ANC regional secretaries have been given 30 days to vacate their municipal employment or vacate their party positions ahead of the November local government elections. The directive, signed by secretary-general Fikile Mbalula and dated May 29, also applies to members of the regional executive committee (REC), who have also been ordered to vacate the senior municipal management positions they hold or resign from their party positions. Regional secretaries are among the most influential officials in the ANC’s provincial power structures. They oversee branch operations, campaigns, candidate co-ordination and political programmes across municipalities and wards.The ANC said the positions could no longer be treated as part-time roles while office bearers remained employed elsewhere.“Where the regional secretary holds employment elsewhere, the regional secretary is required, within those 30 days, either to resign from that employment or to resign as regional secretary,” the directive said.“The movement cannot strengthen its structures if the regional secretary is not the regional structure’s full-time political and organisational anchor, and the movement cannot lead the renewal of municipal government if its own elected office-bearers at the regional level are themselves embedded as senior management within municipalities,” Mbalula said. The directive cites the Constitutional Court’s April 2025 ruling in Samwu v Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs as legal authority for the crackdown. Municipal managers and officials directly accountable to them remain barred from holding political party office under the Municipal Systems Act.Under the directive, every regional secretary must convene a full committee meeting within three days of receiving the letter and require written declarations of municipal employment from every member. The audit extends beyond each region’s formal boundaries to municipalities within 100km, closing off any arrangement where an official holds a prohibited position in a neighbouring area.Reports consolidating the findings across all regions must reach the secretary-general’s office within 30 days. The National Working Committee is to receive a consolidated audit within 45 days.“The movement does not stand by while its own structures weaken; the movement does not stand by while the law is honoured in the breach by its own elected office-bearers; the movement does not stand by while local government — the standing front of the movement’s work in the period to Wednesday November 4 2026 — is treated as the side-business of cadres whose duty is to lead the ANC at the regional level," Mbalula said.