Former intelligence services minister Ronnie Kasrils grabbed the headlines this week, telling South Africa’s voters not to back the ANC in next month’s general election.

Kasrils joined former deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, ex-Gauteng provincial Communist Party (SACP) leader Vishwas Satgar and ex-SACP spokesman Mazibuko Jara in launching their Vukani! Sidikiwe! (Wake up! We are fed up!) campaign at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

They called on voters to either spoil their ballot on May 7 or to vote “tactically” for a smaller opposition party, of which there is no shortage.

Madlala-Routledge was sacked from Thabo Mbeki’s administration in 2007 for making an unauthorised trip to a conference on Aids, although her opposition to government policy was widely believed to be a factor.

She had opposed health secretary Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s bizarre rejection of anti-retroviral drugs to treat HIV/Aids patients in favour of garlic and beetroot.

Kasrils, Madlala-Routledge and their small group of backers insist that they also oppose the Democratic Alliance big business defenders of apartheid privilege, but their main fire is directed against the national liberation movement in which they played a decades-long honourable role.

“The ANC needs to know that it can no longer take for granted its traditional support,” they said, explaining their opposition to government policies and, especially, the problem of corruption.

“If the ANC were to lose 3 or 4 per cent in this election, they’ll still be in power. Nothing will stop that,” Kasrils said at the launch.

“But what that signals is that, my God, you guys better wake up … you’re not going to last for five years, you’re losing more and more respect.”

President Jacob Zuma, the butt of the group’s charges, was quite relaxed about its advice, noting that the ANC, including Kasrils, had fought hard for the right to vote.

“It’s a very funny thing … he was not just a comrade, he was a friend. Maybe at some point we will have an opportunity to meet him and engage him,” Zuma said.

Less measured were the comments from the SACP, the ANC and its youth league, whose spokesman Bandile Masuku said: “We advise Uncle Ronnie not to allow his hatred for the current prominent crop of the leaders in the ANC to cloud his political thinking and pronouncements.”

Masuku warned him that, if he “continues to be troublesome, we shall allow proper characterisation of Ronnie Kasrils to be known and he will age a very bitter and angry man, who only has himself to blame.”

ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe commented: “We are out here campaigning for people to vote for the ANC. If he is campaigning for the spoiling of votes, all I can do is wish him luck.”

He then accused Kasrils of political recklessness in bearing responsibility for the 1992 massacre in Bisho when police in the Ciskei bantustan slaughtered 28 ANC supporters following a 60,000-strong march for democracy.

Mantashe said that Kasrils was “the one who led young men, made them jump fences at the border between South Africa and Ciskei and they were killed in Bisho. The massacre was a result of his recklessness.”

That was certainly the allegation at the time by apartheid president FW de Klerk, but no such sentiment has previously emanated from ANC circles.

SACP general secretary and Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande, who has been slated previously by Kasrils for joining Zuma’s government, likened former SACP members involved in the group to “factory faults.”

He questioned the real motives behind the group’s initiative. “If Ronnie Kasrils wanted to appear so principled, why didn’t he do this at the height of Aids denialism when he was a minister or deputy minister. If he was a principled person, he would have walked away at that time,” he said.

The SACP leader added: “Their message is not going to sink with our people. In fact, I am amazed at how lightly they take the issue of the vote … We are just going to teach them a lesson on May 7.”

Kasrils has responded by circulating on his email network a Daily Maverick piece by Chris Vick that recalls his own work with Kasrils in underground activity during the apartheid dictatorship.

He lists many struggle icons with whom he came into contact, but “I don’t remember ever coming across the name Blade Nzimande,” which amounts to a “What did you do in the war?” put-down.

However, even Vick believes Kasrils is wrong to call for a spoilt vote, citing Trevor Manuel, Pallo Jordan and Mavuso Msimang as among those fighting within the ANC to effect change.

Jordan himself pays tribute to the commitment of “my long-standing comrade Ronnie Kasrils,” while acknowledging that “only the really naive would argue that one supports a political party only if it has a spotless record.

“With all its faults, the ANC remains the principal agent of the transformation in our country.”

He hits the nail on the head in pointing out that withholding votes from the ANC “will indirectly benefit a bankrupt opposition whose policies take us backwards and whose only election message is that public funds have been misused.”