The ANC has decided not to allow the Democratic Alliance to chair any of Parliament's portfolio committees as punishment for party leader Helen Zille insulting President Jacob Zuma.
"It is a question of relations being serviced. There must be mutual respect between the parties," said African National Congress secretary general Gwede Mantashe, as he announced the party nominations for the positions.
"They have taken a position that is hostile. You first manage the hostility then you build a relationship."
He accused Zille of showing "a total disrespect to the office of the president of the republic" and added: "We must have very thin skins to that. It cannot be allowed to continue."
The comments follow a row that broke out between the ruling party and the opposition leader after she appointing only men to her executive team in the Western Cape.
It degenerated when Zille retorted that Zuma was a self-confessed womaniser who by his own admission, in his rape trial in 2007, had sex with an HIV-positive woman without using a condom, thereby exposing his wives to the virus.
ANC in the Western Cape
Mantashe was forced to distance the ANC from defamatory remarks its youth league subsequently made about Zille but on Thursday brushed off questions about disciplining its ally.
"I think the focus is in the wrong area. We must reflect on the real issue of the behaviour of the ANC in the Western Cape." "Racism is not just prejudice, it is also stereotyping that is most dangerous as that is subconscious in the mind."
Mantashe said the Congress of the People, the third biggest party in Parliament with 30 seats in the National Assembly, was not given an opportunity to name one of the party chairs either, "because it is a new animal".
"We must develop a relationship with that animal. We don't know it yet."
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