We're not at a tipping point – Zuma
2012-10-30 10:39
Johannesburg - President Jacob Zuma has told foreign correspondents that South Africa is not in a crisis, it was reported on Tuesday.
"We are not at a tipping point," he said, according to a report in The Sowetan.
Zuma was responding to Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe's comments that the Mangaung elective conference in December would be a "tipping point" for the ANC.
"It is wrong to exaggerate, to say because there are strikes, then South Africa is in a big crisis," Zuma said.
"To us [government], South Africa is not in a crisis. Tipping from where to where?"
On Monday, Business Day, quoted from a transcript of a Financial Times interview with Motlanthe, in which he said Mangaung would be a "tipping point" for the ANC.
He reportedly said that as people and various sectors looked to Mangaung on clues about South Africa's political and economic outlook, the African National Congress would be expected to set out clear policies.
Motlanthe said the party had to be the natural political home to the broadest cross-section of South Africans, including the youth.
"They use a simple measurement... Is the ANC capable of going to the moon? And they say: 'Well if it can't deliver textbooks, how can it go to space?'" he said.
The Star reported that Zuma brushed off a question that worrying about Motlanthe, who is widely tipped as a rival for the presidency at Mangaung, was causing him sleepless nights.
"No one gives me sleepless nights," he said. "Kgalema is my comrade."
- SAPA
