Liberals are engaged in a fight to ensure the dominance of their ideas in the debate about what constitutes political change in South Africa, but African National Congress supporters must fight an ”ideological struggle” to determine the dominant ideas for the transformation of South Africa, says President Thabo Mbeki.
In a savage attack on liberals — whom he describes as ”sweet birds” — Mbeki said in his weekly online column on Friday that ”what the contemporary sweet birds are about is setting our national agenda. They fight as hard as they can to ensure that they, rather than us, should set this agenda.”
Ahead of the annual January 8 statement — a programme and policy guide for the coming year issued on the anniversary of the founding of the ANC in 1912 — the president gives a stern warning to his supporters: ”No revolution is possible without revolutionaries. Similarly, revolutionary change cannot succeed if the forces of change do not win the support of the masses of the people by convincing them freely to support their political and ideological positions.”
Giving a hint of the upcoming statement, which will be issued in Umtata at a mass rally, he said: ”The January 8 statement calls for intensified political and ideological work both within the ranks of the movement and among the people, further to develop the level of political development and maturity of our members, making them even better combatants for the victory of the national democratic revolution.”
His wordy letter refers to an unidentified liberal who visited Lusaka, Zambia — used as a military and political centre for the then exiled ANC.
Referring to late ANC president Oliver Tambo, Mbeki reports him as saying in 1971: ”This sweet bird [the liberal] from the blood-stained south [then apartheid South Africa] flew into Zambia and sang a singularly sweet song: ‘I am opposed to apartheid; I am opposed to the isolation of South Africa; I am opposed to violence; I am opposed to guerrillas; I am opposed to the Lusaka Manifesto; I am opposed to the decision of the World Council of Churches; I know the Africans can do nothing to cause political change in South Africa; I am in favour of change; I am clearly in favour of change, but determined to prevent change’.”
Mbeki reports further: ”In these words Oliver Tambo exposed the great gulf that existed between ourselves and others in our country who, like us, said they were ‘opposed to apartheid’ and were ‘in favour of change’.”
The president goes on to refer to current liberals: ”Today we have the situation that absolutely everybody in our country is ‘in favour of change’. The sweet birds continue to sing particularly sweet songs about what needs to be done to bring about this change, to which, objectively, they are opposed.
”They say they support the objective of building a democratic South Africa but view the popular support our movement enjoys as a threat to democracy.
”They say that they accept that, like all others elsewhere in the world, our democracy should be based, in part, on political parties that contest democratic elections to win power. Nevertheless they are opposed to the unity and cohesion of our movement, and only our movement, preferring, in the interest of democracy, as they say, that it should be composed of factions that fight publicly among themselves, ignoring its own internal democratic procedures.
”In this context, they say they accept that democratically elected governments have the right and duty to implement their election manifestos. Nevertheless, they are opposed to our movement deploying within the state machinery people who understand and accept our manifestos, denouncing this as representing a ‘totalitarian’ blurring of the distinction between state and party and an undemocratic centralisation of power.
”They say they support the creation of a non-racial society but are opposed to affirmative action and black economic empowerment, which they denounce as being nothing more than the perpetuation and entrenchment of ‘crony capitalism’.
”Similarly, while professing support for the emergence of a non-racial South Africa, they deny the persistence of the legacy of racism and apartheid in our country. Accordingly, they denounce our determined effort to address this critical challenge as an unacceptable ‘re-racialisation’ of South Africa and ‘playing the race card’.” — I-Net Bridge
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