BRENDAN BOYLE, Cape Town | Monday
SOURCES within the ANC say President Thabo Mbeki’s altercation on Youth Day with former first lady Winnie Madikizela-Mandela could result in a challenge to his leadership.
Mbeki pushed her away, knocking off her cap, and loudly reprimanded her when she arrived late at a Youth Day rally and leaned down to talk to him.
The sources said that when Mbeki was sworn in as South Africa’s second democratically elected president in June 1999, he could reasonably have read his 66% election win as a mandate for a decade in power.
Now, at least partly because his predecessor’s former wife lost her hat, the ANC might not invite him to stay on for the second half of that term.
The sources indicated that Mbeki’s record was being discussed by senior members who fear a series of controversies and squabbles could indicate a significant lack of political judgement.
“I think Mbeki would have to mess up a whole lot more than he has for there to be a challenge for his job, but the issue is being discussed in a way that is surprising and unusual,” said one party official.
South Africans will vote together for the third time in 2004 with the leader of the winning party, almost certainly the ANC, automatically becoming president.
But the ANC uses a more complex system to elect its leader and party branches and organisations, such as the youth and women’s leagues, are already deciding who they will nominate as party head at the ANC congress in December next year.
Millionaire businessman Cyril Ramaphosa, a former trade union leader who headed negotiations on the transfer of power from whites to the majority blacks, is the leading candidate to succeed Mbeki if there is a challenge.
Controversy about Mbeki’s clumsy handling of key issues including the Aids pandemic, violence in neighbouring Zimbabwe and an alleged plot to oust him have dented his authority.
Mbeki has refused to endorse the medical assumption that HIV causes the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Aids) that already has infected one in every nine South Africans.
And he endorsed a formal police enquiry earlier this year into allegations that three senior black businessmen were plotting to oust him by falsely linking him to the 1994 assassination by white rightists of South African Communist Party icon Chris Hani.
But it was the public tantrum against Madikizela- Mandela that focused analysis on his judgement under pressure.
Though Madikizela-Mandela has never been far from controversy, including a conviction for the kidnapping and assault of a black child activist, she remains hugely popular.
She also heads the ANC Women’s League and has seats on the party’s two key decision-making committees. University of Witwatersrand political scientist Tom Lodge said the tiff with Madikizela-Mandela could damage Mbeki’s chances of an uncontested nomination at next year’s conference.
“She sees herself as a kingmaker and Mbeki has lost an ally,” he told the Cape Argus newspaper, adding that Mbeki’s intemperate response to her had been “just one more item where people will register another niggling doubt”.
Madikizela-Mandela appeared to confirm the threat to Mbeki when she said in a rare television interview on Saturday the ANC had failed to relieve the suffering of the black majority.
“I am gravely concerned about the continuing poverty of our people. I am gravely concerned about some of the political decisions we have taken,” she said.
A party source who spoke on condition of anonymity said there was a widely held view within the ANC that while Mbeki was strong on economic policy, he was prone to public relations errors.
Economic growth has stabilised above three percent of gross domestic product with inflation falling towards the government target of between three and six percent.
For the first time since he succeeded the revered Mandela, who declined a second term as president, Mbeki defended his personal style in an address to parliament on Friday.
Switching between “I” and the “we” he often uses to refer to himself as president, he told legislators: “I will never seek to purchase popularity and approval …The high post we occupy demands that we act with integrity, not informed by any desire to achieve cheap popularity.”
While the popularity of the ANC remains pegged around 65%, recent opinion polls have shown Mbeki’s personal support falling below 50%. – Reuters
ZA*NOW:
ANC slaps down Winnie June 20, 2001
Touchy Thabo wont hug Winnie June 18, 2001