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Mbeki denies undermining Zuma
30/11/2007 20:23 - (SA)
Johannesburg - President Thabo Mbeki rejected on Friday suggestions that he had tried to undermine Jacob Zuma, the ANC deputy leader who leads him in the race to head the ruling party.
The ANC is to choose its leader at a conference in December. If Zuma wins, he is likely to become South Africa's next president in 2009.
Mbeki denied that he had been trying to undermine Zuma in comments to a caucus meeting of ANC members of parliament.
The Sunday Independent quoted Mbeki as telling the lawmakers that they should not let the party be led by "rapists", "criminals" and "counter-revolutionaries and mercenaries", and said lawmakers had taken this as an attack on Zuma.
Mbeki did not deny making the comments. But he said he had not denounced Zuma, and that his comments, reportedly leaked by an anonymous "Zuma sympathiser", had been misconstrued.
In his weekly Letter from the President, posted on the ANC's website, he wrote: "The forthcoming National Conference of the ANC and the attendant so-called leadership succession battle have produced a very interesting and very perverse outcome. This outcome is of central importance with regard to the very character of our movement.
Dramatic comeback
"The perverse outcome to which I refer consists in the interpretation of any reassertion of the most fundamental values, policies and programmes of the ANC as amounting to an attempt to thwart the presidential ambitions of our Deputy President, Jacob Zuma."
Zuma was South Africa's deputy president for six years before Mbeki sacked him in 2005 after he was implicated in a graft trial. He was acquitted of rape charges in a separate case.
Zuma has made a dramatic comeback, maintaining wide support from the powerful trade unions, who accuse Mbeki of promoting big business and neglecting the poor. But the graft case, involving kickbacks for an arms deal, still hangs over him.
The two men's rivalry has plunged the ANC into one of the worst crises in its history, and overshadowed issues such as Aids, poverty, and one of the world's highest crime rates.
Mbeki said on Tuesday he was still in the race after Zuma gathered nominations from key groups affiliated to the ANC, and across ANC provincial branches.
Gaining power
Analysts say Mbeki, who is not allowed to run again for state president, wants to retain his ANC leadership to influence politics and help pick the next president.
Mbeki criticised people who he said were only interested in using the ANC to gain power, writing:
"Our movement will strive constantly to combat and rid itself of opportunist elements who have wormed themselves into its ranks, seeking to use the ANC as a step-ladder to state power, with the intention to use this power for self-enrichment. No genuine member of the ANC is or can be opposed to this."
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