As President Jacob Zuma starts his exit from formal state and party power, I realised that it was time to take stock of what has been happening to the African National Congress (ANC) as well as the government and people of South Africa ‘in the time of Zuma’. Capturing trends meant taking aim at a moving target. Even if the analysis followed a fairly predictable track, it was going to be, in ANC language, a ‘challenging’ task to capture the infamous epoch. Events unfolded as my research and writing took shape. Projects accumulated to build Zuma's legacy, explain or reinterpret the consequences of the period, and there was fervour from within for the post-Zuma era to resemble the Zuma era. Despite new developments, the fundamentals of the era had been cast; the trends presented themselves for capture into a book, this book.

Dominance and Decline follows in the footsteps of my earlier book, The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power. Dominance and Decline is not a doomsday analysis – it recognises the ANC's strengths and accomplishments amidst the havoc sown by the Zuma-ist ANC, which has also become the ANC of the time. The central questions the book answers are: How much damage has been wreaked and how permanent is it likely to be? My analysis also casts light on the question: What kind of ANC after Zuma?

The time of Zuma has turned out to be one of many turning points – away from unambiguous moral high ground, from idealised leaders, from the hope that policies brought by the extensive and expensive state will anchor continuous liberation. The time of Zuma has been one of persistent ANC dominance yet also of appalling decline. It is the entanglement of glory and irony. There is little doubt that South Africa – perhaps also the ANC – will glance back and contemplate what went awry, at what exact point in time, amidst what pieces of countervailing information. This book is intended to take stock and analyse, to map and interpret the unfolding trends.

It was never going to be easy to execute a study of this period. While the analysis gives credit where credit is due, it is also consistently critical of the party-movement that has epitomised much of South Africa's liberation struggle.