The ANC will launch its election manifesto in January in the Amathole region of the Eastern Cape, where its previous regional chairman Mluleki George left to co-found ANC breakaway group the Congress of the People.

Briefing the media after its weekend national executive committee meeting, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe called Amathole "the home of the ANC", repeating it several times after reporters began chuckling at the choice of launch region.

He said the province was only chosen because it would be Zuma's last stop on a nine-province door-to-door campaig

The former chairman of the region Mluleki George resigned as deputy defence minister, and from the ANC, after president Thabo Mbeki resigned in September.

Along with his former defence minister and ANC chairman Terror
Lekota and former Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa, George believes Mbeki was treated unfairly and that the party was moving away from its founding principles.

George's departure was followed by the dissolution of the regional executive committee in Amathole and the party's installation of a task team to audit branches.

At the ANC's elective conference in Polokwane last year, George and a delegation from the Eastern Cape campaigned for a third term for Mbeki, the party's former president, going against the grain of the majority of delegates who eventually voted for Jacob Zuma as the party's president.

The province's former premier Nosimo Balindlela was recently removed from her post as part of an ANC reshuffle, and she has gone on to work with Cope.

Spokeswoman Jessie Duarte said that a regional task team was working at reconnecting branches in the region and continuing door-to-door campaigning "because of the discord between George and the provincial leadership" and the distance between branches this had created.

This included audits of branches which did not hold AGMs and would eventually lead to the election of a new regional executive committee.

"The doors of the ANC are not closed there," she said.

Meanwhile, the ANC's deadline for submissions from branches of names of candidates for Parliament and provincial government, would be on December 15, in the middle of Cope's planned official launch in Bloemfontein.

Business Day wrote that the contents of this list may contribute to who leaves the party to join Cope.

The party would meet this weekend to work on its manifesto and election message based on its commitment to "accelerated change".

It had also been working on recommending a suitable date for next year's elections that falls outside the busy Easter holiday period.

March 25 and May 6 may be well suited because they fall outside of the Easter holidays, when many people will be away from home.

The date is ultimately set by the president of the republic, ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe.
Much of the focus of this weekend's ANC national executive committee meeting was on preparations for the elections, he said.