In the history of South Africa, September 21, 2008 has been the most shocking day ever since. On this day, as I sat in a couch at home, around 19H00 or so, I switched on SABC 2 Television Channel, only to be confronted by a shocking story of President Thabo Mbeki’s “my fellow South African address of the nation”. This was the day on which our second democratically president got sucked by his political party, through the so called political solutions or political interventions, and the most surprising part of this was that, the same comrades who sucked him, were according to the allegations, influenced by outsiders, who form a minority dominance inside ANC.
Of course one has to acknowledge the fact that the victory of Jacob Zuma’s criminal charges is the one which brought up all the political stir-ups and tensions within the rulling party. An immediate decision was taken by the National Executive Committee of the party that Mbeki must step down and he agreed with them. However, I would like to argue something that to me is of a great concern. After Polokwane victory, Msholozi was a declared the president of the rulling party by majority of votes, then later acquitted of the criminal charges against him after the ruling of Judge Nicholson who made it clear that there were political plots against Msholozi. But let us take it back where this thing of Msholozi being charged came about; isn’t that Judge Hillary Squire made a rulling in 2006 that the relationship between Shabir Schaik and Msholozi was generally corrupt?” That being the case, what then prevents the National Prosecuting Authority to proceed with the legal proceedings against the second accused, who is Zuma in this case?
Given the conviction of Shaik and his involvement with Msholozi who according to Hillary Squire had a generally corrupt relationship, does that click any sense to ANC, because the simple implication is that, Zuma helped Shaik to commit crime, but why then latter the second applicant is implicated to have been politically plotted against and be acquitted without attending the court to prove his innocence? ANCYL came into the picture, imposing sanctions against the mother-body to say, “Should Mbeki not be dismissed, I am going to mobilize the youth”, given this statement, one can make a serious implication that the decision to fire Mbeki was not necessarily based on his political party having had lost confidence in him, instead it was based on serving the interests of certain individuals. Because if that statement can be interrogated further, it simply means that if you are not Youth Leagues’ favorite within the ANC, then there is a possibility of you being quickly nailed out. It is obvious that the youth league is simply imposing decisions against the mother body, which if not complied with, the country will be declared ungovernable, due to failure to meet the demands of the youth league.
Now if Zuma was serious about his sense of leadership, why then didn’t he reprimand that statement because it is a serious threat to the country and its people? In fact one cannot be coded out of the context (as this statement is likely to be used by ANC imperialists) to say that, there are serious divisions within the party, because we have a camp that belongs to Mbeki, a camp that belongs to Zuma and the other camp that is composed of non-governable individuals, who are not at any given time, willing to debate policy issues, but are there to dictate conditions that only favours them alone.
Another issue which one cannot just let it pass-by, is the issue of Zuma not being appointed as the President since his victory, because the assumption of the mass community at the moment is that, once an individual gets appointed as the president of the political party, ANC so to be specific, that particular individual automatically becomes the head of the state, then why was that not a similar case with Msholozi? This to me indeed shows that there is great shift of the responsibility by him, in fact a runaway act from responsibility on his side, let alone the resignation of the Cabinet Members. It made newspaper headlines that certain ministers have resigned in sympathy with Mbeki because he is the one who appointed them, although there was a counterstatement on Msholozi’s camp, with the General Secretary coming into the picture to allude that such ministers will not be resigning, but we have seen them leaving the office. Does that sentiment imply that there is smoothness of communication within the ANC? I doubt it there is any. What about unity? Does that means that ANC is going anywhere given the current crisis within it?
