Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has rejected President Thabo Mbeki’s charge that the DA’s Coalition for Change with the Inkatha Freedom Party is ”right-wing”, saying Mbeki is trying to rewrite the past to suit his own needs.
Mbeki did not like the Coalition for Change because he and the African National Congress were opposed to real change in South Africa, Leon said in his weekly newsletter on Friday.
”On every major social issue facing the people of South Africa, the president and the ANC are in the wrong. And the DA has the right answers.”
The DA supports economic policies that will create millions of real jobs by unleashing the private sector and boosting growth. The ANC does not.
The DA supports a basic income grant, and has a proven track record of providing anti-Aids drugs. Again, the ANC does not.
These are not the positions of a ”right-wing” organisation.
”In fact, on all of these issues, the president and the ANC are knee-jerk conservatives,” Leon said.
Mbeki is used to calling names. He labelled his internal ANC critics as the ”ultra-left”, and while he claimed to support the New National Party, he recently included the NNP on his list of ”silly parties”.
”Today he attacks the IFP, but just a few years ago he was singing its praises. South Africans are tired of this two-faced, childish approach to politics.”
The people are tired of a president who lashed out at Christian parties on Friday and preached in church on Sunday; of a president who claimed his party represented the pinnacle of non-sexism, and then ”jokes about beating his sister”.
”The people are tired of a president who runs away from a debate, but keeps using his weekly letter to attack opposition parties from behind the safety of a computer screen because he lacks the courage to do so in public,” Leon said.
In his own online weekly newsletter earlier on Friday, Mbeki launched a scathing attack on the DA and IFP, saying the voters would decide the fate of this ”right-wing” coalition.
Leon said Mbeki had woven a ”bizarre historical account — one full of deliberate distortions, in which the order of events is topsy-turvy and truth has been thrown completely out the window”.
Perhaps Mbeki spent too much time in Moscow when he was in exile, as he seemed to have mastered the totalitarian art of rewriting the past to suit the present needs of the powerful.
”It is, however, rather humorous that the president thinks the ANC will win votes by telling fairy tales about history.
”That shows how out of touch he is, how far from the people,” Leon said. — Sapa
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Special Report: Elections 2004