Dissidents in the ruling African National Congress vowed Sunday to win next year`s general election, as they moved to launch a new party to rival South Africa`s dominant political force.

`We do not underestimate the work that lies ahead... with the elections coming` in just a few months, a breakaway leader Mbhazima Shilowa, the former premier of South Africa`s richest province Gauteng, told reporters.

`We want to become the next government in the provinces and at the national level...We want to be in the majority,` he said.

Dissident leaders were meeting Sunday to decide on a name for their new party, which they plan to launch on December 16, with general elections expected a few months later.

The new party marks a dramatic shift in South African political life, which has been dominated by the ANC since the end of apartheid in 1994 when it brought Nelson Mandela as president.

After initially brushing off the threat posed by the splinter group, ANC leader Jacob Zuma has been criss-crossing the country to shore up the party`s base.

At a rally with 15,000 people in a Soweto stadium on Sunday, Zuma insisted that the ANC would defeat the new party when South Africa holds general elections next year.

`We can`t wait for them to form their party so that we can engage them in debate, not in anger,` said Zuma.

`The ANC is still the party it was in the old days,` he said to deafening applause. `We are going to win the upcoming election with an overwhelming majority, as we have done in previous years.`

Zuma held the rally as a public show of his popularity one day after more than 7,000 delegates attended a convention to craft a platform for the new party.

The ANC won more than two thirds of the votes in the last election. The main opposition Democratic Alliance, perceived as a party for whites, poses little serious threat.

Shilowa told The Sunday Independent newspaper in an interview that the new party was not trying to become a new opposition.

`We want to be in the government in 2009. We are very clear that we are not doing this just to be another opposition,` he said.

`It is about believing in ourselves and about South Africans believing that this new formation we are going to put in place will contest for political power, not just participate in the elections,` he told the paper.

`This is just the beginning of a new South African party that will be rooted in the majority of all our people, all of them, black and white, rich and poor,` he added.

Divisions within the ANC emerged last December, when Zuma unseated former president Thabo Mbeki as the party`s leader following a long power struggle.

Their differences turned even more bitter after Zuma`s allies forced Mbeki to resign the presidency in September, which proved to be the spark that led to the breakaway movement.

Mbeki has not given his support to the new movement, but told Zuma in a letter leaked to the press last week that he would not campaign for the ANC ahead of the polls.

Zuma is popular with poor South Africans, who make up 43 percent of the population, and has strong ties with the country`s powerful labour unions.

Analysts say that the new party will struggle to actually unseat the ANC, with elections expected as early as April.

But they could tap into discontent among the growing black middle class to win enough seats to strip the party of its super-majority in parliament, forcing negotiations on major issues.