Johannesburg - ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe continued his testimony late into the evening on Wednesday at the State Capture Commission and detailed how stories were "flying around" about certain party members captured by the Gupta family.
But Mantashe insisted that the ANC itself was not captured.
Evidence leader advocate Alec Freund said the Guptas may not have had to capture the entire party, if they had captured key members.
Mantashe said the ANC's Integrity Commission finding that former president Jacob Zuma should step down in 2017 was related to Zuma's relationship with the Gupta family.
He said that when he was made aware of the influence the Gupta family had on the ANC, he told ministers to stop taking orders from the Guptas but denied that he suffered a fallout with Zuma because of his sentiments.
Mantashe also revealed that in 2013, shortly after the Gupta family landed a wedding plane at the Waterkloof Air Force Base, there was a recommendation made by the ANC's Integrity Commission for Zuma to step down.
He said, since then, the ANC has been going through a period of "instability".
Mantashe has been giving evidence at the Zondo Commission for over seven hours on Wednesday.
Mantashe started proceedings by reading his opening statement about deployment of ANC cadres to government positions.
He told the Commission that the ANC has a "deployment policy" and not "cadre deployment".
In a supplementary statement written by Mantashe in 2018, he said that the ANC's aim was to "deepen the hold of the liberation movement over the levers of the state".
When Freund asked if the ANC was looking to control the public service and administration, Mantashe agreed but Freund pointed out that the public service was supposed to be non-partisan and that posed a conflict.
POLITICAL BUREAU