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Ruling ANC undermining constitution, Lekota says
The ruling African National Congress is undermining South Africa's constitution and putting its young democracy at risk, according to the leader of a breakaway party from the ANC.
- By Richard Lapper, Financial Times
- Published: 22:59 January 31, 2009
- Image Credit: AP
- Mosiuoa Lekota, leader of the Congress of the People (centre) at the final session of the party's three-day founding conference in Bloemfontein, South Africa, last December.
Johannesburg: The ruling African National Congress is undermining South Africa's constitution and putting its young democracy at risk, according to the leader of a breakaway party from the ANC.
Mosiuoa "Terror" Lekota, the former defence minister who left the ANC last year to form the Congress of the People (Cope), believes that the governing party will - after the forthcoming general election that it is certain to win - use its commanding political influence to save Jacob Zuma, its presidential candidate, from prosecution on corruption charges.
Lekota told journalists that a "political solution" to Zuma's legal problems - such as giving immunity to a serving president - was still on the cards, despite recent ANC assertions to the contrary.
"You have no guarantee that after the elections they will not do that," he said. "And I can tell you Zuma does not want to go to jail and so they will do this thing."
Zuma faces charges of fraud, corruption, racketeering and money laundering, stemming from his involvement in a multi-billion-dollar arms deal dating back to the 1990s. Lekota - whose nickname dates from his prowess as a teenage football striker rather than anything more sinister - argues that moves to protect Zuma would be part of a broader pattern of political interference, which includes the politicisation of the civil service and moves to allow members of the police to join ANC-affiliated trade unions.
"We must make sure that the security forces are neutral and loyal to the constitution, and de-politicise the public services. If we lose on this, South Africa is going to go down the route of Zimbabwe," said Lekota, who was the most senior ANC leader to defect after Thabo Mbeki was sacked as president in September.
The formation of Cope crystallised the greatest schism within the ANC for 50 years and means that the forthcoming general election, due by mid-2009, will be the most competitive since the end of apartheid.
Lekota, who was ANC chairman until 2007, was seen as a close ally of the country's former leader. But in a wide-ranging interview, he criticised both the former president and Zuma, arguing that they shared an authoritarian style that reflected a common experience of exile. Before Zuma's dismissal as vice-president in 2005, the men were closely allied, he said.
"Thabo [Mbeki] and Zuma were tongue and saliva," he said. "Everything they did, they did together. They didn't seem to enjoy debate. I didn't find [their style] appropriate.
"The comrades who were in exile took an almost militaristic approach. Their approach was to want people to be loyal to them all the time. When we criticised certain things, we were seen as almost like challenging their authority."
He defended the Mbeki government's much-criticised policy on HIV/Aids. The former president cast doubt on a connection between the virus and the disease. But Lekota said: "You have to separate what we were doing from what the president was saying.
However, he felt Mbeki's government "soft-pedalled" in its relations with Robert Mugabe.
He traced a rise in corruption back to Mbeki's first term in office in the late 1990s when "we identified a growing tendency towards careerism ... Corruption was creeping in the ranks."
These ills later gathered pace. After Zuma's supporters secured control of the ANC at the end of 2007, "there was just mayhem. They attacked the judiciary and the National Prosecuting Authority ... The Scorpions [the agency investigating organised crime and corruption] were under attack. One had to confront the reality that our democracy as such was in danger".
The current official opposition party is the liberal Democratic Alliance, and few independent analysts think that Cope can score more than 15 per cent of the vote in this election.
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