Ex-minister says ANC close to split

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said on Wednesday the ruling ANC was close to a major split but stopped short of announcing a breakaway party.

"I seems that we are serving today divorce papers," Lekota said at a news conference after complaining at length about what he called undemocratic tendencies in the African National Congress, which he said had betrayed its own principles.

Talk Radio 702 earlier reported that Lekota and other loyalists of ousted president Thabo Mbeki would form a new party.

The former minister repeatedly refused to make such an announcement but said "This is probably the parting of the ways, it probably is. We hope that sense may still prevail in us... If not there's no going back."

Flanked by another ANC dissident, former Deputy Defence Minister Mluleki George, he added: "Logically it seems that this is the end of it."

He called for a special congress of all those opposed to the ANC's current direction within four weeks to discuss the way forward and how to restore democracy both inside the dominant party and in South Africa. He said he had not spoken to opposition parties

Lekota said those opposing the present leadership of the party would need to be in some kind of organisation but said there must be consultation first on the way forward.

Lekota on several occasions attacked ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, who earlier this year said he was ready to kill to support party boss Jacob Zuma.

Lekota complained about tribalism in the ANC and said the leadership had failed to crackdown on supporters singing songs calling for violence. It had also attacked judges as "counter revolutionary."

"Where is the third arm of government, where is the comfort for the citizens of this country?" he said in reference to the attacks on the judiciary.

Zuma is known for his trademark anti-apartheid song "Bring my machinegun."

Mbeki was forced out last month and replaced by Kgalema Motlanthe after a judge accused the former president of meddling in a graft case against Zuma.

The latter, who ousted Mbeki at the head of the ANC last December, is expected to take over as president after elections in the first half of 2009.

Mbeki's ouster at the climax of a power struggle with Zuma marked the biggest political upheaval in the history of the party.

Lekota said he was living with an "uneasy sense that the African National Congress has started moving away from the cause that attracted us."

The creation of a breakaway party would add to political uncertainty and unsettle investors in Africa's biggest economy, but traders said there was no reaction to Lekota's move.

"I don't think there would have been any reaction anyway, but the fact that there was no split meant there was no reaction," said George Glynos, Managing Director of market analysts ETM.

(Writing by Barry Moody, additional reporting by Gordon Bell and Rebecca Harrison; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)