Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi was deeply angered by an icy letter from President Thabo Mbeki this week informing him of his removal from the national Cabinet and wishing him ”the best in your future endeavours”. The letter had left the Inkatha leadership no option but to stonewall Mbeki’s offer of deputy ministerial post to two lower-level Inkatha members.

”The government wants to concentrate on what it does best and leave the rest to the experts — while ensuring the experts don’t work against the interests of the people we’re trying to help.” In the last of the series, Drew Forrest puts 10 Really Diabolical Posers (RDPs) to ANC deputy secretary general Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele

”Patricia [de Lille] is a waffler, and not an organisational person. She’s a creation of the media, because she’s done a good job for white liberals. They’ve made her famous because of her attacks on the ANC. She’s done nothing for people on the ground.” Notorious settler Drew Forrest fires 10 bullets at Pan Africanist Congress deputy president Themba Godi.

”Affirmative action is creating a new discrimination, an angry new generation of young whites. Research indicates that if the employment equity quotas were enforced with 1,9% economic growth, 600 000 whites would have to be fired.” Drew Forrest hands out this week’s tien van die beste to Freedom
Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder.

”Whites who really accept the new South Africa are with the NNP. An ironic development after 1994 is that the NNP has become the real rainbow party, while the party of liberalism has taken over the role of conservative complainers.” New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk fields 10 pre-election curve-balls.

”Our 400-odd large companies can’t absorb the millions of black South Africans outside the economic mainstream. You can say we now have black billionaires like Tokyo Sexwale, but they’re not creating jobs.” United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa fields this week’s 10 tough ones from Drew Forrest.

”Black youth is suffering tremendously because of the ANC government’s so-called policy of black economic empowerment, which — like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither an empire, holy nor Roman — does not empower blacks.” In the first of a series of encounters with party leaders, Drew Forrest puts 10 tricky questions to Tony Leon.