ANC breakaway 'a challenge'

2008-10-16 14:13

Johannesburg - South Africa's ruling ANC on Thursday admitted that a breakaway party posed a "political challenge" and vowed to take stiff action against any members who join the new movement.

The ANC National Executive Council (NEC) told reporters that it would start disciplinary hearings against top politicians who have announced plans to split away.

"The NEC has a responsibility to act against those who have placed themselves outside the principles, practice and discipline of the ANC," the party's secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said.

"We looked into the declared intentions of certain ANC members to establish a new organisation in opposition to the ANC," he said.

"The NEC agreed that this political challenge to the movement should be handled politically," Mantashe added.

Party leaders had earlier brushed off the threat posed the breakaway movement, saying no one could challenge the dominance of the ANC, Africa's oldest liberation movement which has been in power since the end of apartheid.

Former defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota and other ANC heavyweights plan to hold a national convention on November 2, when they could unveil a new party to challenge the ruling party in elections next year.

Disciplinary action

Lekota was suspended from the party on Monday. The most severe penalty the ANC could impose against him is expulsion.

Mantashe said the ANC would "take disciplinary action against any member who mobilises for the formation of a new organisation in opposition to the ANC".

"If we don't do that, we are going to allow people to try and destroy the ANC," he stated.

Lekota and other dissidents joining with him are loyalists of former president Thabo Mbeki, who was forced by the party to resign as the nation's president on September 20, just months before the end of his term.

Mbeki himself has not made any public comments on the possible breakaway.

Talk in SA of a split in the ANC has circulated since its national conference last December when Jacob Zuma toppled Mbeki as ANC leader.

- AFP