President Thabo Mbeki has told the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) that while people in his ruling African National Congress (ANC) are entitled to hold socialist views, they must not impose them on the ruling party.
Speaking in a pre-recorded interview ahead of next week’s national ANC conference, he said the ANC would not adopt socialist or other policies if they would not contribute to positive economic results.
He was speaking in the context of a growing gulf between the ”ultra-left” South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the other two members of the tripartite alliance. The latter held a nationwide strike against privatisation in October.
Mbeki said government would privatise whenever necessary.
Mbeki said he did not believe the alleged ”tensions” between the ANC and its partners would take up much time at the national conference. Most of the issues had been dealt with at the ANC’s national policy conference recently, and no changes were deemed necessary to national policies then.
The so-called ”ultra-left” was perfectly entitled to their views, but could not ”seek to transform the ANC into what it is not”, he said.
Mbeki also attributed the recovery of the rand — which is trading below the key nine rand to the dollar level — to the country’s good economic policies. He referred to the Bank of New York report which showed South Africa was the only country in the world whose index of strength and functioning of the economy had risen.
He also touched on the issue of relations with the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). Apparently contradicting the view that IFP leader and Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi was ready to leave his cabinet — over differences on traditional leaders and defection legislation — he said Buthelezi remained committed to the ANC/IFP working together ”to address common challenges”.
Asked about the suspected rightwingers allegedly involved in the recent spate of bombings in Soweto and elsewhere, Mbeki said there were still some South Africans who did not accept the democratic change and yearned for the past.
However, these ”deeply racist” people were a small minority without any strong support base among ”our people, including Afrikaners”.
They would not get the support of the population, and the arrests this week of several suspects was partly due to the public giving information to the police.
South Africans did not want war and violence, he said. – Sapa, I-Net Bridge