OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki charged on Tuesday that unnamed rivals are conspiring to oust him. His first term of office expires in three years, but rumours are rife that one or more rivals within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) will challenge him then.
”People have got natural ambitions. Some people want to be president of South Africa, that’s fine,” Mbeki said in an interview on the private e-tv channel. ”The matter that’s arising is the manner in which people pursue their ambitions.”
Asked: ”Is it getting dirty?” he replied: ”That’s part of the problem, the manner in which some people do this … you get all sorts of crazy things.
”It’s a conspiratorial thing … you have business people who say ‘we’ve set up a fund to promote our particular candidate, we’ll then try to influence particular journalists to present an image’,” he said.
”Let’s have an open debate about anything, including the presidency,” Mbeki urged.
The president said his physical safety was not a problem, although Safety and Security Minister Steve Tshwete said last weekend that intelligence units were investigating claims of plots to oust Mbeki that put him in danger.
”As far back as last year we picked up clandestine activities involving certain individuals and we are monitoring this on a day-to-day basis to ensure that the president is safe,” Tshwete said.
He would not disclose names, but the Sunday Times newspaper, which reported his comments, said high-profile ANC leaders were under suspicion.
Deputy President Jacob Zuma issued a statement on April 3 to say attempts were being made to drive a wedge between himself and Mbeki.
He said there were rumours and ”unverified, so-called intelligence reports” that he might challenge Mbeki for the ANC presidency.
”I believe our current president is certainly capable of leading both the ANC and the country, and my confidence in him remains unwavering,” he declared in the statement, which took observers by surprise.
Max du Preez, a respected Afrikaner journalist, declared on a radio show on April 8, in comments splashed over the front page of The Citizen newspaper two days later: ”He [Mbeki] is seen as a womaniser. It is publicly known, and I think we should start talking about this … ”.
Later, he said: ”We should understand the struggle in the ANC by taking note of the fact that gossip about the president’s personal life is part of the dynamic inside the party and we should look at it because there is a power struggle going on.”
In his interview, Mbeki also defended his controversial stand on Aids after earlier backing the views of dissident scientists that it is not caused by HIV.
Mbeki said he would not take an HIV/Aids test to set an example, because it would be ”irrelevant”, and setting an example ”within the concepts of a particular paradigm.”
He said new US guidelines called for antiretroviral drugs to be administered later in the course of the illness because of their extreme toxicity.
”It would be a criminal dereliction of duty if our government didn’t say, ‘How do we cope with issues of the toxicity of these drugs?’
”Let’s stop politicising this question, let’s deal with the science of it,” he said. – AFP
ZA*NOW:
ANC to purge Mbeki rivals April 23, 2001