The ANC in Parliament has called on the party’s national leadership to discipline one of its MPs who has publicly pronounced that he will not vote according to the party line in the upcoming motion of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma.
ANC MP Mondli Gungubele stated last week that he was prepared to break ranks and vote in favour of the opposition motion to remove Zuma from office.
"I find it difficult to have confidence in the president," Gungubele reportedly said.
Last week, the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal formally initiated disciplinary proceedings against another ANC MP, Makhosi Khoza, who has openly criticised Zuma and called for his resignation.
There is speculation that the ANC wants to suspend Khoza before the motion of no confidence debate, which is scheduled to take place on August 8.
ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu on Monday described Gungubele’s pronouncements as "crude and defiant".
"What is particularly unfortunate is that comrade Gungubele, who is a long-serving leader of the ANC and has been a member of Parliament before, has decided to act in such a crude defiant manner not in keeping with democratic centralism and collective leadership as a defining feature of the ANC," said Mthembu.
He said the ANC, through secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, had spoken to Gungubele on numerous occasions regarding his public pronouncements.
"We have also had discussions with the ANC leadership collective of the Gauteng province, which comrade Gungubele forms a part of, and raised our concerns about his continued utterances.
"Comrade Gungubele has expressly defined his political programme to be that of self-promotion masquerading as political correctness at the expense of the ANC."
Mthembu said the ANC parliamentary caucus was accountable to the ANC national executive committee.
"No ANC member of Parliament is a free agent. They are deployees of the ANC in Parliament and take their directive from the party, as is the case in all political parties in SA.
"We are calling on the organisation, through its constitutional structures, to act against the ill-disciplined behaviour of comrade Gungubele.
"His ill-discipline is no longer an ANC caucus matter as it is questioning and defying decisions of the ANC as a political centre and authority."
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