President Jacob Zuma has a "compromised reflective capacity" and should have stepped down as president rather than put the country through the motion of no confidence vote.
This is according to Dr Makhosi Khoza, the outspoken ANC MP who was recently removed as chairperson of Parliament's portfolio committee on public service and administration, who was interviewed on SABC 2's Morning Live on Tuesday morning.
"President Zuma is a humble man... but he has a very compromised moral reflective capacity. I don't think he is able to reflect, morally, and say, right now, 'I'm putting so many people through pain'... there's no reason for us to have gone through the motion of no confidence," Khoza said.
She stressed that Zuma was not the kind of leader who took kindly to criticism, saying he took it personally.
"To me, it said a lot about his leadership style."
But the country's problems can't be attributed to Zuma alone, she said.
"But we can attribute it to the leadership collective (of the ANC) that has failed to deal with patronage and corruption."
Khoza also criticised the ANC Womens League for its role in defending Zuma during his rape trial and for comments made by its president Bathabile Dlamini.
Dlamini had said there were "worse men" in the ANC than former deputy minister of higher education Mduduzi Manana, who resigned after being accused of assaulting a woman.
The ANCWL's support of Zuma during his rape trial was a "miscarriage of justice" and a betrayal of women's liberation and the league was not doing what it was supposed to, said Khoza.
She said the league ought to have supported the alleged rape victim.
"I'm sorry that I wasn't able to speak out as I should have... you believe in democratic centralism and that's how you are socialised..."
But there "comes a time" when talking to the party about its flaws does not work, she said.
Khoza lashed out at Dlamini for her handling of the Manana assault case.
"Why was Bathabile Dlamini quiet (about the other men)? And being the president of the ANCWL, why is she trivialising what Manana did? It's a betrayal of the highest order to women."
Khoza said she had seen how corruption was "eating the party". This was evidenced by the loss of the Cape Town, Johannesburg and Tshwane metros in the 2016 elections.
"If they see it (speaking out) as ill-discipline, hard luck for them," she said.