So what's in a name? This may well be asked after the tussle over the ANC breakaway group's choice of Congress of the People as their party's name.
The answer is that it indeed says a good deal about where a party comes from and where it intends to go.
The legal issue was whether the ANC could claim ownership of the name on the basis that it was the banner under which the 1955 Kliptown gathering was organised when the Freedom Charter was adopted.
The new party's joy at having the legal issue settled in its favour showed how important it was for it, politically, to go under the historic name.
By opting for a name as closely associated as possible with the ANC, they want to make the step away from the 96-year-old party as painless as possible for those wishing to follow it.
Such manoeuvring is nothing new. South African political history is replete with similar examples. These show that attempts at name confusion mostly happen when the ideological differences forcing the split are less than clear-cut.
The ANC has a previous experience of this. When Robert Sobukwe's pan-Africanist group split from it in 1958, they made sure that the terms "African" and "Congress" were retained in what came to be named the PAC.
In their case, however, the attempt at association by name was made even though the breakaway group set themselves against one of the basic tenets of the mother party, that of racial inclusiveness as opposed to the exclusivity the ANC propagated.
Other self-inflicted factors like feather-brained organisation and individual rivalries have pretty well seen to the PAC's continued struggle to exist.
The toying with names was as much a part of white breakaway politics in the old days. When General Barry Hertzog led his rebel group out of the South African Party (SAP) of generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts in 1914, they named it the National Party. There was no attempt at obfuscation.
The disagreement was clear-cut. Much like the PAC, the Hertzogites stood for Afrikaner-nationalist exclusivity as opposed to the English-Afrikaner inclusiveness espoused by the SAP. But the Afrikaner nationalists wanted the distinction underscored by their party's name as well.
When Hertzog and Smuts joined their parties in 1934 to allow the country to contend better with the Great Depression, they chose the catch-all name of United National South African Party, later to become the United Party. On the other hand, a breakaway group of Nationalists led by DF Malan at the same time chose to call themselves the Gesuiwerde (purified) Nasionale Party.
When the disillusioned Hertzog group later decided to rejoin Malan's Nationalists in the 1940s, the party was named the Herenigde (reunited) Nasionale Party, with the acronym of HNP.
Twenty-one years after the Malan party came to power in 1948, a group within what became known by its old name of National Party became so upset by the then John Vorster government's courtship of English speakers that they split off to form the Herstigte (re-established) Nasionale Party, which translated conveniently into the acronym HNP! Its attempt to revive old associations did not work. As it turned out, the time had passed for that extreme version of Afrikaner nationalism.
The name issue, meanwhile, took a different turn in the case of the United Party.
When a group including the likes of Helen Suzman broke away from it in 1959, they were so offended by the racist attitudes within its ranks that they opted for the entirely different and telling name of Progressive Party. And how they clung to that in successive fusions with other parties!
It saw them become the Progressive Reform Party and the Progressive Federal Party before they ultimately disappeared into the Democratic Party, which in turn became today's Democratic Alliance.
Neither was there any attempt at creating name confusion when Andries Treurnicht's group left the ruling National Party back in 1982, this time because of the PW Botha leadership's wooing of English-speaking voters.
It was Botha's announcement that his party stood for power-sharing that forced the split. The Treurnicht group called their movement the Conservative Party. Their objective was simply to conserve the old segregationist policy.
The ANC and the NP were born three years apart, the latter in 1915, and from the beginning represented opposite currents of the newly formed Union of South Africa.
Though their ideologies were set far apart, the most significant parallel to be drawn between their respective life experiences might indeed be that between the National Party's Conservative split and the breakaway now from the ANC.
I was the political correspondent of the Pretoria News at the time of the Treurnicht-led split. Taking the view that meaningful change could not come from a hegemonic National Party, I spent much time probing and prodding the widening cracks within the ruling party. It enabled me to predict quite confidently that the big split was on just days before it happened.
Confirmation of the event came when Koos van der Merwe, now remodelled as an Inkatha Freedom Party MP, came storming out of that day's Nationalist caucus meeting in parliament to announce to journalists waiting in the lobby: "Ek is klaar met daai Prog PW!" (I am finished with that Prog PW.)
Those words, I believe, marked more than anything the beginning of the end of the Nationalist will to dominate.
Treurnicht announced the parting of the ways at a media conference later that day.
The split would destroy the belief that the party somehow had a God-given right to govern.
Strangely, considering our differing views, when the conference was over and the journalists left, Treurnicht asked me to stay.
"What do you think is going to happen?" he asked as he and I, and Tom Langley, his chief lieutenant, sat down for what turned into a longish off-the-record chat. He seemed to try to comprehend the enormity of what had just happened.
Those events came vividly to mind as I watched the Lekota-Shilowa group staking their claim. Despite the vague policy differences, there was a sense that something of historic significance was in progress, as happened under Nationalist rule back in 1982 when the Conservatives split.
Could it be that the idea of political power being a right by virtue of history is once again being brought into question?
If so, the split will mean that South Africans are moving towards a new era in which politicians and their parties will increasingly be judged by their worth rather than by the roles they played in the pro- and anti-apartheid struggles. In that case the ANC, too, should not be too sanguine about the dominant position it holds.