Defectors from the ANC opened a conference on Sunday to discuss their policies, just two days ahead of the party's launch at a rally in the city of Bloemfontein.

The new Congress of the People (Cope) officially launch their breakaway party on Tuesday, shaking up South African politics just months before next year's general elections.

The breakaway movement finally emerged in the wake of the African National Congress (ANC) decision to force South African president Thabo Mbeki from power in September.

But tensions within the former liberation movement had been brewing all year, since Jacob Zuma pushed out his long-time rival Mbeki as the ANC's leader during last December's party conference.

At the opening of the conference, the new party's interim chairman Mosiuoa Lekota said South Africans had lost faith in the dream of a vibrant rainbow nation and that the nation was now a "country in despair".

He accused the ANC of creating an atmosphere of political intimidation akin to that of the white-minority rule apartheid era in response to his party's launch.

"Intimidation and paralysing fear is now gripping sections of our society... " the Sapa news agency reported him as saying.

One survey found that half of ANC supporters felt uneasy about the turmoil within the party. The Ipsos Markinor poll released earlier this month also found that 15 percent of ANC backers planned to vote for the opposition in 2009.

With general elections expected as early as March, the new party hopes to harness that discontent at the ballot box and is counting on this week's event to boost its profile and spread its message to voters.

Until now, South African voters have overwhelmingly supported the ANC, the oldest liberation movement on the continent, since Nelson Mandela was elected president in 1994 in the country's first democratic elections.

Cope hopes worries about jobs, crime and AIDS will help attract voters, even though analysts say most of its policies in those areas are similar to the ANC's.

"There are no real differences in their policies than what the ANC is already promising," said Somadoda Fikeni, an independent political analyst.

The key exception is the new party's call for the president to be directly elected — which would prevent another Mbeki-style ouster.

Cope's secretary general Charlotte Lobe says they already have nearly 500 000 members, and that the conference will name a team to lay out the election campaign and formally adopt their policies.

"We will be discussing our draft policy framework policy and charting the way forward for the party," said Lobe.

The Cope hopes to profit from the ANC's decision to disband the Scorpions, the elite crime-busting unit slated for dissolution.

President Kgalema Motlanthe last week also decided to fire the nation's top prosecutor Vusi Pikoli, who had been suspended by Mbeki more than a year ago.

Both decisions sparked criticism that the ANC was blocking the forces that had brought corruption charges against Zuma over an arms scandal. It also raised questions about the fight against crime in a nation that sees an average of 50 murders a day.

A court has tossed out the charges against Zuma on a technicality, but the ruling is under appeal.

The new party has said it wants to restore the Scorpions, which have successfully prosecuted several high-profile cases, and has used the issue to trumpet its commitment to democratic values.

"I think Cope's value-based politics would make it appeal to a broader society," said Dirk Kotze, a political analyst at the University of South Africa.

Unlike the existing opposition Democratic Alliance, which is perceived as a party for whites, Cope has positioned itself as a non-racial party, Kotze said.

"I think they stand for what the majority of South Africans are looking for, which is moral leadership," said Kotze.

But analyst Frederick van Zyl Slabbert said the new party would struggle to leave the ANC's shadow before the elections.

"They have no political base to speak of, their policies are way too similar to what the ANC is preaching," said Van Zyl Slabbert.

"Forming a party is no mean feat, especially so soon before the elections," he said. "They will have work hard to drum up support and establish structures."

Cope, meanwhile, urged delegates to use the popular social network Facebook and "reach out" to South Africans living abroad.

"We own Facebook in South Africa. We have 9000 members online and we have created a branch of Cope in London and Australia," said Lunga Kheepe, Young Professional co-ordinator of Cope.

"Comrades, we must invade Facebook further. Let's go in there, carry conversation, become agents of change and urge people to vote. Be the gospel of the voting class."

He said people in London and Australia consulted with Cope and had decided to walk to their embassy and demand to vote.

"Our citizens of this country that are abroad must be able to vote."

Shilowa added that their party had not only reached people in the United Kingdom, but also in Germany.

He said they would use cyberspace to get as many votes as they could.

AFP