President Thabo Mbeki has exposed a bizarre conspiracy to weaken the ANC by pretending it is divided.

Mbeki stumbled on the plot while reading the Financial Mail, which reported that the ANC was divided between factions supporting Deputy President Jacob Zuma and those supporting prosecutions boss Bulelani Ngcuka.

While most right-thinking citizens could instantly tell that there was no such rivalry between the two good friends, Mbeki was the only one to see the conspiracy behind the report.

It was but one of many efforts to weaken the ANC, he revealed.

Another devilishly sophisticated plot involved persuading the South African Communist Party to challenge the ANC in "the frantic search for enemies of the ANC".

Mbeki immediately alerted the nation to the plot in his online column last week, writing: "Many of those who are convinced that the ANC must be weakened and defeated are convinced that, individually and collectively, the opposition parties do not have the strength and capacity to achieve this goal. They are therefore permanently on the look-out for the enemies of our movement that would have the possibility to accomplish this objective."

Like using dead babies

To make his point, Mbeki dwelled at length on how US senators had been fooled by a public relations company into believing that Iraqi babies had been thrown out of incubators to win public sympathy for declaring war.

At the centre of this plot was one "Nayirah", who pretended to have personally witnessed these events. It turned out that she "was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US". But by then the propaganda had worked its magic.

The President, who successfully infiltrated a recent neo-liberal planning session code-named the "G8", warned ominously: "The desperation behind the search for the enemies of the ANC means that they must be found, and where they do not exist, a Nayirah must be rehearsed to tell a graphic story that the enemies of the ANC exist and are alive and well."

Enemies and friends

The President went further into the devious minds of the enemy: "Because the aim is not merely to make one spectacular discovery or another, those engaged in the search for enemies of the ANC will, of course, work to encourage and support such enemies of the ANC as they may find, even on the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Read it again slowly and remember: Your friend's enemy might be your enemy's friend. Don't be friendly to your enemy's enemies. Or friends. Be vigilant.

Author linked to plot

Mbeki for the first time revealed how author Alan Paton had been involved in the conspiracy, cunningly using Pan-Africanism to hide his racial identity.

"It was on this basis that Alan Paton's Liberal Party supported the PAC, setting the stage for today's 'liberals' to continue to search for enemies of the ANC, whom they will encourage and support, even if they are dressed in 'left' clothes."

Hogarth would advise journalists to avoid this trap by asking sources wearing left clothes to undress and recite the Freedom Charter - though this would not prevent manipulation by Marthinus van Schalkwyk.

Unions also duped

In October 2002, Mbeki revealed that Cosatu, which had embarked on a strike against privatisation, was serving a hidden master. "The question cannot be avoided for too long - whose interests do they serve?" Now we know. The communists are manipulated by liberals!

With acknowledgements to Hogarth and the Sunday Times.