ANC's 5th NGC: A Line in the Sand - Declaration, Direction, and Padkos

Comrades, cadres, and delegates, as you pack your bags and leave Birchwood this Friday morning, travelling back to Galeshewe and Giyani, Mdantsane and Mamelodi, Umlazi and Upington, Mitchells Plain and Musina, I want to speak to you plainly.

Not as someone chasing proximity to power. Not as someone performing factional belonging. But as a loyal and sometimes critical cadre, who still believes the ANC can be a strategic centre of people’s power again, if we stop flattering ourselves and start doing the hard work of correction.

You did not gather this week for atmosphere. As the advance cadres, representing our beloved Movement, you gathered for consequence.

And as you carry padkos for the long road home, you must also carry something else: a decision in your head, and a mandate in your hands. Remember our People: Development, Delivery, Discipline and Dignity.

The truth that must travel home with you

South Africans do not doubt that we can write documents. They doubt that we can govern outcomes.

That is the crisis of trust. Not “public perception”. Not “media narratives”. Not “opposition propaganda”

Trust collapses when lived experience collapses. When water does not run, when sewage runs in streets, when clinics have no dignity, when schools cannot read, when a woman cannot walk safely, when a small business pays protection money, when a witness is killed, when a tender becomes a gunpoint transaction.

If the ANC does not defeat criminal rule, we will not lead society. We will preside over its fragmentation. That is why the line in the sand is not a slogan. It is a survival boundary.

The NGC Declaration is a mandate, not a memorial

From the President’s closing and the Declaration you adopted, it must be treated as marching orders, not conference closure. It explicitly frames this NGC as a turning-point and commits the organisation to a defined renewal and implementation pathway, including a Renewal Charter Towards 2032, a Rejuvenation Action Plan, and a Local Government Action Plan.

This matters because, for the first time in a long time, the movement is admitting on paper what the streets have been shouting for years: Renewal is not a mood. Renewal is a system.

The test now is whether provinces, regions, branches, leagues, caucuses, and deployed cadres treat these instruments as enforceable workplans, with timelines, indicators, and visible accountability, or whether we file them under “conference history” and move on.

A Declaration without enforcement becomes comfort. A Declaration with enforcement becomes power. Remember: Development, Delivery, Discipline and Dignity

What this series tried to do, in one sentence

Across Parts 1 to 10, we set out one integrated message:

South Africa’s crisis is a crisis of sovereignty, or governance (rule), of dignity, of delivery, of discipline, and of development.  We, as the ANC, must shift from rhetoric to a disciplined national development mission, with anti-mafia state restoration, measurable organisational performance, and a renewed alliance and ideas project that can win the future. That is the spine. Everything else is detail.

The five take-home decisions delegates must carry into 2026

As you return home, do not carry “debate”. Carry decisions. Here are five that can be implemented without waiting for another conference season.

1. Turn renewal into measurable branch and community work

A branch cannot be functional because it has minutes. It is functional because it solves a real problem quarterly. That is how you rebuild legitimacy at the ground level.

2. Treat local government as the frontline of state legitimacy

The Local Government Action Plan in the Declaration must become an enforcement instrument, not a campaign pamphlet.

Where municipalities fail, the ANC brand burns first because people live there, not in strategy documents.

3. Make procurement transparency a public weapon against mafias

If tenders remain hidden, criminals remain early in the queue. If adjudication is visible, the space for intimidation narrows.

4. Rebuild the state’s delivery muscles

Stop outsourcing the core brain of the state. Rebuild engineering capacity, project management capacity, forensic capacity, and data capacity. A developmental state is not a press conference. It is a machine.

5. Make 2026 a moral election, not a technical election

We do not win 2026 by explaining history. We win 2026 by restoring safety, dignity, and visible competence in everyday life. The narrative is not “trust us”. The narrative is “watch what we fix”.

The task now is to convert these broad points into a compact between the movement and the people, one that can be checked at the ward, municipal, provincial and national level within 18 months

The world context is not waiting for our internal debates

While we argue internally, external pressures are hardening. South Africa is being targeted in narrative warfare and geopolitical signalling: from attempts to isolate us diplomatically, to attacks framed as “anti-Americanism” or “radical agendas,” to pressure campaigns around sovereignty and alignment.  

And globally, Palestine remains a moral and geopolitical fault-line, one that tests whether international law still has meaning.

That is why South Africa’s posture at the ICJ is not a side issue: it is consistent with the anti-apartheid moral ethic that gave our foreign policy legitimacy in the first place. The point is not to romanticise geopolitics. The point is to understand this: A weak, divided left becomes a playground for external agendas. A disciplined development project becomes a shield. Remember: Development, Delivery, Discipline and Dignity.

Alliance and ideological direction: reconfigure or repeat the old defeat

The Alliance cannot remain a consultative club while society becomes a battlefield of poverty, disinformation, and violence.

COSATU’s class concerns and the SACP’s strategic choices, including the implications of independent contestation, are signals of a deeper truth: working people are searching for coherence, not ceremony.  

If we repeat the historic pattern, united right, divided left, we will hand the future away by default.

Reconfiguration must mean shared strategy, shared minimum programme, and agreed rules of discipline in the public interest, not “summit language” and photo opportunities.

The human fabric must become the centre, not the afterthought

When delegates return home, they are returning to households that are tired.

Tired of GBVF. Tired of addiction economies. Tired of classrooms that don’t teach. Tired of clinics that humiliate. Tired of unsafe streets. Tired of paying twice: once through taxes, once through failure.

That is why the Declaration’s programmes must translate into minimum lived-experience standards, especially for women and youth, otherwise the NGC becomes another elite ritual.

If GBVF is a national crisis, then treat it like one: war rooms, minimum standards, response-time accountability, shelters that work, courts that function, policing that protects.

A Padkos message to delegates: what you must carry home

Carry these commitments:

• Do not defend the ANC by defending weak leaders. Defend it by defending people.
• Do not confuse unity with silence. Unity without truth is decay.
• Do not reduce renewal to discipline. Discipline without delivery is theatre.
• Do not postpone courage to “after conference”. Courage is now, in your ward.

Remember these lines for the road home

• “A Declaration without enforcement is comfort; with enforcement it becomes power.”
• “If the ANC does not defeat criminal sovereignty, democracy and development remain hostage.”
• “Renewal is not a speech; renewal is a system with deadlines.”
• “A branch that cannot solve one community problem per quarter is not a structure of liberation.”
• “Procurement is either industrial policy for the people or a cash machine for gangs and syndicates.”
• “Oversight is not betrayal; it is loyalty to the people.”
• “The 2026 election will not be won by memory; it will be won by visible competence.”
• “A broke movement becomes a soft target for dirty money.”
• “In the digital age, disinformation is a weapon and narrative is infrastructure.”
• “This is not what we struggled for, and we still have time to correct the course.”

Safe festive season, but not political sleep

Comrades and friends, enjoy your families. Rest your bodies. Share meals. Reconnect with children and elders. Make peace where you must. Grieve where you must. Laugh where you can. But do not let the country sleepwalk.

This is the work now: take the NGC home. Turn the Declaration into local action. Turn resolutions into delivery contracts. Turn political education into problem-solving. Turn the ANC into a movement of practical courage again.

Travel safely. Arrive safely. And when you arrive, start.

Safe festive season to you and your families. And may 2026 find us not repeating, but rebuilding.

With #LoveandSolidarityAlways…

cde faiez

* Faiez Jacobs is a former Member of Parliament, founder of The Transcendence Group, Capetonian, Activist, and Servant of the People.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.