Africa’s oldest liberation movement, The African National Congress (ANC), celebrated its 113th anniversary at the Mandela Park Stadium in Khayelitsha over the weekend, where the party’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, delivered the party’s annual January 8 statement.

We told you last week about the challenges leading up to the event, which saw over 14,000 people attend, and how the ANC needs to reflect on its way forward after its majority-losing performance in the 2024 General Elections. Well, they seem to have. Let’s look at what Ramaphosa said and how we’ve heard it all before. 

A brief history

The ANC issued their first January 8 statement in 1972 on the 60th anniversary of its founding. It was written by then ANC president Oliver Tambo. After this initial statement, there would be a hiatus, with the next one only coming in 1979 under the theme “Year of the Spear.” The statement marks the beginning of the political year for the organisation and sets the tone of what it aims to achieve. This year’s statement spoke to the theme of renewal, no doubt following the party’s poor performance at the polls.

What was in the 2025 statement?

This year’s celebrations were not as full of pomp and ceremony as previous years. In the opening remarks of the statement, Ramaphosa seemingly took a swipe at the Government of National Unity (GNU) partner, the Democratic Alliance (DA), by calling the DA-run Western Cape “The point of convergence between east and west, wealth and pov­erty, justice and injustice, despair and hope.” Ramaphosa was seemingly echoing his deputy, Paul Mashatile, who last week alleged that the DA did not care about people in Khayelitsha or Gugulethu. He touched on the formation of the GNU, which he called a “tactical decision”, and also pleaded for unity with the ANC’s alliance partners, the South African Communist Party (SACP), Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African National Civics Organisation (SANCO). In recent months, the SACP has hinted at plans to contest the 2026 Local Government Elections solo, citing frustration with ANC leadership and alleged exploitation under the tripartite alliance. 

Ramaphosa revealed that under its renewal banner, the ANC was focused on three urgent points to “regain the confidence of the majority of the people in our ability to represent their hopes and aspirations for a better life.” These are: 

  • Improving the ability of the economy to create wealth and employment for all
  • Improving the quality, responsiveness, accountability and integrity of all spheres of government 
  • Renewing and rebuilding the ANC so it can provide decisive and ethical leadership to its followers. 

Ramaphosa also threw shade at what he called “anti-transformation forces and the state capture forces”, which he said were trying to destroy the ANC. “Part of the counter-revolutionary tactic is to promote break-away parties to erode the support base of the ANC. Some of these parties masquerade as more radical than the ANC, but their revolutionary-sounding rhetoric cannot hide the reality that they have common cause with the forces opposing transformation,” said Ramaphosa. 

He outlined six “priority tasks” the ANC would focus on in 2025 to regain support. These include tackling youth unemployment, fixing local government, and strengthening crime-fighting efforts. 

While these are admirable goals, it’s as if the ANC is writing the same New Year’s resolutions every year but never actually hitting the gym.

This article has been edited on 16 January 2025 for clarity and to provide additional context while preserving the original intent and key information of the story