Mbeki to announce Zuma's fate

2005-06-13 22:17

Johannesburg - President Thabo Mbeki will address a joint sitting of parliament on Tuesday after a week of calls for the dismissal of his deputy, Jacob Zuma, who has been implicated in corruption.

"The president will deal with issues arising from the judgment of Judge Hilary Squires," presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo told Sapa on Monday.

"The paperwork is being finalised for the president to address a joint sitting."

Last week Squires sentenced Durban businessman Schabir Shaik, who acted as financial adviser to Zuma, to 15 years in prison for fraud and corruption.

Squires found the two men had had a "generally corrupt" relationship.

Mbeki is under pressure from some quarters to fire Zuma, who is first in line for the presidency, while many in the African National Congress and its alliance partners are insisting he stay in office.

'Mbeki's greatest test'

Democratic Alliance chief whip Douglas Gibson said this was Mbeki's greatest test as president.

"I cannot believe that the president would not do the right thing, and that would be to fire Deputy President Jacob Zuma," he said.

"The president has always set his face against corruption."

Meanwhile, the ANC had denied there are divisions within the party over the Zuma affair.

"The ANC is not - and cannot be - divided over the outcome of the Schabir Shaik trial," said ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama in a statement on Monday evening.

"The position of the organisation is well-known and broadly supported within the ranks of the ANC and the alliance - that due process must be followed and that the basic tenets of justice respected and upheld."

Reports of conflict in the party had "been fuelled by a handful of voices within the ANC and its alliance partners who willingly propagate such falsehoods in pursuit of narrow individual agendas", he said.

Seven-hour meeting

On Monday Mbeki held a seven-hour meeting with senior ANC officials at ANC headquarters in Johannesburg.

Ngonyama denied that Zuma was the subject of those talks, but it was widely believed that his fate was discussed at the meeting.

Although no reporters saw Zuma being driven away from the building, he was believed to have left the meeting about two hours before the rest of the ANC executives.

Ngonyama earlier said: "It's an ordinary official meeting."

Besides Mbeki and Zuma, those attending were ANC chair Mosiuoa Lekota, party secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe, his deputy, Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele, and treasurer Mendi Msimang.

Ngonyama said he did not have any idea what was on the agenda. That was decided by the leaders themselves.

'Ordinary member'

However, he did say there would be "no discussion on Zuma".

On Sunday, Zuma told a Congress of SA Trade Unions meeting in Durban that he was prepared to become an ordinary member of the ANC.

"I have served as a branch member with no position (as an) ordinary activist, and I have served with some responsibilities in a branch, and I have served at many levels.

"I will always be ready to do that, even today. The day the ANC says do this I will do it," the SABC quoted Zuma as saying.

- SAPA