Letters

Peter Bruce's eulogy of Thabo Mbeki, The Thick End Of The Wedge (December 14), is overly kind and devoid of reality.

Mbeki did not liberate SA ­ if anything, Mbeki was a second-rate fascist, who polarised politics along black-white lines and marginalised the very constituency that has gone against him.

History will judge the Mbeki era principally as follows: he burdened the economy and constrained the growth rate to a paltry 5%.

He presided over a foreign policy that was naive and, in the case of Zimbabwe, deceitful.

He created a cadre of leaders whose only object was self-enrichment; there is not one institution not tainted by corruption or nepotism.

We need a leader *1 to take us out of the postcolonial legacy to a new era of economic liberation.

John Catsicas
Johannesburg 

With acknowledgements to John Catsicas and Business Day.