The ANC on Sunday described the way Athletics SA managed the gender controversy surrounding gold medallist Caster Semenya as "disgusting".

"We need to be upright in censoring the officials who handled the matter," secretary-general Gwede Mantashe told a press briefing in Johannesburg following the party's national executive committee meeting over the weekend.

"The ANC's NEC looked into the Caster Semenya issue and felt it was disgusting the way it was managed... ASA didn't handle the matter with the utmost transparency and honesty."

Flanked by the party's new spokesman, Jackson Mthembu, Mantashe said the NEC had determined the ANC's alliance partners' swipe at the party's leadership needed an urgent meeting, followed by a summit, to kickstart "ongoing engagement".

Also on the NEC's agenda was the de-unionisation of the SA National Defence Force, the party's 2012 succession debate, which was dismissed as "premature", and plans to address local government problems to curb the spate of recent service delivery protests.