South Africa's Mbeki Resigns from Office

Date: Sunday, September 21, 2008
By: Clare Nullis, Associated Press



CAPE TOWN, South Africa - South African President Thabo Mbeki told the nation Sunday that he had resigned, having lost a power struggle to a rival tainted by allegations of corruption but poised now to lead the country.

In a somber but dignified speech focusing on the successes and shortcomings of his nine-year presidency, Mbeki said he had submitted a letter to the speaker of Parliament "to tender my resignation from the high position of President of the Republic of South Africa."

He said he would stand down at a date to be determined by Parliament, which will convene in the coming days to select an interim president to serve until next year's elections.

National Assembly speaker Baleka Mbete, who is also chairwoman of the African National Congress, is widely tipped to become the interim head of state, paving the way for Mbeki's nemesis, Jacob Zuma, to take over after the elections.

The ANC has a huge majority and is expected to romp to victory in the polls despite its upheavals.
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"I am convinced that the incoming administration will better the work done during the past 14-and-half years so that poverty, underdevelopment, unemployment, illiteracy, challenges of health, crime and corruption will cease to define the lives of many of our people," Mbeki said.

Mbeki, 66, lost the final battle in the long struggle against ANC President Zuma, his former deputy, on Saturday. Mbeki was pressured to quit after a judge threw out a corruption case against Zuma earlier this month on a legal technicality and implied that Mbeki's administration had put political pressure on prosecutors.

In his television address, Mbeki said "categorically" that he had never interfered in the work of prosecutors. He said that included "the painful matter" of the Zuma case. Zuma has been under a cloud for the past eight years from allegations relating to a big arms deal.

A senior ANC official, Matthews Phosa, said the party had asked the Cabinet to remain on the job.

"We want the Cabinet to stay," Phosa said. "We want stability and we want them to stay ... but we cannot enforce things upon them," he said on South African television.

Early indications were that most Cabinet ministers had agreed to stay, including Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, who is important to investor confidence in South Africa.

Phosa also said the party wanted Mbeki to continue as mediator in Zimbabwe, where he recently persuaded President Robert Mugabe to share power with the opposition.

Although increasingly isolated at home in recent months, Mbeki persisted in his statesmanship abroad. In his speech he reeled off a list of countries that have benefited from South African mediation and quiet diplomacy: Congo, Burundi, Ivory Coast, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

"These African patriots know as I do that Africa and Africans will not and must not be the wretched of the earth in perpetuity," Mbeki said.

Despite the humiliation inflicted on him by the party to which he has belonged for the past 52 years -- and despite his own reputation for dealing ruthlessly with opponents -- Mbeki was graceful in defeat. He did not fill his speech with recriminations, as some had feared.

He thanked South Africans for letting him serve them -- for five years as deputy president and nine years as president.

He likened public office to a marathon of long roads, steep hills, loneliness and uncertain rewards at the end and urged South Africans to cherish the freedoms gained by many years of anti-apartheid struggle.

"We should never be despondent if the weather is bad, nor should we turn triumphant because the sun shines," he said.

He traced the achievements of his office, including transforming the economy "resulting in the longest period of sustained economic growth in the history of our country," spurring social progress and winning the right to host the 2010 World Cup.

"Despite the economic advances we have made, I would be first to say that ... the fruits of these positive results are still not fully and equally shared among our people, hence abject poverty coexisting side by side with extraordinary opulence."

He said much more needed to be done to combat the "twin challenges of crime and corruption."

Mbeki had been on the losing end of a power-struggle to Zuma for months. He lost his bid for a third term as ANC president to Zuma at the party congress last December and the knives had been out for him ever since.

Mbeki fired Zuma as national deputy president in 2005, after Zuma's financial adviser Schabir Shaik was convicted of trying to solicit a bribe to deflect investigations into the arms deal.

Initial charges against Zuma were withdrawn, but the chief prosecutor said last December that he had enough evidence to bring new ones. That was within days of Zuma being elected ANC chief. Judge Chris Nicholson threw out the new charges last week on a technicality and implied they were the result of political interference.

But he made no pronouncement on Zuma's guilt or innocence.

Nicholson's verdict gave Mbeki opponents the ammunition they needed.

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said even opposition parties were stunned at the suddenness of Mbeki's ouster.

