African National Cngress veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela held meetings with both the party’s deputy president Jacob Zuma and its president Thabo Mbeki on Friday afternoon.
Details of the meetings were not immediately available but sources close to both men confirmed that Madikizela-Mandela met Zuma at his Forest Town home in Johannesburg, before going to the ANC headquarters at Luthuli House to meet Mbeki.
”They have met but I cannot tell you more,” said a Zuma aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A source close to Madikizela-Mandela said that shortly after 4pm she arrived at Luthuli House to see Mbeki.
Madikizela-Mandela has suggested Mbeki and Zuma retain their current party positions for the next five years, but that Zuma assume the country’s presidency in 2009 — in a bid to broker a truce between the two men before the start of the ANC’s 52nd national congress in Polokwane next week.
Madikizela-Mandela met ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe on Wednesday. That meeting was described as ”positive”, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reported.
Madikizela-Mandela and Motlanthe would not talk to the media because of the ”sensitive” nature of the issue, SABC said.
Earlier in the week, in a letter to Motlanthe, Madikizela-Mandela said she believed there had been a near-total breakdown in the historical discipline and focus of the movement. ”There has been an unprecedented level of self-indulgence in out-of-turn public utterances, attack and counterattack and the apparent normalisation of un-comradely behaviour and rhetoric at levels and intensity not before seen in the long history of our movement,” she said. – Sapa