Mosiuoa Gerard Patrick Lekota (born 13 August 1948) is a South African anti-Apartheid revolutionary for the African National Congress (ANC) who served jail time with Nelson Mandela from 1985 and who left the ANC to form the Congress of the People (Cope) splinter party in 2008.

[1] Previously as a member of the African National Congress, under President Thabo Mbeki, he served in the Cabinet of South Africa as Minister of Defence from 17 June 1999 to 25 September 2008.

Lekota became a permanent organiser for SASO in 1974, but was imprisoned at Robben Island Prison for "conspiring to commit acts endangering the maintenance of law and order" during the same year.

Lekota subsequently served as the chairperson of the National Council of Provinces from 1997 to 1999, before being appointed Minister of Defence.

In this position he was responsible for ordering eight A400M military transport aircraft from Airbus by the Armscor parastatal in 2005, for a price of R17bn.

This was duly carried out, making it the first mass schism from the ANC since the creation of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania in 1959 during the apartheid period.

The announcement was both rejected and played down by leaders of the ANC, with heavy derision coming from the South African Communist Party.

On 20 February 2009, Lekota lost the battle for his party's presidential candidacy to the former presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, Mvume Dandala.

[8] Although, for some time subsequent to Dandala's victory, Lekota kept mum on the matter, on 5 February 2009, on his Facebook page, he spoke out, urging supporters of the new movement: We should also not be distracted now by who serves in the interim leadership, because ultimately the people's voice will be heard.

[9]A week prior to the election, speculation mounted that Lekota was set on repairing back to the ANC, as numerous other COPE defectors already had, but he clarified his stance in emphatic terms for The Sunday Times: There is no way I can return to the company of men and women who are dead set on destroying the constitutional democracy which I gave most of my life to creating.

[12] Lekota did not take up a seat in Parliament after the election; instead, COPE decided that he should concentrate on organizing and building the party, together with Secretary-General Charlotte Lobe.

[17] Lekota is married and has four children, two daughters and two sons; his wife Cynthia was a former Mathematics teacher in the Nquthu, KwaZulu-Natal.

[19]The comments were widely criticised, with one national newspaper editor labelling them as "depressing" and "Thabo Mbeki's Aids denalism all over again".