ANC Veterans League and MK Liberation War Veterans member Siphiwe Nyanda has pleaded with the ANC’s leadership not to work with its former president, Jacob Zuma, warning that he would finish his job of destroying the party.
The former uMkhonto weSizwe Council (MK Council) chairman, wrote his letter on Tuesday, in response to an article written this weekend by former ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe.
In his article, Motlanthe discussed the ANC’s approach to forming coalitions following its dramatic electoral decline and suggested that the ANC should resist the temptation to align with the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP).
uMkhonto weSizwe was a revolutionary armed wing of the ANC during the struggle against apartheid and is a different organisation from the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) party led by Zuma.
Nyanda blames Zuma for the ANC’s decline, not only due to his formation of the MKP but also pointing to his failures during his nine years in power.
Zuma’s MKP emerged from the elections as the third biggest party in South Africa only six months after its formation, despite not having structures or anything to show in terms of clearly defined policies or plans.
MKP’s strong showing was evident in traditional ANC strongholds like KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga.
Nyanda claimed that Zuma had led the ANC while not believing in the values the party stood for. He wrote:
It has now seen through his very recent utterances, that even while he was in the ANC he did not believe in the National Democratic Revolution and the Strategy and tactics of the ANC.
He did not believe in a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa. He led an ANC whose policies he did not believe in.
He did not believe in a Constitutional Democracy that OR Tambo bequeathed us; he did not support an independent judiciary; he did not believe in the will of the people, as he is now showing practically following the latest elections by disputing the results, which are an expression of the will of the people.
Now that Zuma has inflicted so much damage on the ANC from the outside there is a rush to bring him back by his accomplices who are still embedded in the leadership of the ANC so that he can finish his job of destroying the once proud liberation movement of the oppressed people of South Africa.
These attempts must be firmly rejected. The counterrevolution led by Zuma must be kept away. We cannot invite it back into our midst.
These counterrevolutionaries and pseudo-revolutionaries have defiled our good name and driven away many of our supporters.
Nyanda urged the ANC to embrace renewal, hold a National Consultative Conference, and realign with the values of leaders like Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela.
He said the ANC must listen to the people’s will, as expressed in the recent elections, and never take their support for granted again. Wrote Nyanda:
Now is the time for the ANC to purge and clean itself, and let (go) of those who don’t believe in its values to leave as Zuma did.
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