The African National Congress has reacted furiously to a Newsweek report saying Thabo Mbeki’s presidency is unravelling over HIV/Aids, branding it “a badly written movie script camouflaged as analysis”, aimed at destabilising the ANC, its leadership and the government, writes Drew Forrest.
In its cover story this week the influential American weekly said Mbeki was “feuding with allies, fighting his Cabinet and losing international friends” because of his Aids dissent.
Newsweek writer Tom Masland describes him as “apartheid’s ultimate victim: a bright, cultivated intellectually curious man turned inward, driven by his unique history into a job for which he is not suited”.
Masland reports a tense Cabinet stand-off between Mbeki and Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi before the latter’s powerful denunciation of the state’s Aids policy two weeks ago.
Masland suggests Mbeki’s struggle for power in exile, a proneness to paranoia and a habit of “feeling like the smartest person in the room” may have shaped him.
Branding the report a “divide and rule strategy”, the ANC said it was the latest episode in an ongoing campaign to “bludgeon president Mbeki’s image”.
“Newsweek has joined these missiles of attack that have no respect for Africans who think independently Like all previous attempts to weaken the ANC through character assassination of its president, this crusade will not win.”