Former ANC President Thabo Mbeki has lambasted the uMkhonto weSizwe Party and his successor Jacob Zuma for saying that he is still an ANC member but campaigning for the newly-formed MK party.
“You cannot say I’m a member of the ANC, but I’m going to campaign against the ANC. You can’t! That’s not an honest position. He’s campaigning against the ANC; he has defined himself. I think what the leadership of the ANC said earlier, that he has defined himself out of the ANC. That is correct. (I) think that is the position he’s taken practically. Jacob Zuma has defined himself out of the ANC so he’s not ANC anymore.”
Speaking to the SABC News, Mbeki also commented on the DA’s letter requesting the United States and other Western countries to observe elections in South Africa.
“People get invited to countries and organizations … get invited to monitor elections, to observe elections, not by political parties. It doesn’t happen anywhere. The last elections that (was) observed in Nigeria – and many people were there, from the United States, Europe, and everywhere – they were all invited via the electoral process. None of the political parties invited those people. In this case, I think the DA is making a statement about itself. That it doesn’t trust our own people. It doesn’t trust our own capacity to handle our own elections. The people they trust is effectively the white world. That’s the statement by the DA itself,”
Mbeki also says he will campaign for the ANC.
“I’m a member of the ANC, and of course, as a member of the ANC, it is part of the obligation on members of the ANC. We have to make our own contribution to the population.”
Mbeki said since 2009 the number of people voting for the ANC had declined up until the 2021 local government elections. He added that the leadership of the ANC is aware of that decline.
