Outspoken former ANC MP Makhosi Khoza says if she had stayed on in the ANC‚ she would have been six feet under by now.

Khoza spoke to Times Select on Mandela Day about her life after retiring from politics and how it felt to leave the organisation she served since she was 12 years old.

Khoza said she had no regrets about leaving the ANC and has learned valuable lessons from living outside the liberation movement.

“For too long when I was in parliament‚ I was made to believe that there are white people that are out there to reverse the gains we have made. ‘You black people must be very careful of these white people‚’ and so forth.”

She said her experience of reality was different. “I went to Emfuleni and Vereeniging. Both these communities were talking the same language. But when I was in parliament I would have believed that these people don’t see eye to eye. People are actually united in seeing that we need to fix our towns‚” she said.

In September last year Khoza resigned from the ANC after a tumultuous time in parliament where she openly criticised then president Jacob Zuma. Khoza started her own political party‚ African Democratic Change‚ which was a dismal failure.

In April she retired from politics and later joined the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa). She is the executive director of the local government section of Outa.