Smoke from charcoal grills laden with chicken and sausages hung heavy in the air. Hundreds of excited passers-by, dressed in bright ANC colours, streamed past towards the stadium from where music blasted.

This was an old-style rally of the ANC in one of its heartlands — the black township of Soweto. The “masses”, as the Marxist-influenced ANC insists on calling the faithful, were in jovial spirits. Every utterance of their hero, the ANC’s president, Jacob Zuma, was met with thunderous applause. This is bedrock ANC country.

A few miles to the north in the plush suburb of Sandton, once all-white, the dissidents were also addressing the faithful. Whereas Mr Zuma spoke in his native Zulu and wore the trade-mark ANC T-shirt and baseball hat, the leader of the rebel faction, the former Defence Minister, Mosiuoa Lekota, and his main aides were dressed in sober suits and ties.

Over cappuccinos and espressos in the nearby malls, they talked of the need for change. The car park was full of BMWs and Mercedes, the trade-mark sign of South Africa’s “black diamonds”, the name given to the emerging middle class. “I detest everything Zuma stands for. He represents everything that is wrong about black people in this country,” Ashley, a lifelong ANC supporter, said. “He is vulgar and uneducated, and attracts those type of people. It is unthinkable that he could represent us to the world.”

Such views are not uncommon. The battle for the soul of the ANC is as much about class as it is about policies. Both sides claim to speak for the poor, but the new party will have to find a strategy to talk to the masses if it is to do anything other than rattle the mighty ANC edifice.

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