FORMER president Thabo Mbeki has dismissed EFF leader Julius Malema’s claims that he is plotting with former spy boss Arthur Fraser to remove President Cyril Ramaphosa from power.
In a short statement on Thursday, the former statesman said Malema’s claims were intended to deepen divisions within the African National Congress (ANC) and undermine the governing party’s process of renewal.
“[Former] president Mbeki rejects Mr Malema’s scuttlebutt with the contempt it deserves,” said Thabo Mbeki Foundation in a statement.
“He is certain that it originates from the old apartheid intelligence machinery [and] it is intended to deepen divisions within the ANC and to frustrate efforts towards the organisation’s renewal.”
Malema caused a stir on Wednesday when claimed during a media briefing that Fraser was secretly working with Mbeki to remove Ramaphosa from power.
This comes after Fraser opened a police complaint against Ramaphosa, saying he was involved in concealing a crime committed at his Phala Phala farm in Limpopo.
Malema said that Mbeki was ‘secretly’ plotting Ramaphosa’s downfall fall and was also looking at making a comeback to lead the ANC at the party’s elective conference in December.
“RET forces of the ANC have never in jubilation celebrated Fraser, including on the Phala Phala allegations. They have never declared Fraser as a hero and used Phala Phala as a way of decampaigning the president. That is why it was difficult to raise it in the policy conference of the ANC, because it was not their initiative,” claimed Malema.
“They are asking themselves whose agenda Fraser is driving. The answer is Fraser is with [former] president Mbeki in the unseating of President Ramaphosa, because Mbeki says he is still disgruntled for not finishing his term [as president]. Fraser is actually working with Mbeki and not the RET forces.”
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