For Thabo Mbeki, it could have been the day that restored a reputation battered by perverse policies on HIV/Aids and Machiavellian strategies: the signing of a deal he brokered to end Zimbabwe’s political crisis and silence those who scorned his “quiet diplomacy” with Robert Mugabe.
Instead, South Africa’s president will spend this week fighting for his political life as his party debates whether to remove him from office after a damning court ruling that accused Mbeki of apartheid-style tactics in illegally abusing the justice system to try and prevent African National Congress president Jacob Zuma from becoming the country’s next leader.
The agreement in Zimbabwe on Monday is a major triumph for Mbeki who managed to press Mugabe into conceding many of his powers to Morgan Tsvangirai. But that will count for little at home as leaders of the ANC decide Mbeki’s future following Friday’s ruling in which a High Court judge, Chris Nicholson, threw out corruption charges against Zuma and said that the prosecution was the result of “baleful political influence”.
Nicholson said that Mbeki and members of his Cabinet had abused the prosecuting authority in an attempt to remove Zuma from the “titanic political struggle” for control of the ANC. The judge likened Mbeki’s actions to those of apartheid-era governments for inducing two successive heads of the prosecutions authority to commit “a very serious criminal offence” by pursuing a political prosecution.
“In terms of the law, more especially emanating from the Constitution, there is responsibility attributable to the president,” the judge said.
Now Zuma and his supporters are preparing to take revenge on Mbeki. The ANC’s national executive committee and the South African Congress of Trade Unions and Communist party allies are to discuss his future this week. The ANC’s chief whip in Parliament, Nathi Mthethwa, told City Press newspaper that it is not a question of if, but when, the party will move against Mbeki.
“As a leader of the ANC, you cannot be implicated of [sic] plotting the downfall of your comrade and people then pretend as if nothing has happened,” he said.
A senior ANC leader told the Sunday Times that Mbeki had to go. “The most obvious [position] would be to appoint a delegation that will ask him to step down,” he said.
Another ANC official told the paper that Mbeki would “be pushed on to his sword if he can’t fall on his sword”. Mbeki can be removed through a vote of no confidence or by calling an early election. The ANC holds 293 of the 400 seats in Parliament so if the party leadership decided to force the president out it could almost certainly win the necessary majority among ANC MPs with an eye to their future selection as candidates at the next election.
If that happened, the speaker would become acting president until parliament elected a new president, almost certainly Zuma. If an early election is called instead, Mbeki would remain president until the vote within 90 days. – guardian.co.uk