Johnathan Paoli
President Cyril Ramaphosa has condemned the recent launch of former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party and other “splinter groups” and what he said to be the forces behind them intent on disrupting the ruling party.
Ramaphosa was speaking at the January 8 anniversary rally in Mbombela, Mpumalanga on Saturday and said he was aware of social and political forces that were working hard to undermine the gains of freedom made over the last three decades.
“They want to stop the march towards a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous country that truly belongs to all,” Ramaphosa said.
Ramaphosa maintained that the shared goal of these forces were to deprive the ruling party of the ability to use state power to enact change.
“The ANC-led Alliance and the broad progressive movement remains the only reliable force that is capable, and that has a tradition, of uniting and working with various social forces to advance the national democratic agenda,” the president said.
The president pointed at what he called ‘anti-transformation forces’ and said they were converging into pacts, while at the same time seeking to fragment the forces for change through splinter groups and small parties that will contest the ruling party.
In addition, Ramaphosa said that another ‘anti-transformation’ tactic utilitsed was to ensure that the ANC was locked up in internal struggles that would weaken the party and actively encourage rebel break away groups that undermine the ANC’s support base.
“Often these start as factional conflicts within the ANC, but when the movement pushes ahead with its renewal, they mutate into opposition parties that are as opposed to the ANC as the right-wing opponents of transformation,” Ramaphosa said.
Ramaphosa said that despite these parties masquerading as more radical than the ANC, their revolutionary-sounding rhetoric could not hide the reality that they have common cause with the forces opposing transformation.
The president compared oppositional parties uniting to form the Moonshot Pact government to the national and SA Labour parties which were formed after the 1924 elections and which effectively abolished the qualified franchise for Africans in the Cape province as well as introducing native reserves, and prohibiting Black people from acquiring land in urban areas.
“The onslaught against transformation should make us more determined this year to succeed in building a better life for all and to be more deliberate and resolute about the renewal of the ANC, the broad democratic forces and our society,” Ramaphosa said.
While the throngs of ANC supporters who had filled Mbombela Stadium to the brink were singing and carrying a mock coffin of MK, Zuma was making his intentions to run for president of South Africa known in Ndwedwe, northern KwaZulu-Natal.
Zuma made the announcement while addressing a prayer service at the Nazareth Baptist Church, better known as the Shembe church, in Ndwedwe on Saturday afternoon.
“I was quickly removed before the end of my term as president because I was trying to change people’s lives but their behaviour has made me want to come back. I want to return to change our situation,” Zuma said.
Zuma urged church members to pray for him ahead of the general elections and urged the church members present to vote for a government led by people familiar to them.
ANC Deputy President, Paul Mashatile had earlier made scathing remarks wherein he criticised Zuma and the MK Party by saying that party members mistakenly supported people who turned out to be “wolves.”
Mashatile added that they will flash the wolves out and he said “good riddance” to those who are leaving the ANC.
INSIDE POLITICS
