Stefaans Brmmer and Jaspreet Kindra
A pamphlet said to have originated in the African National Congress alliance calling for “one president, one term” has fuelled the latest round of accusations around supposed plots against President Thabo Mbeki.
This has been the month in which tensions around the president, long simmering in the ANC and tripartite alliance, finally boiled to the surface. The public has been treated to one surprise after the other, including Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s denial he wants his boss’s job, and a war of words over the president’s alleged sexual habits.
Well-placed ANC sources say the supposed discovery of the pamphlet during a visit of the ANC National Working Committee (NWC) to the North West Province reignited tensions around purported conspiracies to oust Mbeki. “Hot air and paranoia”, some commentators have said. This may or may not be true, but actual incidents and allegations, long unresolved within the ANC, appear to have contributed to the latest public outpourings.
An example is contained in the so-called “Winnie letter” to Zuma, leaked to the media in January. In it, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela claimed Mbeki opened an NWC meeting in May last year by accusing the media and ANC comrades of undermining him. Mbeki personally attacked Madikizela-Mandela for supposedly spreading rumours of a night-time escapade involving Mbeki and the wife of Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa.
While the accusation and the letter clearly led to tension in the ANC, no action has been taken either to resolve the dispute between Mbeki and Madikizela-Mandela, or to address the leak of the letter to the public.
But around November last year, a potentially more serious set of allegations started undermining relationships at the top. They contained a new spin on the “plot against Thabo” theme with Zuma cast as the main protagonist.
It is understood that the SABC has been sitting on the presumably unsubstantiated allegations against Zuma. A Johannesburg daily is known to have received an anonymous dossier making similar allegations, which it is still evaluating.
These allegations have dovetailed with claims set in the Byzantine political scenery of Mpumalanga, distilled in documents drawn up by former Mpumalanga ANC Youth League leader James Nkambule. He was key witness in the ANC’s internal Maphisa-Ngcakula commission of inquiry, which led to the downfall of Mathews Phosa as Mpumalanga premier and ended his deputy presidential ambitions.
Nkambule, who is facing criminal charges for his role in the Mpumalanga Parks Board scandal, claimed in the documents that Phosa was mounting a new presidential challenge. But he went further, implicating Zuma, ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe and even Smuts Ngonyama, the head of the ANC presidential office and widely regarded as a top Mbeki loyalist branding them as “sympathetic towards Mathews Phosa and his other fellow ‘victims of Mbeki'”.
All the while, Mbeki was still struggling to shake off the after-effects of a bad first year in office, hounded by unfavourable assessments of his handling of the HIV/Aids and Zimbabwe crises. The scene was set for a showdown. ANC sources say that last month’s NWC delegation to North West province came across supposed evidence of a pamphlet calling for Mbeki’s removal after a single term. Some sources claimed the pamphlet originated with a senior North West ANC leader who is also a senior member of the South African Communist Party.
SACP assistant general secretary Jeremy Cronin commented: “The SACP is aware of rumours that there is some anti-President Thabo Mbeki pamphlet floating around in some ANC circles. We’ve also heard allegations that some SACP individuals might be involved.”
Cronin said the SACP had tried to ascertain the truth of the claims, as it disapproved of members using the party or its structures “for factionalist activity in fraternal organisations like the ANC”, but that to date no evidence had been found of SACP involvement.
Next came the ANC national executive committee (NEC) meeting of March 24 to 26 where attacks on the president were again raised. While it seems the pamphlet was not specifically discussed, the official NEC statement afterwards noted “concerted efforts” to sow disunity and undermine Mbeki. These efforts, the statement noted, took many forms, including media reports, whispering campaigns and “anonymous pamphlets”.
The big surprise, however, came a week later when Zuma released a statement to an unsuspecting public in which he denied he would challenge the president. Referring to “so-called intelligence reports” presumably the information the SABC has failed to broadcast Zuma said: “We have been aware of some elements in various guises, who have been trying to isolate the President by creating the impression that some of his trusted comrades are plotting against him.”
An NEC member, asking not to be named, this week said he believed there were outside forces ranged against Mbeki, but that much of the recent brouhaha could be traced to the ANC’s inability to deal “decisively” with unresolved issues, including the Winnie letter.