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Johannesburg - Former African National Congress leaders must give current leaders the space to lead the party, ANCYL president Collen Maine said on Tuesday.
"We are just appealing to this man Thabo Mbeki to give the elected leadership an opportunity to interact with the current challenges facing the ANC, including the view on the motion of no confidence," he said.
No ANC MP would vote according to "their so-called conscience", he said.
Mpumalanga ANC chairperson David Mabuza, the North West ANC, and the national ANC shared the view that MPs had to toe the party line and vote against the motion of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma, to take place in the National Assembly next Tuesday.
He was responding to former president Thabo Mbeki's letter, in which he called on MPs to remember that they were the voice of the people of SA, not of their political parties.
Lose seats
They did not have to vote according to party lines, he wrote in a letter, published in The Star.
Mabuza said those who failed to vote against the motion would lose their seats as MPs.
"Our electoral system in the country is the party one. People go there, in Parliament, to represent the ANC and the ANC is led by President Jacob Zuma," Maine said.
The ANC would defend the party's gains and South Africa's democracy by voting against the motion, he argued.
Maine said the aim of the vote of no confidence was to destroy the 105-year old liberation movement.
Mbeki could not accept being led by someone he didn't like. The party's leadership had been elected and his actions were contributing to the ANC's demise.
Maine said the league was worried that the ANC old guard wanted the party to die with them.
When the ANC wanted Zuma to go, it would tell him so, he said.
