The ANC goes into yet another national executive committee meeting at the end of this week. As usual political observers will hold their breath waiting for news of what transpires in the meeting of the 108 or so top leaders in the party. The key question, as has been the case with every one of these meetings since January 2018, is whether Ramaphosa has enough power in the NEC to implement his urgently needed reform agenda.

The scrutiny of the ANC NEC and other ANC structures is not misplaced. Power in SA lies with control of the ANC. Useful as the state capture inquiry has been, a stark and bitter truth has been exposed by it. That truth is that none of the corruption that has taken place in our republic would have taken place if the ANC had not been captured first. That means that one cannot talk about state capture without talking about ANC capture. One cannot reform the state, at least for now, without reforming the ANC or kicking it out of power...