President Thabo Mbeki and the opposition leader, Helen Zille of the Democratic Alliance, crossed swords on Friday in the internet letters they send each week to their supporters. Both were talking about sacked deputy minister of health Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.
In Mbeki’s 4 000-word effusion, he again charges the errant minister with having not been a team player, and with having misled the public over the government’s HIV/Aids programme.
”I would not make any further comment on this matter,” Mbeki wrote. ”However, some, both within our country and internationally, have raised an ill-founded and ill-intentioned hue and cry about the dismissal of Ms Madlala-Routledge. As part of this, all manner of fabrications have been peddled that relate to a whole variety of issues that bear on the work both of the African National Congress and our government.”
He raises questions about what the ANC itself might do to punish her for her outspokenness. ANC members, he says, have asked why she has suggested that the current leadership of the ANC has divided the party, and ”why she suggests it does not have the courage to stand up for the truth, why she suggests that our leadership has no regard for the values of our movement, and why she suggests that the leader of the ANC is not supported by our country”.
He goes on: ”Undoubtedly the ANC will deal with this matter as prescribed by its constitution, its normal procedures, its conventions and traditions, and our current challenges.”
The president defends himself against charges of having centralised power around himself, and attacks the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ Zwelinzima Vavi for having taken Madlala-Routledge’s side.
He also takes to task the London Independent newspaper for what he calls its inaccurate and ill-judged attack on his government.
Zille in her letter writes that the episode illustrates what kind of party the ANC has become.
She quotes with approval a satirical columnist who said: ”What is the worst offence you can commit in the eyes of the ANC? It can’t be corruption, otherwise the self-confessed Travelgate thieves would have been drummed out of their jobs and Tony Yengeni would not have been carried shoulder-high into jail. It can’t be incompetence either or Manto Tshabalala-Msimang would be heading a queue at the door marked ‘Exit’. Negligence? Nope, or Jackie Selebi and Charles Nqakula would be joining her in the hunt for gainful employment.
”It seems the cardinal sin, and the stone over which Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge tripped, is failing to toe the party line.”
Zille says that in a party like the ANC, where individuals are owned by the group, the group leader lays down the line and everyone else falls in — or runs the risk of being punished, as we have so clearly seen.
”After her sacking, Madlala-Routledge was quoted as pinning her hopes on an ‘open and honest’ leader taking over the ANC,” the DA leader says. ”She clearly still pins her hopes on her belief that the ANC’s problem is merely pilot error, not the design of the aircraft.” — I-Net Bridge