‘They See the Rot — and Do Nothing’

ILLUSION: At a Free State lekgotla, Soviet Lekganyane cut through ANC renewal rhetoric, accusing leaders of recognising wrongdoing yet failing — or refusing — to act while the state drifts…

By Themba Khumalo

Soviet Lekganyane stepped to the microphone. The room probably shifted. I can see, in my mind’s eye, comrades bracing for comfort, for sugar-coated words, for polite nods. 

They got none of that. Instead, he tore through every illusion.

He spoke of leaders who had long abandoned their duty, where wrongdoing was glaring and undeniable, but no one fixes it, no one even flinches, and some even defend it, while others excuse it.

No euphemisms. No soft edges. The truth did not whisper. It struck. Hard. Precise. Lethal. Every word uttered cut like a scalpel. Bloodless, surgical, unavoidable. I imagine the silence that followed was not from shock. It was recognition.

Lekganyane diagnosed the patient without blaming the weather or some imaginary act of God.

Addressing the Free State lekgotla last weekend, the ANC national executive committee member did not point the finger at hostile media, opposition parties, or shadowy foreign interests. He located the resistance to the party’s so-called renewal agenda precisely where it festers — inside the organisation itself. This is not rhetoric. It is a confession.

His charge was damning. Leaders, he argued, are paralysed in meetings where wrongdoing is visible to all. They see it. They recognise it. 

Yet, they cannot, or will not, act. Worse still, some muster the nerve to defend it. The problem is not ignorance. It is consent.

Lekganyane asked: “Why do we sit in a meeting of the ANC and find ourselves unable to take a decision on something that all of us see is wrong? And where do we get the courage to sit in that meeting and defend those wrongdoings?”

When Lekganyane says certain leaders are “occupying positions” and have “checked out of office”, he is describing a political pathology: formal authority without moral presence. Titles remain. Salaries remain. Convoys remain. But the core functions of leadership — decision-making, accountability, courage — have evaporated.

“People are just occupying positions, but they’ve literally checked out of office,” he charged.

This is not an abstract concern. South Africans are living under a governing elite that has checked out. The economy flounders, rudderless and paralysed, lacking any plan to pull it back from the brink. Municipal infrastructure is collapsing due to graft, the appointment of unqualified people, lack of maintenance and upgrading of ageing infrastructure, and chaotic billing. Schools disintegrate from neglect, classrooms bursting at the seams. Hospitals choke on overcrowding and bleeding resources, while the elite look on.

Industrial-scale looting devours public funds, from the more than R2 billion stolen from Thembisa Hospital to countless other institutions. Leaders make arrogant statements that read like jabs at the poor, indifferent to the suffering around them.

Citizens are not asking for ideological refinement; they are demanding institutions that function, leaders who act, and a state capable of fulfilling the most basic obligations of governance.

Lekganyane, who also chairs Parliament’s ad hoc committee probing the infiltration of the SA Police Service by drug cartels, understands, at close range, how rot embeds itself — not through dramatic coups, but through quiet accommodation.

His remarks landed in the middle of another storm. In 2025, the ANC branded the year as one of “renewal”. In that same period, allegations emerged that NEC member Senzo Mchunu — now suspended as police minister — had associated with a criminal cartel and disbanded a KwaZulu-Natal political killings task team. KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi publicly accused him of criminality.

 Mchunu has since appeared before Lekganyane’s committee to justify decisions said to have aided a criminal enterprise.

The contrast is brutal. On one hand, a party branding itself as renewed. On the other hand, allegations that cut to the bone of state security. Renewal risks becoming a slogan pasted over structural decay.

Lekganyane is right: leadership is not conferred by conference resolution. He said, “If you don’t make a choice to lead, you will never be a leader, no matter how many conferences have elected you.”

Leadership is a daily choice. If a leader cannot confront wrongdoing in a closed meeting, they will not confront it in public office. If they defend the indefensible among comrades, they rationalise failure before citizens.

What he exposes is not factional resistance but institutional fatigue — a governing elite comfortable with inertia. To “check out of office” is to treat power as tenancy rather than duty. It is to sit in the chair but abandon the responsibility.

The ANC’s crisis is operational, not merely reputational. When those entrusted with authority disengage internally, the state disengages externally. Decisions stall. Oversight softens. Networks of patronage harden. The public feels it first in service delivery and ultimately in the legitimacy of democracy itself.

Unless you are a “zombified” supporter or follower who is a sworn enemy to the truth, Lekganyane’s diagnosis is beyond question, but the remedy will be painful. It requires more than conferences and themed years. Those who cannot lead or act when expected to must exit. Those who remain must show, in measurable terms, that wrongdoing carries consequences — even when the perpetrator wears the same colours.

Until that happens, “renewal” will remain a word repeated in meetings where everyone sees the problem and no one moves to fix it.

*The writer, Themba Khumalo, is a renowned columnist, political commentator and former editor