PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma has hit back at Julius Malema, a week after the controversial ANC youth leader insisted that leaders cannot count on more than one term in office.

In a clear reference to the increasingly outspoken Malema, Zuma said ANC juniors had to respect their elders.

"Juniors must obey their seniors all the time. You are not there because you want to be there. You're put there by the organisation.

"The entire organisation must respect and abide by decisions. You have no right to undermine people after electing them," Zuma said.

Malema attracted the ire of the ANC hierarchy when he told a meeting of the Youth League’s National General Council (NGC) that most in the party’s leadership should consider themselves “fortunate” if they got a second term at the party’s elective conference in 2012.

"From the president to the additional member, their term ends in 2012 and they must not cry in 2012 if they are not elected. They must be thankful that at least the ANC once considered them.

"Now the ANC is considering other people? If the ANC says 'continue', you must be thankful. To be given an opportunity twice is not automatic. There is nothing called two terms in the ANC, it's one term,” Malema said.

Some members of the ANC, its youth wing and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), all of which helped Zuma oust former president Thabo Mbeki in 2007, have indicated they won’t support him for a second term media reports suggested.

But Zuma, who has drawn sharp criticism over his handling of a nationwide strike that has paralysed public services, warned that public discussion of his succession would undermine the party.

“What has happened now, which is unfortunate, is that such utterances have come too early and it is not characteristic of the ANC,” Zuma said in an interview published a Sunday newspaper.

“The ANC doesn’t do so, because if you do that too early you are in fact undermining the functioning of the ANC. It could be an indication of some weaknesses we may be having.”

The ANC leader has also come under attack over perceived corruption after a major iron mining contract was awarded to a firm connected with one of his sons. 

“We see children of those who are in power and friends of those who are in power accumulating more money and our people not emerging,” Malema said of the deal.

"We must never allow that in South Africa, where African leaders and their families are the richest and their own people in their own countries are the poorest.  We don't want that in South Africa, we can't sit back and allow that.”

The labour body COSATU said it would seek to overturn the contract award, describing the deal as “outrageous”.

However Zuma said criticism of the business dealing of members of his family was “unfair”.

“They have been in business long before, more than a decade,” he said.

“Why should you not do business when you are closer to political power”.