Police reinforcements were summoned to keep the peace on Sunday as ANC dissidents scuffled with party loyalists at a meeting in Gugulethu, Cape Town.

The meeting was one of a series held in the Western Cape this weekend, ahead of the national convention called for next Sunday by former ANC chairperson Terror Lekota.

The confrontation occurred when the ANC supporters, who included members of the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans' Association, were refused entry to the Ikwezi community hall, where the dissidents were holding a rally.

Though no blows were exchanged, a small group of ANC supporters tried to force their way in, and a shoving and shouting match ensued.

The seven policemen who had been monitoring the meeting intervened, forming a barricade in blue across the doorway, and reinforcements were summoned as one officer stood with his finger on the trigger of a shotgun.

The ANC group, which by now numbered about 40 people, continued singing and dancing in the parking lot outside the hall.

Inside, about 500 people sang a song praising former president Thabo Mbeki.

A reluctance to leave

An old ANC election poster of a smiling Mbeki was stuck on the wall behind the speakers' table, with the party's name folded under so it did not show.

Former SA Communist Party treasurer Phillip Dexter told them he did not want to leave the ANC (he is still a member, though he has left the SACP) and did not believe they wanted to either.

"But when a group of leaders hijack the organisation and lead it in a wrong direction we don't have a choice," he said.

He said the leaders of the ANC were lying when they said there was a conspiracy against party president Jacob Zuma.

The real conspiracy was against the Constitution, and against democracy and freedom, which was driven by a small group of leaders who had decided their political careers were more important than the lives and freedoms of ordinary ANC members.

"We allowed them to lie, we allowed them to misbehave, and it's our responsibility now to fix it," he said.

Describing the SACP as "a gang of plotters and gangsters", he rejected a demand by SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande that Mbeki should explain why the dissidents were acting in his name.

This was yet another lie, Dexter said.

"We are doing this in the name of democracy, in the name of the Constitution. Thabo Mbeki has nothing to explain to anybody."

Mbeki to make up his mind?

He told journalists outside the hall people should leave Mbeki alone at this point and "let him take time out".

"I think he'll make up his own mind about what he wants to do."

A Lekota supporter in the Southern Cape, former Bitou councillor Zamile Xiphula, told Sapa about 3000 people attended a dissident rally at a sports stadium in Kwanokuthula, Plettenberg Bay, on Sunday.

The rally was addressed by former deputy defence minister Mluleki George.

Another rally was held at Citrusdal on the West Coast. Co-ordinator Onel de Beer said about 400 people attended, and that it had been a "very emotional" occasion, as some of them were saying goodbye to a party they had been members of for years.

On Saturday, hundreds of people attended a rally at Mbekweni, Paarl, where they dropped ANC membership cards and membership forms into a cardboard box, which was later set alight.

The 3 November convention is scheduled to take place in Bloemfontein, followed by the announcement of a new political party in December.

Sapa