President Thabo Mbeki on Friday denied suggestions of a ”supposed life and death conflict” between himself and former deputy president Jacob Zuma.
Reality would also prove speculation that the African National Congress was in danger of falling apart was nothing more than ”an expression of the vain wishes of its inventors”, he said in his weekly newsletter on the ANC website.
Mbeki quoted from a recent newspaper article, which suggested the current ”ANC succession battle” raised the question whether the party could survive the next 18 months to the conference in December next year when Mbeki’s successor was due to be elected.
He also quoted from a joint statement he and Zuma, as ANC Deputy President, presented to the ANC National Executive Council (NEC) in September last year.
It expressed appreciation of the ”genuine sense of solidarity among cadres within the movement” with Zuma, but urged vigilance ”against unhealthy forces [which] seek to attach themselves to this campaign”.
”Some of these forces would be driven by opportunism, others by a counter-revolutionary agenda to weaken the ANC and undermine transformation, and yet others by attempts to hide behind the campaign to pursue illegal and corrupt activities.
”We wish to assert that there is one ANC, and therefore reject the notion that individuals should be required to choose sides, on the basis of the absolutely false assertion that we lead two contending factions within the movement.
”We therefore urge, in the strongest terms possible, that no one should use the name of the president or the deputy president to mobilise for or against either, and for or against any other leader of the movement,” it read.
Another joint statement to the NEC, in November, stated that fundamentally false assertions had repeatedly been made that Zuma was campaigning to mobilise support for him to be elected ANC president in 2007 and president of South Africa in 2009.
The deputy president has never campaigned for these or any other positions,” it read.
Mbeki said he and Zuma had made these statements together, fully conscious of their shared commitment to respect and sustain the noble traditions that had characterised the ANC for more than nine decades.
He said last month’s NEC meeting had also rejected as without foundation perceived notions of a division among the senior leaders of the organisation.
Despite these voluntary, explicit, unequivocal and published statements to the NEC, ”there are some in our country who find it in their fundamental interest to propagate the false message that the current, and very strange, public controversy that relates to our movement centres on a supposed life and death conflict between the president and the deputy president of the ANC”.
These went on to claim that this was the single most important and decisive issue that would determine the medium-term future both of the ANC and democratic South Africa.
”Without doubt, actual reality over the next 18 months, rather than the wishes of some forces in our country and elsewhere in the world, will prove that the speculative prediction that the ANC may not ‘survive intact’, is nothing more than an expression of the vain wishes of its inventors.
”Principled and decisive action by members of the ANC, the broad democratic movement and the masses of our people will, once again, confirm the determination of our people to defend the integrity and unity of their historic movement, the ANC, confident that it remains the true repository and defender of their interests,” he said. – Sapa