'ANC is like PW'

2008-10-12 10:01

Lizel Steenkamp

Cape Town - Jacob Zuma's "new ANC" is using "PW Botha's apartheid techniques", said former minister Mosiuoa Lekota.

"Vlakplaas is rising again," said Lekota on Saturday in Langa in the Western Cape in an attack on the party of which he had been national chairperson until nine months ago.

A crowd of about 3 000 unhappy ANC supporters reacted with shock when Lekota announced that his life was in danger after the press conference on Wednesday in Johannesburg where he announced a "divorce" from the ANC.

Lekota's bodyguard was kidnapped, robbed and threatened on Friday afternoon near Pretoria. "They told him, the party you and Lekota want to start, will happen in heaven. What they were really trying to say, was, 'if you don't do as we say, we will kill you'. That is exactly what PW Botha told me," said Lekota.

Yusuf Abramjee, group head of news and talk programmes at Primedia Broadcasting, also received an anonymous threatening phone call about the press conference that Lekota held at their offices.

Abramjee said a man had told him that the press conference was "a dangerous move". He said he interpreted it as intimidation but not a death threat.

Lekota told the Langa crowd to mobilize for a national convention to decide if there should be a split from the ANC. He said discussions were taking place around the country, within and outside the ANC to see how the 2009 election should be handled.

He said the ANC's national conference in Polokwane was a "place where I was surrounded by rude, drunk and hostile elements." He said the situation only became worse after Polokwane.

He said ANC Youth League president Julius Malema had not been democratically elected, but was appointed leader after "days of drunkenness". "Who is this young man to decide for the whole ANC what should happen and how it should happen?"

- Rapport