South African President Thabo Mbeki has sprung to the defence of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu — who recently urged that former deputy president Jacob Zuma should not become president — following what he describes as a ”truly distressing personal attack” on the archbishop by the Congress of South African Students (Cosas).
This follows Tutu’s remarks — in the Harold Wolpe memorial lecture on August 23 — that he would not be able to hold his head high if African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma, dismissed as the nation’s deputy president last year, became president of the country.
Mbeki noted that Cosas leader Kenny Motshegoa had shot back at Tutu by saying: ”We [Cosas] condemn the recent attacks on the deputy president of the ANC [Zuma] by the Archbishop Tutu, who claims to be the moral authority of society.
”We cannot allow Tutu to undermine decisions that are taken within constitutional structures of the ANC, on the support to be given to comrade Jacob Zuma.”
Motshegoa added further: ”Does Tutu think he is higher than the court that cleared Jacob Zuma, or does he think he has a better moral base than others?”
Motshegoa was referring to Zuma’s acquittal on a rape charge.
But Mbeki — who could face a contest for the ruling ANC leadership next year against Zuma — said in his ANC Today internet column on Friday: ”We must ask ourselves the question how is it possible that children, such as the members of Cosas, feel empowered to demand that their grandfathers should ‘provide us with [their] sexual history before [they] speak as experts on sexual behaviour’!”
He was referring to Motshegoa’s demand that Tutu did so.
Mbeki asked too: ”How is it possible that these children become so emboldened that they can easily dismiss the views of their grandfather by describing him as ”a scandalous man?”.
The president continues: ”What happened that inspired the very young to conclude that our national heroes are nothing more ‘than loose cannons that have been ‘certificated’ without formal education on justice, by conspirators who have degrees in political jealousy and conspiracy’!
”What is it that gives the very young the audacity to repudiate what our senior citizens say to all of us as being nothing more than the product of ‘howling voices’!”
Tutu had said in the lecture: ”Our Constitution, which the country’s president promises to guard and uphold, guarantees to each of us the right to our point of view. I like Jacob Zuma as a warm, very approachable person, but he did nothing to stop his supporters [during the rape case].
”I for one would not be able to hold my head high if a person with such supporters were to become my president, someone who did not think it necessary to apologise for engaging in casual sex without taking proper precautions in a country that is being devastated by this horrendous HIV/Aids pandemic. What sort of example would he be setting?”
Mbeki, calling for youth respect of their elders, said: ”The utterly unacceptable things said by the president of Cosas against the person of Archbishop Tutu are totally at variance with the cultural standards that inform the behaviour of the overwhelming majority of our young people.
”They have conveyed an image of an uncivilised society that our country and people do not deserve.” — I-Net Bridge