WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2007-12-04 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
[I’m sure the cabinet is pretty politicised. No surprises. Jan]
By Sibusiso Ngalwa and Angela Quintal
President Thabo Mbeki’s Cabinet has rallied around the man whose third term at the helm of the ANC is in jeopardy, fanning out around the country to try and ensure he does not lose to Jacob Zuma, while the president himself is doing his bit to ensure a third term as party leader.
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on Friday urged the business community to back Mbeki’s campaign to ensure the stability of the country’s economy and the strength of the rand.
In addition to Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, who has become the president’s public hatchet man when it comes to taking on Zuma, other ministers – whose jobs are on the line under a Zuma victory – have also become Mbeki’s public defenders.
| ‘I remain a firm supporter of Thabo Mbeki’ |
They include Public Enterprise Minister Alec Erwin who in the weekend press wrote: “I remain a firm supporter of Thabo Mbeki being voted in for another term as ANC president and urge him to ignore those seeking an easy victory.”
Erwin appeared on the BBC’s Hard Talk earlier this year where he said he believed Zuma would have “great difficulty” in becoming the next president of the ANC and, by implication the country’s head of state.
At the weekend it was clear that he did not want to eat his words and wrote in the City Press that the provincial nominations – in which the majority of provinces favoured Zuma – had seen the “tried and tested procedures of the ANC invaded by naked power politics and campaigning in the worst American traditions”.
Criticising the ANCWL, which also backed Zuma last week and ignored its earlier resolution for a woman in the presidency, he said “sisterhood and respect were sacrificed for the expediency of electoral politics”.
Erwin wrote that there had been a “concerted assault” on the ANC procedures and also decried the fact that ANC members in support of Zuma were “using the media to campaign in the ANC”.
“Comrade Zuma did not halt this, despite statements and actions by some which I have no doubt he disapproved of. By unleashing such a campaign, they corrupted the integrity of the disciplined ANC processes,” Erwin wrote.
He praised Mbeki, whom he said had been the subject of a massive and vicious public attack, but who had not been “deflected into the intended trap of abandoning governance to fight for his personal position”.
Also last week, Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad and Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa took to the airwaves to ensure they did their bit for the Mbeki “campaign”, while the president himself granted a rare local print interview to Independent Newspapers after months of repeated requests.
In East London, Mlambo-Ngcuka was the main speaker at an ANC fundraising dinner and made no bones about her backing.
“We must make sure that all our delegates go to Limpopo. We have to convince the delegates to vote correctly and not intimidate them so that we deliver an honest vote.”
She urged the businessmen to “invest” in Mbeki’s campaign and promised that there would be “returns”.
“Our country is at a cross-road – this would be the biggest investment you would have made. There will be returns, not with tenders or positions, but we will govern the country correctly.”
There were some, said Mlambo-Ngcuka, who aspired to govern the country, but had no “understanding and sophistication”.
“They will have to equal or better (Mbeki’s) track record, nothing less,” she said.
Describing Mbeki as the “best statesman” in Africa, Mlambo-Ngcuka said that the president had turned around a negative economy to a positive one which was now approaching a 6 percent growth rate.
Some were saying that Mbeki was out of the race, but this was not true, the deputy president said.