Senior ANC office bearers used the weekend’s birthday rallies to advocate unity in the tripartite alliance.

There has been a public rift between the ANC Youth League and the South African Communist Party and a recent tussle between Secretary General Gwede Mantashe and Tokyo Sexwale.

The two clashed over a report authored by the Housing Minister about the SACP’s Polokwane Conference last month.

After a week, in which they exchanged veiled barbs with one another, both Secretary General Gwede Mantashe and ANC heavyweight Tokyo Sexwale took to the podium on Saturday to dismiss claims of a rift.

Addressing supporters in Escourt in Kwa-Zulu Natal, Sexwale said people who claimed there were tensions did not know how the alliance operates.

He went as far as exchanging caps with SACP members to emphasize his point.

Speaking in the Free State, Mantashe dismissed his spat with Sexwale as a media fabrication.

He told a crowd there that the tripartite alliance is not made of paper, and it is up to the ANC to take responsibility for its unity.

(Edited by Deshnee Subramany)