The ANC will not abandon national reconciliation, and ”politically motivated lies” will not divide the organisation, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.
Writing in the African National Congress’ online publication, ANC Today, he questioned the motivation behind The Citizen newspaper’s recent scathing attack on former Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadre Robert McBride.
McBride received amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for his part in bombing the Magoo’s and Why Not bars near the Durban beachfront in 1986.
In a front page story, and subsequent editorial, The Citizen opposed McBride’s possible appointment as head of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police, denouncing him as a criminal.
Mbeki said the newspaper was ”urging our country to reopen the wounds of the past”.
”I do not know whether Mr McBride was ever or is interested to be Chief of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police … whether he has the competence to serve in this capacity.
”What I know is that it would be fundamentally wrong that he is denied the possibility to be appointed to any position, simply because of what he did during our struggle for liberation, for which he apologised and for which he was granted amnesty.
”We will not agree that Mr McBride should be condemned for having been a liberation fighter.”
Mbeki said whatever the problems, ”all our people, black and white”, had made remarkable progress in bridging divisions and healing wounds.
”Even as we recognise that much still remains to be done, we know that the enemies of the past have reached out to one another to make the important statement together, that they share a common destiny.
”In an extraordinary process driven by the recognition that we belong together, the majority of our people, black and white, have come to understand that our country faces a common challenge of the eradication of the legacy of apartheid, which we must confront in unity,” he said.
”Today, even as opposed to a mere five years ago, there are many more of our people who can say with genuine feeling and conviction that we are all South African and African.
”The Citizen thinks that all this must come to an end. It says that we must identify, denounce and isolate those South Africans anyone of us might determine to be criminals, on the basis of what they did in the past.
”It must also be keen that the lists should be published of all those who served the apartheid regime as agents, informers and sources … or is all this intended to apply only to ANC members!”
Mbeki said, recently, there had been much discussion about who might or might not have been an ”apartheid spy”. In the course of this, false and self-serving allegations had been made that this reflected divisions within the ANC.
These politically motivated lies would not divide the ANC, as intended.
”Neither will the efforts of The Citizen to provoke us to abandon the path of national reconciliation succeed.
”Fortunately, I know that the ANC will, as it has done for 91 years, continue to argue that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white,” Mbeki said. – Sapa