The elusive president

Where is Thabo Mbeki? This is the question many ANC members have been asking since he failed to attend the important first meeting of the party’s new national executive committee (NEC), as well as the party’s birthday celebrations in Atteridgeville last weekend.

Speculation abounds. Despite secretary general Gwede Mantashe’s insistence that no sleep is being lost, the rank and file is not impressed. They see Mbeki’s stayaway as a snub.

‘Certainly he could spare a little time? It looks like he is licking his wounds and doesn’t want to face us,” a provincial ANC representative and Zuma supporter said.

In an unusual move Mbeki, who is not in the business of hosting regular press conferences, addressed the media on January 12 for the second time in a month and therefore secured the front page of almost every Sunday newpaper. It wasn’t great news; it concerned the charges against National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi.

Is it coincidence that the press conference was on the very day the newly elected ANC president delivered his all-important January 8 statement? His detractors think not.

‘Mbeki stole Zuma’s limelight and he knows it. He was clever in making sure that whatever came out at Atteridgeville would not be the thing people talked about and that [Mbeki’s media address] would be the main thing on television,” a regional ANC leader in Gauteng said.

Mbeki’s supporters make no secret of the fact that, despite the Selebi issue, Mbeki was in no hurry to get to Atteridgeville.

Said an ANC insider: ‘How could he be seen sharing a stage with someone [Jacob Zuma] who is going to court later this year for the very crimes that he has been fighting against throughout his term in office? What does that say about his stance on corruption? It will be seen as him going soft.”

Suggestions were made that Mbeki does not, or cannot, face NEC meetings where his ideas might be ripped to pieces.

‘How would you feel sitting there knowing that all you have worked for is now being taken apart bit by bit. You still think you were right in what you planned and now it is all changing. It’s painful, the man is only human.”