"The vicious way in which Mbeki was forced out by his enemies has shocked the nation," she said.

Zille said Mbeki leaves a "checkered legacy" because of his refusal to accept the causes and seriousness of the AIDS epidemic, which now kills more than 900 South Africans per day, and his refusal to criticize Mugage.

"His denialism of HIV/Aids and crime cost thousands of lives; he undermined his own vision of an African renaissance by siding with despots on the continent," Zille said. "He has left South Africa more divided than when he assumed office."

I've been thinking about this all day ....

Does anybody know what's really happening here?? What the real story is??

quote:

Originally posted by EbonyRose:
I've been thinking about this all day ....

Does anybody know what's really happening here?? What the real story is??

South Africa: Whose Liberation Was It?

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

ZumaThabo Mbeki, under whose leadership South Africa set about to
create a class of Black millionaires, is out as the ruling African
National Congress leader. It's now time to get on with the
revolution, left too long unfinished. We shall see if more militant
actors "have the courage and ideas to create real change at the
bottom."

"The revolution was only partially completed."

South Africa seems finally willing to seriously assess the fruits of
its victory against apartheid, achieved in 1994 with the assumption
of power by Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress, the
ANC. The system of legalized white supremacy seemed to go out with a
whimper, rather than the apocalyptic finale that so many had feared.
But that was because the revolution was only partially completed. It
brought social, political and economic mobility to a small sliver of
the Black population - especially the politically well-connected -
but did not alter the fundamental relationships between the rich and
the poor Black majority; between the multinational firms that
dominate South African economic life and the continent's most
organized industrial Black working class. And it did not meaningfully
address the grotesquely disproportionate white ownership of land.

These questions of social democracy, that go much deeper than
one-man, one-vote, were put off indefinitely in the interest of
"stability" - of avoiding white and capital flight. As a result, the
dreams of the masses of South Africans were deferred, so as not to
create white panic.

Rather than embark on a thoroughgoing transformation of South African
society, the ruling factions in the African National Congress under
Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Nelson Mandela as president, decided they
would create a class of Black millionaires. The focus of their very
narrow, Black capitalist project seemed to favor integration of
Johannesburg's rich, formerly all-white neighborhoods rather than
rapidly improving the quality of life in sprawling "townships" like
Soweto, where the people live. It was a picture of new Black luxury
that Ebony and Black Enterprise magazines would certainly appreciate,
but in no way resembled the "free" and truly equal South African
society for which so many had sacrificed and died.

"The ruling factions in the African National Congress under Thabo
Mbeki decided they would create a class of Black millionaires."

The "grand alliance" that brought down white minority rule was based
on the ANC, the South African Communist Party, and the Congress of
South African Trade Unions, COSATU. In the interest of unity, the
Communists and COSATU long avoided an outright break with Thabo
Mbeki's leading faction in the ANC, which too often seemed to be the
guardian of corporate South Africa and the new, Black corporate class.

I will never forget the spectacle of COSATU's leader, addressing a
meeting of Black American labor leaders, the Coalition of Black Trade
Unionists, in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2006. He quite literally begged
for assistance from the African American trade unionists - who were
barely able to keep their own heads above water after so many defeats
at the hands of U.S. corporations. The South African union leader
beseeched U.S. Blacks to buy South African textiles, which had been
decimated by Chinese competition. Amazing, I thought! COSATU's
"allies" in the ANC hold state power, yet he appeals to marginalized
Black American workers for help. What Black South Africans need,
clearly, is a kind of regime change - to get on with the revolution.

Now Thabo Mbeki has been deposed by the ANC, in favor a former ally
of his named Jacob Zuma. COSATU, the Communists and the ANC youth
wing succeeded in forcing a change at the top. Now let us see if they
have the courage and ideas to create real change at the bottom, to
truly empower the South African majority.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
------------------------------------------------

The Fall of Thabo Mbeki and the Future of South Africa
The African World
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor

I had almost literally just finished reading William Gumede’s
acclaimed biography of South African President Thabo Mbeki, Thabo
Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC: Second Edition (New
York: Zed Press, 2007), when it was announced that President Mbeki
was being sacked by the leadership of the African National Congress.
To say that I was stunned would be no overstatement. Knowing a little
about the South African political situation, I was aware that an
individual - including the president of the country - could be
recalled by their party, but it was more the fact that the ANC
actually recalled President Mbeki that was startling.

