Daily Maverick on 13 April 2017

This is not the first time the ANC has had a huge leadership crisis involving its President. Former President Thabo Mbeki was one of many ANC presidents that was removed by internal detractors for interference, stubbornness, centralisation of power and/or non-progressiveness.

In times of changing opinions within the movement, senior leaders, like Pixley ka Isaka Seme, also found themselves being forced out of key leadership positions for similar faults.

Whether reasons for their removal were justified or not is inconsequential. What matters is that the ANC as a political organisation was, until 2008, able to discipline and remove its highest office-holder when it needed and saw it appropriate to do so.