South Africa’s ruling African National Congress was facing the biggest split in its history yesterday after close allies of the ousted former President, Thabo Mbeki, announced that they were on the verge of setting up a breakaway party.

The former Defence Minister, Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota, said: “It seems that we are serving, today, divorce papers.” Mr Lekota, a former ANC chairman who served as a political prisoner on Robben Island, accused the party’s current leadership of arrogance and tribalism.

Mr Lekota, who earned his nickname in his youth on the football field, announced that fellow disgruntled ANC leaders were intending to hold a national conference in a few weeks’ for all South Africans concerned at recent developments, and to consider how best “to defend democracy” in the country. A final decision over a breakaway would be taken at that conference, he said.

Rumours of a breakaway ANC faction have abounded since Mr Mbeki was forced to resign last month after losing a bitter, three-year power struggle with Jacob Zuma, the ANC president. Mr Zuma, who is on course to become the country’s third black president after elections next year, reacted by hinting that the dissidents could be expelled from the party.

Mr Zuma’s allies on the left of the ANC shocked many traditionalists within the movement by pushing Mr Mbeki out a few months before his second term ends in April next year. He was replaced by a party stalwart, Kgalema Motlanthe, who is seen as a caretaker President until Mr Zuma can take over after the poll next year.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel peace laureate regarded widely as South Africa’s moral voice, has said that Mr Zuma is not fit to lead the country. On Monday he said that he did not believe it was right to remove Mr Mbeki from office and that he would not vote for the ANC at the next election unless there were changes in its behaviour.

Any new party would face huge obstacles in trying to dent the ANC’s iron grip on power only 14 years after the end of apartheid.

Mr Lekota, who resigned with five other ministers when Mr Mbeki was recalled by the ANC leadership, accused Mr Zuma’s allies of undemocratic actions, fanning ethnic tensions and making a naked grab for power.

Mr Zuma faces corruption allegations resulting from a multibillion-rand arms scandal in 1999-2000. He was acquitted of rape in 2006 but was forced to admit that he had had unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman more than half his age.

Mr Mbeki dismissed Mr Zuma as Deputy President of the country in 2005 after he was first charged by state prosecutors. He fought off those charges on a technicality but may be recharged, a move that triggered the revolt against Mr Mbeki.

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