Could Magashule’s outcome see a formation of a new party?

In comparison to Ace Magashule’s “King Canute” moment in effectively commanding the sea to roll back, by “suspending” president Cyril Ramaphosa from the ANC, Julius Malema’s contravention of party discipline in 2012 was mild.

Malema said then-president Jacob Zuma was just like his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, something which must have upset the man from Nkandla but was hardly mutiny in ANC ranks.

ALSO READ: South Africans will suffer from ANC’s ‘civil war’, says DA leader

However, Magashule’s open defiance of the party’s national working committee in continuing to maintain that his own suspension is illegal and his unilateral edict on Ramaphosa “suspension” is, arguably, the closest to open revolt against the leadership that an ANC member has come since 1994.

If the ANC allows this to go unremarked or, more importantly, unpunished, it will show that its commitment to tackling corruption and dealing with its leaders who are involved in it, is little more than hollow rhetoric.

READ MORE: ‘I’m still the secretary-general’ – defiant Magashule sticks to his guns

A disciplinary process against Magashule raises the very real prospect that he will be expelled, as Malema was.

This could, once and for all, lance the boil of the Zuma faction within the ANC – or could be the spark for the formation of another party, as Malema did with the EFF.

Worryingly, though, it could also signal civil strife never seen before.