OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 9.10am.
A SENIOR ANC member resigned from his job and the party on Thursday after an apparent contradiction between the party’s and President Thabo Mbeki’s stance over Zimbabwe.
Pieter Venter, who resigned from his post as the ANC head of media in parliament, wrote a statement delivered as a motion in parliament on Tuesday which condemned “the loss of human life, brutality and thuggery” in Zimbabwe.
“Such conditions severely compromise the possibility of a free, fair and credible election,” it said.
The motion appeared to be at odds with President Thabo Mbeki’s stance that the June 24 and 25 poll could be free and fair and caused a stir within the party, particularly in the party’s headquarters in Johannesburg.
ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni called a media briefing on Thursday to claim the motion did not contradict Mbeki. The party stood by its leader and believed that the elections can still be free and fair, despite the ongoing violence, he said.
South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994 was preceded by violence, but was still deemed free and fair, Yengeni added.
But Venter stuck to his guns and said that the statement, which had party support, does indeed intend to say that the violence in Zimbabwe means that free and fair polls are not possible.
He said he believes Yengeni’s statements to the media are “basically condoning violence, murder and political intimidation in Zimbabwe.”
In Zimbabwe, “you basically have state-sponsored violence, intimidation, [ruling] Zanu-PF cadres deployed in every single constituency. That’s just bizarre to say free and fair elections would be possible under these circumstances,” he said.
Mbeki this week dismissed the findings of a United States-based observer team, the National Democratic Institute of International Affairs, that conditions for a free and fair election in Zimbabwe do not exist. — AFP