President Thabo Mbeki has told ANC leaders that his deputy, Jacob Zuma, no longer believes that there is a political conspiracy against him.

Mbeki startled the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal leadership with this disclosure during a seven-hour meeting on Monday. The meeting, set last June, follows a Sunday Times report detailing how some ANC leaders had plotted to shut Mbeki out of the province.

Mbeki made the revelation after Zuma left Monday’s meeting early, citing pressing commitments. Zuma had done no talking.

The conspiracy claim has been key to mobilising the Zuma camp . Zuma and his supporters have for some years claimed that the criminal probes into his actions were meant to stop him from becoming president of the ANC and of South Africa. He even made these claims during court appearances on corruption and rape charges.

According to highly placed ANC officials who were present, Mbeki told the 40 ANC provincial and regional leaders that Zuma had conceded his lack of credence in a conspiracy during a one-on-one meeting they had held at Zuma’s request in September last year.

Several senior members of the ANC leadership in the province from both camps confirmed the contents of Mbeki’s briefing. One told the Sunday Times that Mbeki’s description of his meeting with Zuma left many of those present “embarrassed but enlightened”.

“The President told us that in the National Working Committee where they met, the deputy president [said] he would prefer to confide in the President in private.

“During the course of their discussion it came out clearly between the two of them that some of the things the deputy president had spoken about, when put in the right context, will then mean that there is no conspiracy,” said a Provincial Executive Committee member.

“The President said the deputy president had told him that [the conspiracy allegations] had come about either through misunderstanding, misinformation or being ill-informed.

“They then agreed that the things they had spoken about were very sensitive and that the detail should not be communicated to any other person and should remain between them. This was at the request of the deputy president .”

“People were left dry by what the president said. You could see that they were confused and embarrassed that the things they have been saying for so long [about the conspiracy] were not based on fact but on wrong information *1.”

Zuma’s personal assistant, Nontokozo Luthuli, said he would comment once he returned from Belgium and was briefed by Mbeki on what had been discussed in his absence.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said he had not been briefed on Zuma and Mbeki’s discussion, saying, “I know the opposite. At the ANC, JZ insisted that there is a conspiracy.

“I am very surprised to hear this,” Vavi said.

ANC provincial secretary Senzo Mchunu said the discussion was not over. “We have to continue with this discussion. To report on detail when only the President has commented would be improper,” Mchunu said.

Mchunu said it would be “not only important but necessary” to communicate the outcome of these talks to the ANC membership.

ANC Youth League spokesman Zizi Kodwa said: “It has never been our position that there was a conspiracy.

“Certain issues have happened *2 around JZ, and these feed into the perception that there could be a conspiracy or a campaign against him.”

SA Communist Party chief Blade Nzimande is also abroad and could not be reached. Repeated attempts to secure comment from ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe and ANC head of the presidency Smuts Ngonyama were unsuccessful.

With acknowledgement to Paddy Harper and Sunday Times.