On Wednesday, the ANC in North West joined Gauteng and Limpopo in rejecting the document. The Eastern Cape, which is to finalise its policy positions tomorrow, is said to have also rejected the document.

Though KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga have endorsed the document, indications from ANC structures in other provinces, as well as within ANC alliance partner Cosatu, are that the policy proposal will be rejected when the ruling party holds its policy conference next week.

The ANC in Free State is yet to take a position on the party's policy proposals.

Earlier this month, Zuma told ANC delegates in Northern Cape that the apartheid economy remained intact and that a second transition to remove it was needed.

"We need a second transition because the first transition was relevant to the political transition. But it is not adequate for a social as well as economic transformation phase," he said.

But his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe, last week punched holes into the proposal, which he said was loaded with "smatterings of Marxist jargon".

"Second transition! Second transition! Second transition! From what, from where to where? What constituted the first transition? What were the tasks of that phase; have all those tasks been accomplished or not?" Motlanthe asked.

The second transition draft document speaks of how the party focused on political transition in the first 18 years of democracy, and that the next 50 to 100 years should be dedicated to economic transition.

In rejecting it, the ANC in North West said the document created a notion that "there is a second transition that our struggle is entering as if there was a first transition declared at a given epoch of our struggle".

"This labelling of our current conjuncture of our history as the second transition further creates an impression that the first transition, as of the advent of democracy in 1994 to date, has resolved issues of inequality, racism, sexism, degradation, poverty, unemployment and landlessness," the province said in a statement.

Gauteng said the "concept is neither persuasive nor theoretically sound".

Limpopo has since said it does not agree with the separation of political and economic transformation.

The ANC Youth League has also rubbished the document, saying what was needed was a radical approach as prescribed in the Freedom Charter.