President Thabo Mbeki on Friday told the African National Congress (ANC) Women’s League to forget about who would be the party’s next president and to focus on solving poverty and gender violence.
”I would advise you please forget that there’s a national conference of the ANC coming in December; we will come back to it another time,” Mbeki told the start of the women’s league’s national general council in Kempton Park.
In a speech peppered with questions such as ”How well are we doing?”, he appealed to the league to attract more young, as well as rural and working-class, women.
”Are we strong enough to lead the millions of women in our country?” he asked.
Mbeki lamented the fact that ANC policy documents contained no mention of the ”gender question” and said this had to be corrected.
On Thursday night’s extraordinary summit of the SADC (Southern African Development Community), Mbeki said concern had been expressed about the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe.
”They have asked us as the SADC to lead the process of engaging with people of Zimbabwe to produce an outcome [to the crisis].”
Mbeki said the meeting had also mentioned that the Democratic Republic of Congo ”has had its democratic elections and nobody has the right to change that by resorting to arms”. — Sapa