In another round of firings, two senior leaders of the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) have been expelled – barely a month after they had been appointed to a strategic presidential task team to advise party president Jacob Zuma on the running of the organisation.

Pumlani Kubukeli and Khanyisile Litchfield-Tshabalala were pushed out in terms of provisions in the MKP constitution that allows its president to remove and deploy members and to reform its structures.

According to MKP spokesperson Sifiso Mahlangu, the action was taken over disciplinary transgressions: “The decision follows a series of acts and conduct attributed to the two members, which, in the determination of the party leadership, have been detrimental to the good name, reputation, integrity, and interests of the organisation, and have undermined the unity and organisational discipline of the party.”

It was not specified what these acts entailed.

Mahlangu said that the two had had their party memberships terminated with immediate effect, and that the Speaker of the National Assembly had been contacted to remove them from Parliament.

Litchfield-Tshabalala has had a long political history, including serving in the African National Congress’s armed wing (also named uMkhonto weSizwe), before joining the navy in 1997. She became a rear admiral, but resigned after having been found guilty of fraud by a military court. In 2014, she went to Parliament as a representative of the Economic Freedom Fighters, and later joined the United Democratic Movement. She was elected to Parliament for the MKP in 2024, and had been playing a prominent role in the committee investigating the possible impeachment of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Kubukeli, also an uMkhonto weSizwe veteran and prisoner prior to the transition, has served as president of the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association and as MKP organiser in the Eastern Cape. He joined Parliament in December last year, as one of a number of MKP members replacing those whom the leadership had decided to remove.

Frequent changes among the MKP leadership, both in terms of its personnel and structures, have been a noteworthy feature of the party. In this, it mirrors Zuma’s behaviour as president of South Africa, when there were regular Cabinet reshuffles.