroduction of quota limits on immigration intake. Our country must decide, transparently and in the public interest, how many additional persons the means at its disposal can lawfully and humanely accommodate.
The instrument exists in our law — section 19 of the Immigration Act, Act 13 of 2002, provides the framework. The NEC also encourages South Africans to engage in the public-participation processes of Parliament on Bills now before the legislature. Among these are Bills that will protect the rights of every South African to create and to operate enterprise — the constitutional right at section 22 of our Constitution — and Bills that will close the route by which a person travels through several safe countries on the journey to our Republic and only applies for asylum or refugee status on arrival here. The principle of first-safe-country is a principle of international refugee law, and the legislative reform now under way will give it operational effect in South Africa.
The President of the Republic of South Africa travels to Egypt for the Mid-Year Coordination Meeting of the African Union, held at El Alamein from Wednesday 24 to Saturday 27 June 2026. The African National Congress, through the Government of the Republic, will table at El Alamein the foundations of a
Continental Compact on Migration in Africa — a framework paper that moves the continental conversation from the register of accusation to the register of shared responsibility. The Compact is the African answer to a continental question.
We will not allow our country to be reduced to a single line of caricature on a question that is the continent’s question and the world’s question together.
The NEC urges every Provincial Premier in the Republic to activate a Quick Response Team on immigrant tensions in their province, working in concurrence with the South African Police Service, the National Prosecuting Authority, the Department of Home Affairs, the Department of Social Development, the Provincial Disaster Management Centres, and the National Disaster Management Centre.
ON THE EVICTIONS IN THE WESTERN CAPE
The NEC has received the matter of the farm laborers evictions taking place in the Western Cape. The Secretary General’s Office will further engage the Western Cape Provincial Task Team of the African National Congress to develop and advance a Programme of Action on the evictions question. The ANC does not stand by while the people of our Republic are removed from their land and from their homes.
ON THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION — IRAN, PALESTINE, LEBANON
The National Executive Committee reflected on the international situation and on the urgency of a just, durable and political resolution to the multiple conflicts now bearing down on humanity. The path of war is not the path of solution.
The war on the Islamic Republic of Iran is a matter of the gravest concern to the African National Congress and to our country. The ANC, in the tradition of Cde Oliver Tambo and the Harare Declaration of 1989, calls on all parties — the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Government of the State of Israel, the Governments of the Arab States, the Governments of the major powers, and the multilateral institutions seated under the United Nations Charter — to choose the path of negotiation and to set aside the path of arms. The escalation of armed action between great-power blocs in the Middle East places the global economy under strain, places African economies under strain, and places ordinary households in our country under strain through the rising cost of fuels, the rising cost of staples and the rising cost of credit.
The National Executive Committee commends Cde Ronald Lamola, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, for the discipline and the principled clarity with which South African diplomacy carried itself at the recent BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. The ANC places on record its appreciation to the Minister and his team for the work that placed our country firmly on the side of dialogue, of multilateralism, of the United Nations Charter, and of the rule of international law in this trying season.
The National Executive Committee further calls for a political solution to the continuing war on the Palestinian people in Gaza and in the West Bank. The ANC reaffirms the standing position of the South African government before the International Court of Justice in the matter of South Africa against Israel: the genocide must end, the occupation must end, and the two-state solution must be brought into effect.
The African National Congress notes with the deepest pain the continued invasion of the sovereign territory of Lebanon and the resulting suffering inflicted upon the civilian populations of southern Lebanon. We call on all parties to seek a peaceful, negotiated solution to the difficulties of the region.
ON PROVINCIAL TASK TEAMS IN THE EASTERN CAPE AND IN GAUTENG
The Special meeting of the NEC convened in Cape Town on Wednesday 13 May 2026 took the decision that Provincial Task Teams must be established in the Eastern Cape and in Gauteng, in place of the Provincial Executive Committees whose terms have expired without a Provincial Conference having sat. The Special NEC left the implementation and the formulation of the membership to the National Working Committee. The NEC that met this past weekend has noted the compositions placed before it.
For the avoidance of doubt: the governments of the Eastern Cape and of Gauteng are not affected by these organisational arrangements of the ANC. The Comrade Premier of Gauteng, Cde Panyaza Lesufi, and the Comrade Premier of the Eastern Cape, Cde Oscar Mabuyane, and the Members of the Executive Councils in both provinces, continue to discharge their constitutional responsibilities.
The provincial legislatures continue to sit. The work of the State continues. The Provincial Task Team in each province will carry the African National Congress through the Local Government Elections and will, at the earliest procedurally ripe moment, convene the postponed Provincial Conferences in the ordinary course.
ON THE REGIONAL ANC CONFERENCE SEASON — MANGAUNG AS THE LAST
The ANC has, in this period, concluded the season of Regional Conferences. The West Rand Regional Conference convened successfully from 18 to 20 May 2026; the Mangaung Regional Conference rerun is scheduled for the weekend of 29 and 30 May 2026 — this coming weekend. Mangaung will be the last regional conference convened by the ANC before the Local Government Elections.
No further regional conferences will be held before 4 November 2026. The ANC carries its campaign forward through the Regional Executive Committees seated to date, through the Provincial Task Teams in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng, and through the appropriate dispute-cure processes of the ANC’s own constitutional structures where conferences could not convene. The discipline is settled.
The focus from this point on is the Local Government Elections of 4 November 2026.
ON THE INTEGRITY COMMISSION REPORT
The NEC received and considered the Report of the African National Congress Integrity Commission on matters concerning five named comrades. The NEC thanks and salutes the members of the Integrity Commission, which stands at the core of the African National Congress’s renewal programme and at the core of the upholding of ethical conduct and good governance from within our ranks.
