An ANC provincial congress report describing Minority Front leader Amichand Rajbansi as an ex-apartheid collaborator could have thrown a spanner in the works of the ANC's move to topple the Inkatha Freedom Party from power in KwaZulu-Natal.
The ANC needs the MF's two seats in the provincial legislature to evict the IFP through the new floor crossing legislation. But its report on national minorities has cast a shadow on the likelihood of the MF supporting it.
ANC provincial secretary Sipho Gcabashe told his party's provincial congress on Saturday that old Indian ANC activists had problems with what they perceived as the ANC's embracing of "ex-collaborators" like Rajbansi.
With the ANC having adopted a "now or never" stance in its move to dislodge the IFP, Gcabashe's report has thrown the ANC's intentions into disarray, with Rajbansi threatening to walk out of the ANC-MF alliance "if they feel we are an embarrassment".
Rajbansi, a former House of Delegates member in the apartheid-era tricameral parliamentary system, challenged the ANC to look at "apartheid spooks" within its own ranks.
The Bengal Tiger's list of "spooks" within the ANC include its provincial legislature member Ina Cronje, who was a member of the Progressive Federal Party in the tricameral order.
Others are former Transkei military ruler and now United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa who had a stint in the ANC, Mpumalanga Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu, and foreign affairs parliamentary committee chair and former House of Representatives member Lewellyn Landers.
