South African official opposition leader Tony Leon has questioned the shroud of silence which hangs in ruling African National Congress (ANC) circles over the prospect that Finance Minister Trevor Manuel could be deputy president one day.
Speaking at a public meeting in Newcastle on Tuesday evening, the opposition leader said he missed the days when former President Nelson Mandela was still in office.
”Mandela’s vision of racial reconciliation has been lost. President Thabo Mbeki focuses on what divides us in South Africa rather than what unites us. He supports dictators, not human rights. He leads a government that has shown scant regard for the sufferings of the poor and the sick.”
Suggesting that a race card was being played — not only in terms of no recruitment of coloureds in the Western Cape to the police force — but also over the political prospects of Manuel, who is the most senior coloured man in the South African cabinet, Leon said: ”Mr Manuel, as we all know, has been quite competent and he has brought down the national debt.”
”On top of that, at the last ANC conference he was elected in the top position to the [ruling party’s] national executive. And unlike our current deputy president [Jacob Zuma], there is no Scorpions’ investigation in progress against Mr Manuel.”
”So why is it that he is rarely ever mentioned as a possible deputy president, indeed as a successor to Thabo Mbeki?”
Leon continued: ”Some speculate that it is because ”he is only a ‘so-called coloured’.” I would hope that is not true. But if it is true, it is a disgrace.”
The opposition leader said he dreamed of a South Africa that would be ”more like the America of (former President) Bill Clinton, where any child, no matter how lowly the town or the circumstances he or she is born in, can dream of becoming president.”
”But let us be frank. There are many other things which politicians are normally shy of speaking of. If you talk to ordinary people in the townships — and these days the DA spends a great deal of time doing just that — you often hear people ask: ”When it will be the time to see a Venda, a Sotho, a Motswana, an Ndebele or a Swazi in that position?”
”There is, without doubt, a genuine sense of grievance here. But we should not have to face such grievances. In the South Africa I dream of, none of these differences will matter. We must simply have the best people running things, regardless of their race or ethnicity, and no one should feel disadvantaged because they were born into what some others might regard as the ‘wrong’ group,” said Leon. – I-Net Bridge