If Nelson Mandela were alive today, what would he make of the positions of the African National Congress (ANC) and its current leader, Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa? The man who became the face and voice of a nation as it struggled for decades against the regime and brutal policies that enforced apartheid, and who transformed its rainbow peoples and who together led them on the first steps of true freedom, independence and governance, would find an ANC government riddled by allegations of corruption and incompetence, a president embroiled in an unsavoury crisis of confidence, its currency at a low and its government bonds rated as junk.

These are sad times in South Africa, where Zuma is resisting all calls to step aside. In the past week, Zuma restructured his Cabinet, firing 11 government ministers, including the highly respected Pravin Gordhan. Gordhan’s departure led rating agency Standard & Poor’s to downgrade South Africa’s government bonds to junk status. In essence, the agency has said that the bonds issued by the Zuma government are hardly worth the ink spent, never mind actually investing in the moribund economy there.

The reality is that Zuma has overseen a collapse of his nation’s finances, with unemployment rising, little or zero growth while he personally and others in his inner circle are accused of influence-peddling and enriching themselves at the expense of public finances.

The ANC itself is standing by Zuma, but as local elections have already show in the past 18 months, the ballot-box dominance of the party is not necessarily ensured. South Africa’s largest trade union, Cosatu, is re-evaluating its relationship with the ANC because of Zuma’s refusal to step aside, and there are further signs that the president has lost touch with most South Africans. Wide-scale street protests have failed to persuade Zuma that it’s time to go. Those protests have also failed to persuade party members loyal to Zuma that their allegiance may be misplaced, given the political climate.

For the past five years, Zuma has become increasingly embroiled in corruption allegations. He, however, has managed to keep the ANC loyal to his cause, and he retains a high level of support among those who he nurtured through the ranks of the youth wing of the party.

The reality in South Africa is that the ANC appears to have lost sight of its founding principles: Its principals now have lost sight of its founder.