The African National  Congress (ANC) in North West fully supports President Cyril Ramaphosa, the party said on Monday.

"We appeal to everyone to understand that as the PEC [provincial executive committee] and the province we fully support our ANC president, Cde Cyril Ramaphosa, and no amount of labelling will deter us from working with president Ramaphosa," said acting provincial secretary Sussana Dantjie after the PEC meeting in Rustenburg.

She said the PEC understood why the provincial chairperson supported former president Jacob Zuma.

"The PEC has full, unshakable confidence in the provincial chairperson of the ANC and fully understands and accepts why him and many other cadres have expressed support for former ANC president Jacob Zuma in line with the NEC decision on this matter," she said.

Mahumapelo was one of the speakers in Durban following Zuma's court appearance, on corruption charges relating to the arms deals. Mahumapelo's speech led to the SA Communist Party (SACP) in North West pulling out of the provincial alliance council.

Provincial secretary Madoda Sambatha said the SACP was extremely shocked by the comments made by Mahumapelo.

"For Mahumapelo to present Comrade Jacob Zuma as “the president” whilst he was part of the 54th National Conference of the ANC that elected Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa as president of the ANC does not only represent extreme political arrogance but it further exposes a move to undermine the ANC and the entire democratic movement..." he said in a statement.

"We call on the North West ANC chairperson to publicly apologise for his irresponsible utterances made outside the Durban court today [Friday] including referring to Comrade Zuma as a president. On our part as the SACP, we have decided to immediately withdraw our participation at the Alliance Council planned for 09-10 June 2018 in Rustenburg pending a public apology by Comrade Supra as well as intervention by the national officials."

Dantjie said the PEC also expressed its disappointment with the withdrawal of the alliance partners led by SACP from the provincial alliance council.

"It is the view of the PEC that the SACP in the province has chosen to adopt a posture of a populist victim and fails to rise to the occasion, instead of playing the role of a political vanguard that the SACP has always undertook to play. The ANC will, however - as resolved by the December Nasrec Conference - continue to engage the SACP politically in dealing with the challenges we both face as alliance partners," she said.

"The PEC also wants to dispel with the contempt it deserves the notion that the majority of leadership in the province intend forming or joining another political party. That is pure fallacy and propaganda by people who want to cast doubt on the credibility of the duly elected leadership of the movement in the province."

There are reports that Zuma's supporters were planning a break-away party -- African Transformation Congress (ATC).

The break-way party was reported to command huge support in KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and in North West.

Political analyst Professor Andre Duvenhage, from the North West University last week said the ANC was facing internal fighting.

"The micro context is that there is big internal fighting within the structures of the ANC and this makes it difficult for them to take final decisions in the build up to properly the most difficult national and provincial elections for the ANC, clearly we have a rebellion with the structures of the ANC against [President Cyril] Ramaphosa..." he said.

"That rebellion is coming from at least three but maybe four source of origins that is KZN [KwaZulu-Natal]  where [Jacob] Zuma himself and [Sihle] Zikalala are prominent, the Free State, Magashule and the whole Supra scenario. And Supra has a lot of support within the structure of the ANC in the North West, so it is not easy to take that decision without losing support."