Exclusive: Poll Finds ANC Voters Want Ramaphosa to Run for a Third Term

A clear divide is emerging between South Africa’s electorate at large and the voter base of the African National Congress (ANC) over whether President Cyril Ramaphosa should seek a third term as party leader.

This is according to a poll conducted in late 2025 by the Social Research Foundation.*

Among South Africans overall, opposition to a third term is decisive. A combined 61.4% of voters oppose the idea, including 54.1% who are strongly opposed and 7.3% who oppose it somewhat. Support is markedly weaker, totalling 34.5%, made up of 23.1% who strongly support a third term and 11.4% who support it to a lesser degree. Read plainly, the balance of opinion beyond the ANC is firmly tilted against extending Ramaphosa’s tenure at the top of the party.

That matters because the ANC is no longer operating in an environment where national majorities can be assumed. Coalition politics has become a feature of South Africa’s landscape, raising the political cost of any move that appears to entrench power. To many voters outside the party, a third term risks being read not as continuity, but as a refusal to renew leadership at a time of weak growth, strained public finances, and persistent service delivery failures.

The internal picture inside the ANC looks very different. Among ANC voters, a clear majority supports Ramaphosa standing again. Support totals 58.0%, consisting of 46.0% who support the idea strongly and 12.0% who support it somewhat. Opposition among ANC voters stands at 42.0%, with 34.0% strongly opposed and 8.0% somewhat opposed. In effect, the preferences of the party’s base run counter to those of the wider electorate.

This divergence highlights a familiar governing party dilemma. Within the ANC, Ramaphosa continues to be seen by many supporters as a stabilising figure, particularly when weighed against factional alternatives associated with past instability or corruption. For these voters, continuity is framed less as personal loyalty and more as risk management, a way of preventing internal fragmentation even if performance has fallen short of earlier expectations.

Outside the ANC, however, the same logic carries diminishing returns. A leadership extension that consolidates internal support may deepen the perception that the party is absorbed by succession politics rather than focused on reform and growth. In a coalition era, that perception shapes not only voter behaviour but also the willingness of potential partners to treat the ANC as a credible anchor of stability.

Despite the strength of ANC voter support for a third term, Ramaphosa is not expected to run again. He is expected to stand down as ANC leader at its next National Conference at the end of 2027.

It remains unclear who his successor might be. Party insiders worry that two of the leading candidates, Fikile Mbalula and Paul Mashatile, may struggle to broaden the party’s appeal and could see the ANC suffer crippling further electoral losses if either becomes the face of the next campaign.

Among some analysts, businessman Patrice Motsepe, who holds no senior position within the party, is seen as the ANC’s best chance of staunching its losses and projecting a cleaner, more competent leadership brand. But that option is also viewed as politically difficult, with Motsepe facing considerable internal resistance from various ANC factions that remain wary of any successor who might disrupt entrenched networks of influence.

*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.