President Thabo Mbeki has strongly criticised those intent on continuing political assassinations reminiscent of the apartheid regime, vowing that perpetrators will be brought to book.
Writing in his weekly newsletter on the African National Congress’ online publication, ANC Today, on Monday, he referred to last week’s murder of the former speaker of the Estcourt municipal council, Stanley Chetty, who had switched to the ANC during the recent window period.
”The ANC provincial chairperson in KwaZulu-Natal and premier of the province, Sbu Ndebele, has already said he is convinced that Stanley Chetty’s was a political assassination.
”He has pointed to the fact that other councillors who crossed over to the ANC have been threatened with death,” Mbeki said.
”Murder under any circumstances is totally unacceptable. With regard to this as any other murder case, we are certain that the police service will do everything it can to apprehend those responsible for Stanley Chetty’s death and bring them before our courts.
”However, we also cannot ignore the possibility that this might have been a political assassination.”
Mbeki said people such as former black consciousness leader Steve Biko, who was murdered 27 years ago this month, and anti-apartheid cleric Beyers Naude, who recently died, and many others, sacrificed everything so that everybody could enjoy full democratic rights.
”Nobody in our country has either the right or the power to deny any of our people the possibility to use and enjoy those rights. We will not allow that anybody restores to our country even one element of the repressive practices that characterised 1977 and other years,” he said.
”If, indeed this was a political assassination, we must all communicate a clear message to the assassins and those who might want to emulate them — that democratic South Africa will give no quarter in the struggle to defeat those who want to continue the practices of the apartheid regime,” Mbeki said. – Sapa