Despite the fact of this dramatic action, the coverage has been
largely uninformative. With the notable exception of the new South
African journal Amandla (www.amandla.org.za) there has been little
analysis of what actually took place. In that light I would strongly
recommend that you, the reader, take a look at the analysis presented
by Amandla.

As noted by Amandla, the key observation to make about the removal of
President Mbeki is that it does not reflect a difference around
policy within the leadership ranks of the African National Congress.
There have certainly been very questionable actions taken by
President Mbeki since his days as Deputy President and later
President of the Republic of South Africa. He has been the chief
architect of the neo-liberal economic policies (privatization,
deregulation, casualization, pro-free trade) that the ANC adopted
after jettisoning its more progressive 1994 platform for
reconstruction and redistribution of wealth. Despite very heavy
opposition from progressive social movements in South Africa,
President Mbeki was not removed.

President Mbeki was also not known to be a great leader in the fight
around HIV/AIDS. Slow to respond to the depth of the crisis, he spent
an inordinate amount of time attempting to justify overwhelmingly
rejected positions on the origin of HIV/AIDS, the connection between
each, and the steps necessary to address the pandemic. The situation
became so tense that former President Nelson Mandela had to speak out
publicly against the policies of his successor, a step that he had
been loath to undertake. Despite domestic and global condemnation of
his policies towards this pandemic, President Mbeki was not removed.

What appears to have tipped the scale represented more of a
reflection of a combination of an internal power struggle along with
the consequences of arrogance from Mbeki’s camp. The coup de grace
reportedly was the conclusion arrived at by many ANC leaders that
there may have been an attempt by President Mbeki (or those around
him) to influence a case against his former ally, Jacob Zuma. Zuma,
accused, though acquitted, of corruption charges. It became a
lightening rod for many opponents of policies of President Mbeki
after he was unceremoniously fired from government by Mbeki. Though
there is little evidence that Zuma represents much different from
Mbeki (at the level of policy), he came to symbolize the demands and
concerns of a section of the ANC that was dissatisfied with the lack
of attention that the Mbeki administration was giving towards issues
affecting the mass of poor South Africans. President Mbeki adamantly
denies that he or anyone in his
administration did anything improper in this case.

Thus, the resignation of Mbeki is a reflection of the power struggle
within the ANC, a struggle that is probably far from over and could
quite conceivably result in a split within the party. That the
struggle was not over the substance of President Mbeki’s rule
rather than the particular actions that he allegedly took makes this
struggle both cloudy and very dangerous. As is the case when the
issues of principle are not at the fore, a struggle can devolve into
a factional exchange that is inflammatory beyond the issues that are
at stake.

Jacob Zuma - the person - may be a stand-in for issues that many
South Africans believe were ignored in much of the post-1994 era.
Yet, the haze that surrounds him, in part due to the seriousness of
the corruption charges as well as the rape trial for which he was
acquitted (but during which time he was not at the vanguard in the
struggle against male supremacy to say the least) raises serious
questions as to what direction he, as the presumed next South African
President, will pursue. That he is NOT Mbeki does not, itself,
represent a political program, but rather represents only symbolism.

Tensions have been brewing for years within the tripartite alliance
of the ANC, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South
African Communist Party, comrades from the anti-apartheid struggle.
The differences, which also exist outside the alliance and include
independent social movements, have reflected contrasting views of
what it means to complete the anti-apartheid struggle and the period
that is referred to in South Africa as the “national democratic
revolution.” It may be the case that President Mbeki’s success at
achieving leadership of the ANC and later South Africa overreached
itself, and came at the price of not only his own administration, but
the unity of the ANC.

Our hope should be that there emerges clarity on different directions
for the future of South Africa and their respective implications.
That is a debate that has been taking place in South Africa, but
often behind the curtain. Rather than a focus on the merits or
demerits of respective personalities, the issues at stake for South
Africa have implications for much of the global South which is facing
the question as to whether there are alternatives to neo-liberal
economic policies, alternatives that favor the dispossessed and
impoverished.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is the
Executive Editor of BlackCommentator.com, a Senior Scholar with the
Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of
TransAfrica Forum and co-author of the book, Solidarity Divided: The
Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice
(University of California Press), which examines the crisis of
organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.