Headache: ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe had to change his tune after NEC members rebuked him.
The ANC has dismissed “with the contempt they deserve” reports published in today’s Mail & Guardian, claiming a “rift” between ANC President Jacob Zuma, and its general secretary, Gwede Mantashe.
A statement was released in response to the M&G article in which several sources painted a picture of the ANC president openly at odds with his general secretary.
The statement said: “If one were to analyse South Africa through the fanciful headlines of the Mail & Guardian they would be forgiven for believing the ANC, and indeed South Africa, was a faction ridden amorphous mess in a state of perpetual crisis unable to take any decisions or provide any leadership to this country.”
“This view is devoid of any truth and a continuation of an age old attempt to sow division and distrust within the ANC and its leadership.”
It said that the article was the result of “calculated acts at the whim of an opportunistic and malicious media, ignoring to tell to our people genuine stories of development and progress, instead choosing made up versions and fishing expeditions from faceless and nameless sources”.
The statement called the article “gutter journalism at its best dependent entirely on the unbridled imagination of anonymous bogeymen and overzealous journalists”.
Mantashe told the M&G this week that there appears to be a campaign to drive a wedge between him and the president. “That is what they are praying for,” he said.
M&G a ‘propaganda pamphlet’
The ANC questioned the integrity of the article, stating that the agenda seemed to be “sinister”.
“It only leads one to wonder who these stories are intended to benefit and indeed if the agenda is not the more sinister one of entrenching the racist narrative of a failing state led by incapable, incompetent and self-serving Africans.”
The statement says that the national officials of the ANC function as “a cohesive and principled collective” in the execution of their duties, and the organisation praised them for “remaining united”.
“Desperate attempts by anyone, whether within the structures or not, to divide them are not new. These determined efforts to pit comrade against comrade have dismally failed before and will no doubt fail once again.”
The ANC accused the M&G of abandoning “all principles of [the] South African Press Code and the very ethics of objective journalism to become a propaganda pamphlet masquerading as a newspaper”. – Sapa