Three senior members of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal have left the party to join the newly formed Congress of the People on Monday.

African National Congress provincial legislature member, George Sithole, and two National Democratic Convention (Nadeco) members, inkosi Mhlabuyalingana Mthuli and Chris Ngiba, resigned from their parties and joined the Congress of the People.

They announced their resignations at a press briefing in Durban on Monday.

The announcement was supposed to be made on Friday in Groutville by Cope president Terror Lekota but the event was postponed at the eleventh hour because Lekota failed to show up.

Sithole was the chairperson of the provincial legislature's social development portfolio committee and Ngiba was Nadeco's provincial chairperson and a member of the national Parliament.

Speaking immediately after being welcomed to Cope, Sithole apologised to former president Thabo Mbeki and Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma for resigning from the ruling party, saying that he would miss them.

"I find that spiritually and practically I am no longer loyal to the ANC as I vowed decades ago that I will be.

"I am sad that a tragic moment like this catches me long before I complete the revolutionary journey that I began timidly, even naively in 1959 when we marched from Cato Manor to Durban Central Prison to demand the release of our president Albert Luthuli.

"I say naively because as at then, I did not understand the issues at the core of the march."

Ngiba said he had joined Cope because it offered something different from the other parties.

"I also left because Nadeco is still facing serious leadership problems.

"When Reverend Hawu Mbatha became president, we hoped that the problem of leadership, which rocked Nadeco, would be over. Those problems are still there."

He said he hoped all smaller parties could join forces and form a strong opposition party to compete with the ruling party.

Cope's Siyanda Mhlongo said new members were a major boost for his party.

Cope had been struggling to cajole senior members from its arch-rival, the ANC, to join Cope.

The only senior leader in KwaZulu-Natal to have crossed to Cope since the party's formation, was Mhlongo.

He was ANC's head of police in the province before resigning from the party. He is now Cope's spokesperson in KwaZulu-Natal.