COMMUNISTS branded top ANC leaders “rotten to the core” yesterday, indicating growing calls for a split in the movement that liberated South Africa from apartheid.

Speaking to the City Press newspaper, South African Communist Party (SACP) second deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila laid into President Jacob Zuma’s government over the recent crisis over benefit payments.

“We find it difficult to be led by people of absolute decadence who are rotten to the core and are not willing to change their ways,” he stormed ahead of a crunch bilateral meeting between the SACP and ANC.

“That completely obliterates all values of our revolutionary movement.”

The latest crisis erupted last month when it emerged the Social Development Ministry had not found a new contractor to replace Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) when its tender expires on March 31 — even though the Constitutional Court ruled in 2014 that the contract should have been voided over dodgy tendering.

The South African Social Security Agency pays some 141 billion rand (£8.8bn) annually to 17 million recipients under the social grants system — who now fear their payments will not be made from April 1.

The court has given Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini until today to answer a series of questions, including whether she objected to monitoring the CPS contract.

But Mr Mapaila indicated that the SACP would join the growing calls to dump Ms Dlamini — after revolutionary union federation Cosatu, the other member of the tripartite alliance that vanquished white racist rule, and other ANC allies called for her to go last week.

He accused Mr Zuma of protecting Ms Dlamini, demanding the ANC get rid “of this corrupt lot” who he accused of “looting.”

“It is clear that he would not decide against his friends that are campaigning for him and are doing all of these wrong things in his name,” he said.

As the ANC prepared to release the nine public discussion documents for its policy conference this summer, Mr Mapaila claimed the prospect of the communists splitting the alliance and standing separately in elections “is almost a fait accompli … but the congress still has to decide.”

“We should not be a subsidiary of another party,” he said.

“Otherwise, a faction that has captured the ANC thinks that it is the one in alliance with us,” he added, without naming that faction’s members.