Members of the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) have told of how President Thabo Mbeki initiated a searing discussion on corruption two weeks ago.

Mbeki used the wave of protests against poor housing conditions as a pretext to prepare the committee for possible action against former Deputy President Jacob Zuma and ANC MPs implicated in the Travelgate corruption scandal.

Senior party officials confirmed to the Sunday Times that the debate resulted in “a sea change” in the ANC’s attitude to allegations of corruption at all levels in the party.

“It was the President himself who put it on the agenda. He said there is a need to deal with this [corruption] very strongly,” said one NEC member.

The committee discussed the way the party had handled allegations of corruption in the past and concluded in an apparently tough self-examination that it might have sent mixed messages about accountability at the highest levels. “It was a broad stocktaking and a fairly honest one,” said a source.

A day after the meeting, in a significant hardening of attitude, ANC Secretary-General Kgalema Motlanthe announced that MPs convicted of defrauding Parliament in the Travelgate scam would lose their seats.

Party officials had previously refused to say whether convicted MPs would be expelled, saying only that the party’s disciplinary machinery would kick in once all judicial processes had been exhausted.

NEC sources said Motlanthe’s statement was a deliberate signal of a new approach to corruption. One member said Zuma’s name was not mentioned, but added: “Everyone knew that no layer was exempted. The Zuma case was not specifically mentioned, but that was clearly the context in which the discussion took place.”

The talks came two days after Mbeki had told Parliament that even his executive, a term that usually means the Cabinet, was not exempt from “the drive for the accumulation of personal wealth at all costs”.

He said the Forum of Directors General would give special attention to high-level corruption in its review of government operations.

With acknowledgements to Brendan Boyle and the Sunday Times.