Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad goes to great lengths in an attempt to dispel rumours that President Thabo Mbeki will seek a third term (Cape Times, August 19).

When former president Nelson Mandela raised the issue during his 85th birthday celebrations in July, it was not the first time he had questioned Mbeki's unparalleled power.

He did so, quite famously, at the ANC's 50th national conference in Mafikeng in 1997, when then deputy president Mbeki was elected unopposed as leader of the ANC.

"One temptation of a leader elected unopposed is that he may use that powerful position to settle scores with his detractors, marginalise them and, in certain cases, get rid of them and surround himself with yes-men and women," Mandela said on that occasion.`

Pahad says that Madiba addressed the third term issue because questions were being asked by the media about it. But he does not identify the source of these questions. That is because he cannot. It appears that there was not a single journalist who asked Madiba about Mbeki's political ambitions.

The fact is that our former president chose to bring up the subject himself.

Nowhere in Pahad's long article does he ever explicitly state that Mbeki will not seek a third term. He simply refers to the denials of others and to Mbeki's past behaviour. That is hardly a convincing or reassuring argument. So Pahad personalises the issue. He attacks Patrick Laurence and implies that his sources within the ANC on the third term issue do not actually exist.

Anyone who cared to examine Laurence's track record as a journalist - which included a criminal conviction under apartheid's press law for refusing to divulge his sources - would know that Laurence would be absolutely impeccable in sourcing any quotation. Pahad also tries to defend the president's handling of the investigations against Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

Clearly the ANC is trying to prevent a full and honest exposure of the corrupt arms deal. Such behaviour hardly inspires confidence in the ANC's will to resist temptations to abuse its power. What remains of Pahad's argument is a feeble claim that the ruling party has brought a decade of success. While there certainly have been some successes, the ANC has also been responsible for many glaring failures.

This is not just a problem of perceptions, as Pahad would have us believe. In his view, there is a giant conspiracy between the media and the opposition parties. But the facts are clear. Jobs are down, crime is up, growth is slow, and disease is decimating the population. Pahad's flippant attitude towards crime is revealing. Crime is just an ever-handy swart gevaar tactic, he says.

Somehow, the fact that senior members of the government, including a presidential spokesperson, have recently been victims of crime does not strike Pahad as a particularly pressing concern.

If Pahad bothered to visit the victims of violent crime, to feel personally the anguish of their hearts, he might understand what every other South African knows: that crime is among the severest obstacles in the way of our country's success.

Clearly, South Africa needs urgent and fundamental change.

Cabinet's recent announcement that government will start distributing anti-retroviral drugs represents a step in the right direction - if this promise is indeed fulfilled.

But we cannot allow ourselves to forget what has happened over the last several years. Mbeki and senior ANC leaders maintained that HIV did not cause Aids, that anti-retroviral drugs were poisonous, and that anyone who disagreed was either a white racist or a black stooge.

The very real danger is that the ANC will continue using these racial and ideological tactics to deny reality and silence criticism. Pahad does so, for example, in his charge that white fears are at the heart of speculation about Mbeki's political ambitions.

Once again, this is the race card, dealt from the very bottom of the deck. Clearly, the only way forward for South Africa is to support a strong and effective opposition. That is what the Democratic Alliance has promised the voters, and it is what we have delivered.

We also have a Policy Programme for Positive Change that will benefit all the people, starting at the grassroots level. We believe in a real transformation - not one that puts race above all else, but one that puts the welfare of the ordinary person at the top of the national agenda.

That is why the DA supports a Basic Income Grant that will give millions of the poorest South Africans the opportunity to enter the cash economy. That is why a DA-controlled province was the first to provide nevirapine to pregnant mothers with HIV, while six ANC-controlled provinces have failed to do so, even though the drug is available free of charge.

That is why the DA has introduced a plan to put 150 000 police officers on our nation's streets and free South Africans from a fear that is all too real.

In the coming election, the ANC will try to cement its two-thirds majority in parliament and gain control of all nine provinces. But the DA has built formidable strength. We project that our party will make historic gains in every province.

Together with our allies in the Inkatha Freedom Party and the coalition for change, we can roll back the ANC's margin in the national assembly and govern in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

Pahad seems to think that the ANC has the exclusive privilege of finding the right people to stand at the helm in the future, as he puts it. But that privilege - nay, that right - belongs to each and every South African voter. It appears that Pahad and the ANC have forgotten this. It is high time that the voters of South Africa reminded them.

With acknowledgements to Tony Leon and the Cape Times.