A breakaway faction of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) formed a new party on Saturday to contest elections next year, a move that could dramatically reshape the country’s post-apartheid political landscape.
The rebellion by members loyal to former South African president Thabo Mbeki, ousted by the ANC in September, has thrown the traditionally united party into disarray and stoked fears of rising instability in Africa’s richest economy.
Some 4,000 delegates attended the splinter faction’s first national meeting in a show of strength for the first real challenge to the ANC since South Africa’s multiracial elections in 1994.
PHOTO: EPA
An increasing number of South Africans facing massive unemployment and poverty feel the leaders of the ANC are tainted by corruption and do not have their interests at heart.
The new party will be launched in South Africa’s Free State province on Dec. 16, Mbhazima Shilowa, a Mbeki ally and former provincial premier, told several thousand delegates at a convention in Johannesburg.
A name for the party has not yet been chosen.
“I stand here today on behalf of the preparatory committee to say not only do we intend to tackle it [the ANC], we intend to win the next election,” Shilowa, who resigned from the ANC last month, said to loud cheers from the crowd.
Mbeki was defeated by Jacob Zuma in a bitter contest for the ANC leadership last year and then ousted by the party nine months later. Zuma is the front-runner to take the presidency in next year’s election.
Mbeki has declined to support the breakaway party, but has also said he does not want to be part of the ANC election campaign.
Earlier, former defense minister Mosiuoa Lekota, another prominent ANC defector, said the ANC appeared set on interfering in state institutions and enriching its leaders as white minority governments had done during apartheid.
“The threat the nation faces is that we will see the reaffirmation of important elements of that terrible legacy under our new masters,” he told the delegates. “We are ready and we will stand up and fight.”
Lekota, seen as one of Mbeki’s most faithful ministers, resigned from the Cabinet five weeks ago in sympathy with his former boss. He and other defectors have been organizing the framework of a new political party since then.
The possibility that the pro-business Mbeki wing of the ANC could bolt and join the new party comes amid investor concerns over growing trade union and communist influence in the ANC-led coalition, which has been in power since 1994.
Many analysts say the ANC still commands deep loyalty, even from Mbeki supporters, and that a break-up is unlikely despite some discontent with Zuma’s leadership in the business community and black middle class.
Zuma has said he would not tilt government to the left or discard pro-business policies credited for nearly a decade of economic growth.
The ANC leader has dismissed Lekota, who resigned from the party this week, and the other defectors as irrelevant.
“We wish the adventurists luck and are pleased that many are coming out and are resigning from the ANC. We expect the convention to unmask many others who will hopefully also leave the ANC in peace,” Zuma said on Friday.
The ANC is determined to prevent a trickle of defections swelling in the months leading up to a general election, which is expected around April. ANC activists have clashed with Lekota’s supporters at public meetings in recent weeks.
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