Mbeki turns heat on IFP/DA
2004-04-02 17:55
Donwald Pressly
Cape Town - President Thabo Mbeki on Friday urged South Africans to ensure they did nothing in the election period that would provide examples that Afro-pessimists could use to substantiate "their racist prejudices against everything African".
At the same time, he questioned the motives of Inkatha Freedom Party supporters who, he believed, had tried to disrupt several ruling African National Congress meetings in KwaZulu-Natal as well as a recent imbizo meeting - a meeting of the president with "the people".
Mbeki said: "The reality is that in this province, KwaZulu-Natal, our movement has experienced the greatest incidence of violence and intimidation against its members and supporters.
"This has included the assassination of our members and instances of determined attempts to disrupt our public meetings and campaigns."
'Men carried traditional weapons at imbizo'
Referring to the IFP/Democratic Alliance partnership - led by Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi and the DA's Tony Leon - he said: "We hope these ideological allies of long standing, the IFP and the DA, which have not combined in a formal united front, will now do everything they can to discourage all their shared supporters from trying to secure an electoral victory for their coalition through the use of violence and intimidation."
Referring to the recent imbizo at Msinga, he said: "Men suddenly appeared at the venue of our imbizo carrying "traditional weapons".
"These had absolutely no place in a peaceful process of interaction between the people and the president of the republic."
"Understanding this, none of the people who came to the imbizo carried weapons of any kind.
"The conclusion was inevitable and correct that the armed minority group that appeared at Tugela Ferry came to terrorise the people to limit their interaction with the president of the republic."
There had been at least two other incidents of intimidation - at Pietermaritzburg and Ulundi - where ANC members had been intimidated by IFP supporters, he reported.
Speaking in his ANC Today newsletter on the party's website, Mbeki warned: "There are some in our country and other parts of the world who still refuse to accept that, as Africans, we can build a successful, stable and peaceful nonracial, nonsexist and prosperous democracy."
Negative stereotypes
"These are continuously hard at work to project as negative an image of our country as they can.
"The victory they seek is the entrenchment of the notion globally that ours is nothing more than yet another example of their negative stereotype of an African country."
"We also know that these negative elements would work to use this "proof" (election violence) to demoralise our people, the rest of our continent and peoples throughout the world who are determined to work with us to achieve the goal of a better life for all throughout Africa and the rest of the developing world.
- I-Net Bridge (News24)