Businessman Tokyo Sexwale has reiterated that infighting within the African National Congress (ANC) would destroy the party, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Sunday.
Sexwale was addressing the Umkhonto weSizwe Veterans’ Association in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape.
”We’re fighting sometimes on regionalism … but its bordering on ethnicity … and comrades, it’s violating now the sacred positions.
”That is why we must begin to be afraid. We can come and go … the ANC must remain,” he said.
In expressing his concern about current divisions in the party, he acknowledged that the ANC had achieved a lot under President Thabo Mbeki as well as former President Nelson Mandela.
On Friday, Sexwale told students in Johannesburg that South Africa cannot afford to lose the tripartite alliance.
”We can’t have a Cosatu [Congress of South African Trade Unions] that feels that it has got serious difficulties with the ANC. We can’t have an ANC that can’t see eye to eye with its members,” he said.
The tripartite alliance comprises the ANC, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party.
Sexwale warned that leadership battles would cause South Africa’s democratic revolution to fail. He said the leadership of the ANC is not about electing one ”superstar”.
On his own role in the ANC’s leadership race, he said: ”I would rather remain president in your hearts, unelected, than putting daggers in the backs of others at the Union Buildings.”
Responding to criticisms about a possible contradiction between his ANC membership and his business interests, he said the depth of his pockets do not determine his social consciousness. — Sapa