Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2006-08-07 Reporter: Linda Ensor Reporter:

Mbeki Needs to Confront Zuma’s Bid for Power ­ Leon

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2006-08-07

Reporter

Linda Ensor

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za

 

CAPE TOWN ­ President Thabo Mbeki needed to confront the presidential bid by African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma by announcing and throwing his weight behind his chosen successor, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday.

Leon said Mbeki’s delay in supporting a successor was demoralising his supporters, emboldening Zuma and his admirers, and distracting the country from pressing problems. He needed to assert his leadership, Leon said.

In what could be a first sign of his publicly tackling the issue, Mbeki admitted this week that the Zuma presidential bid had plunged the ANC into an unprecedented crisis of infighting, which was distracting government from its commitment to service delivery.

Zuma did not hesitate to take direct aim at Mbeki, trying to embroil him in his corruption trial by suggesting the president was party to vital information about the arms deal and should be called as a witness, Leon said.

In building his case that there was a political conspiracy against him, Zuma had also accused the state of refusing to grant him state funding for his criminal trial.

However, this proved groundless as it emerged in a newspaper report yesterday that the state had agreed to pay costs but Zuma had failed to provide the state with information about his new advocates in time.

Leon said in his weekly online newsletter SA Today that Mbeki had “unwittingly set a time-bomb ticking around Zuma because he resolutely refuses to face the burning issue of the hour: who, indeed, is to succeed Mbeki as president? Mbeki refuses to be drawn on the subject consuming the country. The president seems paralysed by inaction ­ and the paralysis is infecting the country.

“Arrested by the Zuma bid he refuses to confront directly, Mbeki is swiftly becoming a lame-duck president ­ incapable of moving forward firmly on any issue, whether it be crime or joblessness or HIV/AIDS or the worsening catastrophe in Zimbabwe.”

Leon said that to see off the Zuma challenge, Mbeki needed to acknowledge it and make clear the “questionable values” Zuma’s candidacy represented. Mbeki also needed to do “something dramatic” if he was to save his presidency, “to capture the popular imagination and rally its energies”.

“It is time the president stood up to Zuma’s challenge, and committed his government to accountability and action. What is needed is bold action around the issues debilitating the country, and an admission that the debate about the presidential succession is a normal aspect of political discourse.”

Notwithstanding his appreciation of the openness and accessibility of Zuma’s personality compared to Mbeki’s remoteness, Leon said he did not support Zuma’s bid.

“I believe a Zuma presidency would march SA backwards into a racially polarised past, undoing much achieved to date in building a stable and inclusive democracy.

“It seems unconscionable that a man with so dubious a record as Zuma’s should have both government rattled and the nation entralled. The explanation has as much to do with the weakness in Mbeki’s presidency as the boldness of Zuma’s challenge.”

With acknowledgements to Linda Ensor and Business Day.