Warring factions on the "sinking ship" of the African National Congress (ANC) posed an impending disaster the country would need to deal with, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille said on Thursday.

"The divisions at the heart of government are the root cause of ungovernability (sic)," she told the Cape Town Press Club.

They would lead to an ANC implosion that would dominate the political landscape for the next seven years.

"When you're on a burning platform, you're in a race against time... In politics, the instinctive reaction to a burning platform is denial," Zille said.

The ANC was using "political plastic watering cans" to douse the flames in its tripartite alliance.

She said this short-term view compromised the ability to get to the root crisis of economic exclusion, unemployment, poverty and inequality.

Every crisis, from the non-delivery of school textbooks in Limpopo to the gunning down of miners at Marikana, widened the division between populists and constitutionalists in the party.

"The ANC colossus stands inert in the middle, pulled in both directions, but unable to move either way without falling apart," Zille said.

Every citizen would need to decide whether to stand with the populists, who would drive the country into the "abyss"; or with the constitutionalists, who would fight for four core principles.

These were defending the Constitution, nurturing genuine non-racialism, growing a market-driven economy, and building a state that put competence above party loyalty, said Zille.

Zille, also the Western Cape premier, announced she would stand for a second term in November to lead a movement to recapture "the promise of 1994".

"I will continue to devote my life to the attainment of that goal. I have staked my political leadership on it. And I am prepared to work with all like-minded political leaders to achieve it," she said.

The next two years, leading up to the general election in 2014, would see significant political developments.

Zille said the country needed a convergence in the political centre as none of the existing political parties, as currently constituted, could credibly offer this on its own.

Both past and present parties were powerful brands but today served to keep apart millions of people who really belonged together.

Asked if her political invitation was specifically extended to the Congress of the People (Cope), she said no, although she wished it all the best and said the party was needed in the political space.

She said Cope needed to hold an elective congress and declare what political platform it stood on.