President Jacob Zuma has become an albatross around the ANC's neck in an era in which the ANC is supposed to be working hard on renewing itself.

It has become a tragic trend in the ANC that Zuma's personal battles are conflated with those of the party.

The tendency has brought so much destruction to the ANC that if it is not immediately stopped, it will bring the entire organisation to its knees.

Without delving into the debate about the wrongness or rightness of the raging Brett Murray Zuma painting saga, the ANC must pause and ponder if continuing to surrender to the dynamics of a personality cult since Zuma became president has paid any positive dividends.

In his letter to Zuma in 2008, former president Thabo Mbeki warned of a new tendency of personality cults in the ANC. He lamented that ANC members were now divided into factions that aligned themselves with individuals in the party.

The ANCs' political suicide of conflating its issues with those of Zuma have persisted since his marathon corruption legal duel with the National Prosecuting Authority, which left a bitter taste in the public's mouth by never being resolved in a courtroom.

The siding with Zuma through his personal battles carried on with his rape trial in 2006, when members of the ANC fervently supported him to its conclusion.

The trial left a big moral dent in the integrity of Zuma which the ANC shared by virtue of supporting him.

Soon after his presidency began, the ANC was again in its element with its spokesmen frothing at the mouth, defending Zuma after his sexual escapades with Sonono Khoza went public.

Presently the ANC is up in arms about a painting that predominantly paints a picture of Zuma's personal life. The organisation has taken the matter to court.

In an unprecedented act of a brutal attack on the media, the secretary-general of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe, and its official spokesman, Jackson Mthembu, have called on the public to boycott City Press newspaper for publishing the Zuma painting.

The ANC has crossed the line of Zuma being its president and now treats him as a monarch.

Unless the organisation reflects and adjusts itself to its true foundations and values, which have seen it last for a century, the future is too ghastly to contemplate.