The NEC fully endorsed the Report of the Integrity Commission and its recommendations on each of the comrades named. Further to that endorsement, the NEC resolved to take an additional step: the NEC shall refer all five matters to the National Disciplinary Committee of the African National Congress for action under the constitutional disciplinary process of the ANC, with the NEC itself serving as the complainant.
The Office of the Secretary General will give effect to the resolution in the ordinary course.
The five comrades whose matters have been referred to the National Disciplinary Committee, with the NEC as the complainant, are: Cde Tolashe, Cde Cele, Cde Mkhwane, Cde Khalipa, and Cde Zungu. The constitutional disciplinary process will run in the ordinary course.
The National Executive Committee commends, in the strongest terms, the African National Congress Integrity Commission for the depth, the fearlessness and the discipline with which it has discharged its mandate within the ANC.
The Integrity Commission is the conscience of the African National Congress. Its work — performed without favour and without fear — is one of the principal instruments by which the ANC renews itself and holds itself to the standard the people of South Africa expect of it.
The ANC places on record its profound appreciation to the Chairperson of the Integrity Commission and to every Commissioner who has served the ANC and the country through this organ of self-correction.
ON THE TRIPARTITE ALLIANCE AND THE SO-CALLED CONFERENCE OF THE LEFT
The African National Congress reaffirms, as the NEC has reaffirmed in every sitting since the founding of the
Tripartite Alliance, the relationship between the ANC and the South African Communist Party, and the broader alliance of the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, and the South African National Civic Organisation.
The Alliance has stood the test of time. The Alliance has stood the test of personalities. The Alliance has been founded, since its analytical articulation at Morogoro in 1969 and reaffirmed at Kabwe in 1985, on the principle of unity and struggle against the enemy of the people. The relationship between the components of the Alliance is dialectical and complementary.
The African National Congress is the leading force of the broad national liberation front; the South African Communist Party carries the vanguard role of the working class within the front. That is the position the ANC has carried since 1969, and that is the position the ANC carries today.
On the so-called Conference of the Left convened by the South African Communist Party from Friday 29 May 2026 in Boksburg: the African National Congress was invited to participate. The African National Congress, after careful deliberation in its Officials and at the National Working Committee of 18 and 19 May 2026, chose to stay away.
Then NEC resolved to support that position. The African National Congress will not participate in the Conference. We have, however, invited the leadership of the South African Communist Party to a principal-level engagement on the underlying questions, in the standing discipline of the Alliance.
We say openly to our country: the African National Congress does not consider this convening to be a Conference of the Left. The composition is itself the political argument. A gathering that proposes to sit chambers of commerce alongside the Bolshevik Party, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party alongside AZAPO, business formations alongside trade unions, is not a left formation in any received meaning of the term. It is a coalition of negation — united by what it stands against, namely the African National Congress in government — and unable to articulate the positive programme by which the working class and the people would advance under its banner. It is a political project dressed in theoretical clothing.
The ANC notes, with the seriousness the matter deserves, that the convening forces have chosen to associate themselves at this gathering with formations whose principal leadership figures were identified by the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture — the
Zondo Commission — as central to the wrecking of the South African institutions the African National Congress built: the South African Revenue Service; the National Prosecuting Authority; the Hawks; the State Security Agency; Eskom; Transnet; and the public-procurement system across the State.
The ANC places that association on the public record. The Alliance stands. The African National Congress remains the centre of the broad national liberation front and of the broad democratic and patriotic forces of our Republic. The work of this period is the work of the National Democratic Revolution. The answer is in every Branch General Meeting, in every ward, in every municipality, and in every street of the Republic in which the African National Congress has stood, stands, and will stand.
The African National Congress is at work.
ON THE STORY OUR COUNTRY DESERVES
The NEC reflected, in this meeting, on the gap that exists between the objective record of progress in the living conditions of South Africans over the past three decades and the lived experience of many of our people today. Both readings are real. The objective record carries the story of millions of houses delivered, of millions of additional South Africans connected to piped water and to electricity, of the National Health Insurance Act now in lawful implementation, of free education at our schools and at our TVET colleges, of one of the largest social-grant systems on the African continent.
The lived experience is shaped by the cost of living, by unemployment, by crime, and by corruption — every one of these is real, and every one of these the ANC reads carefully. The NEC has directed the communications work of the ANC to carry both readings into the country at the same time.
We do not deny the lived experience of our people. We do not concede the objective record of what has been built since 1994. The honest conversation with our people is the conversation that holds both at once.
ON BEREAVEMENTS
The NEC observed a moment’s silence for Cde Bushy Maape, former Premier of the North West Province and a cadre of the ANC of long and faithful standing. The Office of the Secretary General has been directed to convey, on behalf of the NEC, the formal condolences of the ANC to the Maape family and to the North West structures. The NEC also observed a moment’s silence for all comrades whose passing has been recorded in the period under review.
THE CAMPAIGN RHYTHM TO 4 NOVEMBER 2026
Comrades, members of the media, fellow South Africans — the work of every cadre, every branch, every region and every province of the African National Congress now converges on the date of the Local Government Elections of 4 November 2026.
The ANC carries into this period the standing inheritance of its canon — the Freedom Charter, on which the ANC has rested for over seven decades, and which we shall again commemorate on Freedom Charter Day, this 26 June 2026. The Strategy and Tactics tradition from Morogoro 1969 through Kabwe 1985 through to the National General Council Base Document of 2025.
The National Democratic Revolution as the strategic objective. The broad national liberation front as the alliance through which we carry the moment.
The discipline of the cadre as the instrument by which the line of march is held.
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