Cape Town – The ANC has to "hit rock bottom" and lose the national elections "for the penny to drop" in the minds of ANC members, former president Kgalema Motlanthe said on Tuesday.
"It would be good for the ANC itself if it was voted out, because...those elements who are in it for the largess will quit, will desert it, and only then the possibility would arise to salvage whatever is left of it," Motlanthe said in an interview with BBC news Africa.
He said political parties were established for a specific purpose and maybe "the ANC has achieved that" purpose.
Motlanthe, however, said he would continue to help the ANC achieve majorities in elections.
"But you know I am dead certain at the rate at which, you know, it is sliding to the bottom, it may actually lose the elections."
Although Motlanthe told BBC Hardtalk that his vote is his secret, he told BBC World Service Radio in April this year that his vote for the ANC could not be taken as "given" come the 2019 elections.
At the time he also said that he expected President Jacob Zuma to step down in 2016 after the Constitutional Court's ruling on non-security upgrades at his Nkandla home.
"I thought the honourable thing for the president would have been to step aside."
The ANC lost control of the Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay metros in the 2016 municipal elections. The ANC got 53.91% of the total votes across the country and the DA 26.90%.
The ANC's national executive committee said it took collective responsibility for the decline in electoral support, despite Zuma's approval polls being at an all-time low.
Lindiwe Sisulu and Cyril Ramaphosa have branded their election campaigns to take over from Zuma in December around restoring the values of the ANC, while front-runner Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has emphasised the issue of radical economic transformation.