African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma hit back at former defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota on Sunday, describing him and his supporters as ”snakes” who had long been plotting against the ruling party.
Speaking before thousands of ANC supporters in Soweto, Zuma said those leaving the ruling party to join the breakaway party were ”political hypocrites”.
”They brought their ideas to the policy conference. They failed. They thought they could bring those ideas through the back door in Polokwane. They also failed. We know that they started talking about this thing of the new party just after they lost in Polokwane,” he said.
Zuma’s stinging attack comes a day after Lekota and former Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa hosted an historic convention in Sandton, Johannesburg, attended by 6 000 delegates.
The convention, which was also attended by different political parties, resolved to form a new political formation to contest next year’s general elections.
The new party poses the first major political threat to the ANC since the dawn of democracy in 1994.
Zuma’s Soweto rally forms part of the ANC’s strategy to mobilise its members against the new party. Zuma and members of the party’s powerful national executive committee have been criss-crossing the country in an effort to prevent the new party from eroding its support base.
The Soweto rally was attended mainly by ANC members, who were bussed in from different parts of Gauteng. About 30 buses were hired by the ANC.
Speaking to supporters, mainly in isiZulu, Zuma mocked the Shikota convention organisers for holding their event in Sandton, saying this showed that they represented the rich, while he claimed his party remained a movement of the poor.
”We should prove to them that we can win by a [more] overwhelming majority than the one we achieved in 2004. We have always been ready to govern and we are ready to govern now. There is no organisation that can do what the ANC has done,” he said.
He said the ANC will also fight any attempt by Lekota and his supporters to use a name similar to that of the ANC.
”Don’t mislead people by using a name similar to the ANC,” he said.
On Friday, the ANC brought an urgent application in the Pretoria High Court to prevent Lakota and his supporters from naming their party the SANC — whether in the form of the South Africa National Congress and/or the South African National Convention. The matter was postponed to Thursday.
Zuma told the crowd that Lekota and his supporters were hypocritical because they claim to promote the rule of law while they still accuse him of being a rapist when he had been acquitted of rape.
”They talk about the rule of law, saying that people should not elect criminals. But why do they say this when the judge found that I was not guilty. Where is fairness when you keep on insisting that one is a rapist while they have been acquitted by the court? That cannot be right,” he said to a loud applause.
Zuma said Lekota was also wrong to claim that the ANC had deviated from the Freedom Charter.
He told supporters that Lekota’s party was associating with the Democratic Alliance, which he said was against the Freedom Charter. ”They claim to be leaving the ANC on the basis that we are no longer following the Freedom Charter. But [Helen] Zille never agreed with the Freedom Charter. They fought with the DA in the past, but now they agree with Zille,” he said.
He indicated that his party’s key priorities after the 2009 elections will be education, crime, heath and rural development. He said the ANC will force all children to attend school, and will review laws that he said were giving criminals too many rights.