Assumption: 'ANC members and leaders are presumed guilty until they can prove their innocence'

President Thabo Mbeki in 2003 branded critics of the arms deal as racist "fishers of corrupt men" and yesterday he did the same in relation to another multi-billion project, the controversial Gautrain.

A day after the cabinet dismissed allegations of conflict of interest against two of its own in connection with the rapid rail link, Mbeki used his weekly ANC online newsletter to rail against those concerned about possible corruption in the deal.

Mbeki said the ANC's accusers were not about to allow facts to stand in the way "of their determination to project the ANC as being nothing more than a cabal of mercenary politicians, posing as liberation fighters".

This included the media, trade unionists and politicians from across the spectrum, who "came to the common conclusion that the ANC members and leaders concerned must be presumed guilty until they prove conclusively that they are innocent".

The ANC was faced "with a new multi-party offensive", composed of the commercial media, the Democratic Alliance, the SACP and Cosatu, the president wrote.

They had a shared conviction "that the ANC has allowed itself to be transformed into a ravenous monster controlled by individuals dedicated to the pursuit of personal wealth by 'a well connected elite' ".

Mbeki defended Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete, and Education Minsister Naledi Pandor, whose interests in Dyambu Holdings and Black Management Forum Investments (BMFI) came under recent scrutiny.

Both companies are part of a group of 18 black companies that constitute the BEE partner in the Bombela Consortium which won the lucrative Gautrain project.

Mapisa-Nqakula and Mbete were founding members of Dyambu but no longer played a role, and were in fact working to establish a trust that would receive the profits to pursue women empowerment objectives, Mbeki said.

"Over the years the senior women comrades who set up Dyambu have been as much part of our movement's fight against corruption and the abuse of state power as all other leaders of the ANC."

Referring to Pandor, Mbeki said she bought shares in BMFI long before she came to the government and owned a tiny fraction of the issue share capital.

Pandor "would be exceedingly foolish to expect that the dividends that might one day flow from her minute ownership of BMFI could buy her even a month's supply of brown bread". "And she is no fool," Mbeki said.

"How anyone could come to the conclusion that any of the thousands of individual shareholders in these 18 companies could making a killing from the Gautrain contract beats all understanding."

Mbeki repeated this week's cabinet statement that the two cabinet ministers could not have influenced the awarding of the contract, as the process was handled in its entirely |by the Gauteng provincial |government.

"The national government was drawn into this matter simply because it became obvious that the Gauteng provincial government would not have the resources to implement the Gautrain project," he said.

Mbeki repeated his view that black people are stereotyped as "amoral and corrupt".

"Thus some in our country and elsewhere in the world know it as a matter of fact that our government is bound to be amoral and corrupt.

"As a result, it was very easy, successfully, to market all manner of deliberate falsehoods about the ANC and government, counting on the stubborn persistence of an insulting stereotype to give credibility to the most outrageous truths.

"The Gautrain story confirms the hard reality that as long as the racist conviction that Africans are naturally prone to corruption, venality and mismanagement persists, so long must we remain on guard to fight the canards that will be peddled, serving as media headlines with greater frequency than the summer rains," Mbeki said.

With acknowledgement to Angela Quintal and Cape Argus.