Anatomy of the ANC in power: insights from Port Elizabeth.

This paper provides a critical review of Mcebisi Ndletyana's book The Anatomy of the ANC in Power: Insights from Port Elizabeth, 1990–2019 which was published in 2020 by the Human Sciences Research Council. The review ranges from a discussion of the methodology and concept to a discussion of the major themes. With respect to the concept and methodology, it is argued that a study pithed on an aspect of the polity at a subnational level contributes significantly to the advancement of knowledge in the discipline of politics about the nature of particularly the party system in South Africa. The first of the major themes the review focuses on is the impact of the legacy of the various liberation traditions on the ANC and the implications this had on the emerging political culture of the party in the democratic period. The paper argues that Ndletyana's account demonstrates that some of the bad character traits of the ANC labelled by its leaders as 'new tendencies' were in fact evident right at the formative stage of the party. The second theme adopted here is party-state relations and decay in which the reviewer concurs with the author's central argument that factions had a negative bearing on governance and negatively affected the electoral prospects of the ANC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]