COUNTERPOINT: While we agree with our colleague Drew Forrest that Mbeki is a man past his sell-by date, we do not agree that the paper was ahead of its time in its appraisal of Mbeki. The Mail & Guardian 2001 and the M&G 2008 are two different papers.
Tony Leon, the former leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), is writing to the chair of the foreign affairs portfolio committee in Parliament, asking him to summon Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to explain what the government is doing to protect South Africa businesses from being nationalised by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
President Thabo Mbeki must release the letter he allegedly wrote to George Bush asking the American president to "butt out" of Zimbabwe, the Democratic Alliance said on Thursday. Mbeki's four-page letter to Bush apparently criticised the United States for taking sides against Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.
Zimbabwe's ambassador to South Africa on Monday criticised the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for claiming that President Thabo Mbeki had not been an "honest broker". He was briefing Parliament's portfolio committee on foreign affairs ahead of his country's "harmonised" March 29 elections.
In his State of the Nation address on Friday, President Thabo Mbeki repeated an all too familiar pattern of legitimising Zimbabwean elections before they have even taken place, said the Democratic Alliance's (DA) spokesperson for foreign affairs Tony Leon.
The British high commission has confirmed that it is conducting a global review of its visit visa requirements. High commissioner Paul Boateng said on Wednesday that Britain is in regular contact with the South African government regarding the process and that no decision has been taken.
The Democratic Alliance's Tony Leon on Monday accused President Thabo Mbeki, African National Congress president Jacob Zuma and Cape Judge President John Hlophe of "constitutional vandalism". Addressing the Mizrachi Organisation in Cape Town, the former DA leader called for a government inclusive of "all talent" available.
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille was emerging as a person who would go to extremes to cover up the truth, a former member of the DA said on Tuesday. "[She is] a person who criticises the judiciary and the media because their duties do not fit her political agenda," Kobus Brynard, a Western Cape MPL for the African National Congress, said.
Former leader of the Democratic Alliance Tony Leon, who now speaks for the party on foreign affairs, has launched a scathing attack on South Africa's plan to host a second World Conference against Racism in Durban next year. "Quite what good will come of this exercise remains open to serious question," he said.
Hansard, the official record of parliamentary proceedings, does not agree with Buyelwa Patience Sonjica's version of recent events, the Sunday Independent reported. Sonjica, the Minister of Minerals and Energy, said on Tuesday that she did not say that all South Africans should go to bed earlier so that they could grow and become cleverer.
Addressing an audience in London on Wednesday, Tony Leon -- the former leader of the Democratic Alliance -- expressed fears that under Jacob Zuma as president, South Africa could revert to a stereotype of "Big Man", African-style kleptocracy replete with redistributive and populist economics with lashings of demagoguery.
