The African National Congress (ANC) faces an increasingly serious threat to its political authority. That threat is not confined to opposition gains or coalition arithmetic. It is rooted in a deeper erosion of credibility that is now visible across voter groups, regions, and even within the party’s own support base.

A poll conducted by the Social Research Foundation in late 2025* captures this problem starkly. When voters were asked which party they associate most strongly with the phrase “makes broken promises”, the response was decisive. Seventy-three percent of voters said the phrase described the ANC best. That was followed by the Economic Freedom Fighters at 3.9%, the Democratic Alliance (DA) at 3.3%, and the uMkhonto weSizwe Party at 0.5%, with all other parties registering below one percent. This is not a shared indictment of the political system. It is a label voters attach overwhelmingly to the governing party.

What makes the result more damaging is that it is reinforced by how ANC voters themselves respond. Among the ANC voter subsample, 53.0% say the phrase “makes broken promises” describes the ANC best. The remaining responses are thinly spread across opposition parties, with no alternative breaking into double digits. In effect, a majority of the party’s own supporters accept the charge, even if they continue to vote for it.

This finding sits alongside a broader pattern of decline reported by The Common Sense over the past month. The ANC is polling below 50.0% among black voters, rural voters, and South Africa’s poorest voters. These are constituencies that once formed the party’s most reliable base. Losing majority support here signals more than temporary dissatisfaction. It points to a weakening of the moral and political authority on which the ANC has historically relied.

At the same time, the party is losing ground where economic power is concentrated. Across South Africa’s three biggest provincial economies, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape, the DA now commands more voter support than the ANC. The same pattern emerges when votes are aggregated across the metros, which generate most of the country’s economic output and jobs.

Frans Cronje told The Common Sense that the data also flags a longer-term structural risk for the country’s politics. Referring to the possibility that ANC support could slip far enough that the ANC and the DA collectively can no longer form a national majority, Cronje said, “This is not our forecast at this time, but we flag it as a risk.”

He added, “The DA commands the established middle class and the ANC’s future political relevance depends on commanding a chunk of the vote of the aspirant middle class on the urban fringes.”

“That partnership makes for a relatively stable Government of National Unity alliance as the interests of the voters behind the two parties are largely allied,” Cronje said.

Alongside that longer-term risk sits a more immediate challenge. For the ANC to hold its current support levels in the mid-30s to mid-40s (in percentages) requires confronting a basic credibility collapse. The vast majority of voters, and over half of the ANC’s own voters, no longer believe what the party leadership tells them, whether about living standards, job creation, corruption, or government services.

For the ANC, that is the core danger revealed by the “broken promises” data. A party can survive unpopular policies. It struggles to survive a settled belief that its leaders do not speak truthfully about lived reality. When that belief takes root, campaign promises stop persuading voters, announcements stop reassuring them, and even genuine reforms are met with scepticism.

Rebuilding authority will require delivery that voters can see and feel in their daily lives, not rhetorical resets or manifesto launches. Until that happens, the ANC’s brand will remain defined less by what it promises next than by what voters believe it has failed to deliver.

*The Social Research Foundation’s Q4 2025 Market Survey was commissioned by the Foundation and conducted by Victory Research among 1 002 registered voters between 27 October and 14 November 2025 using telephonic CATI interviews. A single-frame random digit-dialling design was used, drawing from all possible South African mobile numbers to ensure that every number had an equal probability of selection, with national sim card penetration exceeding 250%, more than 90% of adults owning a phone, and mobile networks covering 99.8% of the population, giving universal practical coverage. The sample was fully weighted to match the national registered voter population across all key demographics, including language, age, race, gender, education, income, and urban or rural location. Turnout modelling assigned each respondent a probability of voting based on questions measuring their likelihood of participation, with the primary turnout model set at 52.8%. The poll carries a 4.0% margin of error at a 95% confidence level, with a design effect of 1.762.