ANC leaders are detached from reality

Tensions within the African National Congress (ANC) and its structures have deepened after the ANC Youth League president, Collen Malatjie, accused senior party leaders of being “detached from reality.”

This follows controversial remarks by ANC National Chairperson Gwede Mantashe on the issue of unemployment.

Malatjie has become the latest high-profile figure to publicly criticise Mantashe, who recently said that unemployment persists because some South Africans are not proactive enough in seeking work.

Speaking at an ANC January 8 Women’s League Manyano gathering in Rustenburg on Thursday, Malatjie delivered a pointed response aimed squarely at Mantashe, although he did not mention him by name.

His remarks were met with loud applause from the audience and marked one of the sharpest internal rebukes of the ANC’s senior leadership in recent months.

“With the high level of unemployment in South Africa, you find leaders of the ANC saying that people are unemployed because they are lazy to apply for jobs,” Malatjie said.

“Those are people who are detached from the reality of the people of South Africa.”

He questioned how senior leaders could make such claims in a country where millions of young people and parents expend scarce resources each day in fruitless job searches.

“How do you say to the youth of this country, and mothers who are giving their kids money every day to go and apply for jobs, that they are lazy?” he asked.

In a direct swipe, Malatjie criticised leaders who, he said, had never personally experienced the realities of unemployment.

“Then a man who has not retired and yet has never written a CV his entire life stands, says that the youth is unemployed because they are lazy to apply for jobs,” he said.

Malatjie went further by calling for stricter party discipline and accountability, urging ANC members to challenge what he described as irresponsible conduct by deployed leaders.

Mantashe’s unemployment comments

Mantashe’s original comments were made during an interview with SABC News, where he argued that the ANC had inadvertently created a “passive society” in which citizens expect the state to provide jobs instead of actively seeking opportunities themselves.

“You sit back in the sun and expect the state to deliver. People are not involved,” Mantashe said.

He urged unemployed South Africans to stop “basking in the sun” and apply for opportunities he claimed the ANC government had created.

“The ANC has given you a fishing rod. Must it now catch fish for you?” he asked.

Mantashe cited his own experience, saying he had never relied on government assistance to find work. He described travelling to the mines as a young man to seek employment and using his wages to invest in livestock.

“Today, because there is a progressive government, people expect that government to give them jobs,” he said.

The remarks came against the backdrop of one of the worst unemployment crises globally.

Official data places South Africa’s overall unemployment rate above 32%, with youth unemployment exceeding 45%, leaving millions of young people outside the economy.

Economists have repeatedly warned that unemployment is driven by structural constraints, including weak economic growth, years of energy insecurity, skills mismatches, corruption and policy uncertainty.

The backlash against Mantashe extended beyond the ANC.

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba blamed the governing party’s record, citing corruption, state capture and cadre deployment as major contributors to joblessness.

Within the ANC itself, Malatjie’s intervention highlights a widening generational and ideological divide, as younger leaders grow increasingly vocal about what they see as tone-deaf messaging from senior figures ahead of the local government elections.

The episode underscores the ANC’s struggle to reconcile its liberation-era leadership culture with the economic frustrations of a younger, disillusioned electorate.

This manifested in the party dropping to its lowest electoral performance yet in the 2024 polls, siting at 40% of the vote nationally.

It got under 17% in KwaZulu Natal, less than 20% in the Western Cape, and under 35% in Gauteng.