The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) criticised party MP Makhosi Khoza on Thursday for speaking out against President Jacob Zuma. In a series of tweets the ANCYL said the ruling party should "initiate necessary discipline against members who are disgracing the party in public".
Pictures of Khoza and Former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan were posted on a single tweet with a caption saying Gordhan and Khoza have "maligned the party by targeting its leadership."
The League went on to say that comrades like Khoza and Gordhan should be taught a lesson then tweeting about "WMC sold out organisations" that are "trying to create public outrage for regime change".
Speaking at the conference for the future of South Africa on Tuesday, Khoza said while growing up she was taught to "respect [ANC] leadership directives" and "socialised" to view anything that comes from an opponent with suspicion, she is now questioning whether these directives have been "morally bankrupt", "directionless", and "betray the organisational mission".
"I am here because South Africans, the people, are speaking and I have to listen attentively so that my ANC can be an effective instrument of liberation. Can the ANC be an effective instrument of non-racialism when it is led by a president who has lost legitimacy, credibility, integrity and honorableness?" she asked.
Khoza spoke alongside other keynote speakers such as former South African Revenue Service bigwig Peter Richer, Passenger Rail Agency South Africa (Prasa) board chair Popo Molefe, as well as businessperson and Save SA leader Sipho Pityana.
Earlier this month ANC Chief Whip Jackson Mthembu said that Khoza is ill- disciplined. He said Khoza was publicly breaking ranks after she wrote a letter to Parliament speaker Baleka Mbete asking for MPs to be given space to vote with their conscience on a motion of no confidence against President Jacob Zuma.
Khoza has recently received death threats following increasingly vocal opposition to the president and a the state of the governing party.
She posted on Facebook on July 14 that she had been given "21 days to live". On Wednesday, Baleka Mbete said that parliament would be working with police to provide Khoza with adequate security.
Khoza started speaking out about the state of the ANC, particularly under the leadership of President Jacob Zuma, earlier this year when she was a guest on Power FM's Power Perspective, with JJ Thabane. At the time, thousands of South Africans took part in nationwide protests led by civil society organisations calling for Zuma to step down. Khoza has since said the ANC cannot ignore the people who protested against Jacob Zuma or the 10 million ANC voters who are not party members.
"The ANC, as a leader of society cannot be seen to be resorting to quantitative forms of flexing muscles, because you know you have the numbers, without listening to what the people are saying," she said.