MORE THAN 6,000 delegates attending a national convention on Saturday held by a breakaway faction of the African National Congress have agreed to form a new political party to contest next year's general election.
Former defence minister and ANC chairperson Mosiuoa "Terror" Lekota, who resigned his ministerial post after former South African president Thabo Mbeki was sacked by the ANC in September, said the new party would be officially unveiled on December 16th next.
Speculation has been rife that senior ANC members disillusioned with the leadership elected last year and the direction in which it was taking the party would quit and forge a new political entity.
Addressing the delegates, the new party's co-leader and former premier of Gauteng, Mbhazima Shilowa, said they not only intended to take on the ANC, "we intend to win the next election".
"We are not going to contest with the ANC, fishing in that small pond. The contest is not for the 600,000 members that were in the ANC before we resigned. The contest is the 22 million voters in South Africa," he said.
According to a draft resolution put together at the convention, held in Johannesburg, the party would campaign on a number of key issues. These include reforming the electoral system from proportional representation to a constituency-based system; restoration of the rule of law where no citizen can be above the law; defending supremacy of the constitution, and fighting poverty.
In a rare show of unity in South African politics, representatives of the country's opposition parties shared the platform with the former senior ANC members behind the movement and gave the new formation, which has yet to be named, their full support.
Analysts believe that if the new party agreed to form a coalition with South Africa's other opposition parties, the entity would amount to the first credible challenge to the two-thirds parliamentary majority the ANC has enjoyed since coming to power in 1994.
Opposition leaders have confirmed they are willing to form a coalition with the new movement after next year's election.