President Thabo Mbeki has warned against attempts to weaken and subvert South Africa’s hard-won democracy through violence and destruction.
Writing in his weekly newsletter on the African National Congress website on Friday, Mbeki said the country will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Constitution next month.
”We will assess the progress we have made and the problems we have experienced as we have sought to create ‘the kind of South Africa visualised in our Constitution’.
”I am certain that in this regard, we will have to revert back to the important matters of a New Patriotism, of a shared national agenda, and of the responsibility that falls on each and every one of us to make his or her contribution to the pursuit of that national agenda,” he said.
Thursday’s Freedom Day celebration has served to underline the critical importance of the nature of the new South Africa — ”the home of a stable democracy, human rights, equality, peace, stability and a shared prosperity”.
All these are the fundamental features that define the democratic victory the people won at great cost 12 years ago, after a long struggle stretching over many centuries.
”Our movement we will never permit that anyone should undermine them or treat them with contempt.
”All genuine members of the ANC and the broad democratic movement will have been extremely distressed and concerned that even as we were celebrating Freedom Day and just before, people who claim to be part of our movement had engaged in actions that demonstrate the unacceptable contempt for the gains of the democratic revolution to which we have referred.
”I refer here to various actions deliberately intended to weaken and subvert the democracy for which countless numbers of patriots sacrificed their lives, such as violent attacks against mayors and councillors, the destruction of their houses as well as people’s municipal property, violent attacks against workers during some strikes, the trashing of public thoroughfares, vandalism and looting,” Mbeki said.
Similar behaviour in the past had obliged former president Nelson Mandela to speak out strongly against attempts by some to introduce anarchy into society.
Mbeki said the historic task facing all genuine members and supporters of the ANC, and all other genuine democrats, is to act in unity and unite in action to advance the national agenda focused on the reconstruction and development of the country, in the interests of the millions of people still afflicted by poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment. — Sapa