President Thabo Mbeki will attend the launch of a book on his governance by Ronald Suresh Roberts at the presidential guest house in Pretoria on Friday.
The book, Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki, will be launched at 7pm.
An online advertising blurb for the book states that ”this illuminating examination … provides unprecedented access to the man and his ideas”.
On Thursday, the Star columnist Max du Preez wrote: ”It is little more than a diatribe and a hatchet job on Mbeki’s critics.”
Xolela Mangcu in Business Day said: ”I bought the book thinking I would discover something about the political and intellectual influences of Mbeki’s upbringing. Instead I am faced with a regurgitation of the same old hackneyed historical facts … ”
Last month author Rian Malan said Roberts had written ”a load of impenetrable academic hooey”.
In January, the Presidency described a claim by the Democratic Alliance (DA) that it had sponsored Roberts to write a book about Mbeki as an attempt to tarnish the integrity of the presidency.
The DA said documents lodged with the Cape High Court, as part of Roberts’ defamation case against Johncom Media, confirmed the presidency had in fact commissioned such a sponsorship for Roberts to write a book about Mbeki.
Presidential spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga said the Minister in the Presidency Dr Essop Pahad ”in his personal capacity, agreed to assist in facilitating the financing of such a book.
”It is in this context that he approached Dr Bosman at Absa.”
Since Pahad made the approach in his personal capacity, the presidency was not involved in the matter at all, Ratshitanga said. – Sapa