Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's President, To Resign
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The fate of President Thabo Mbeki hung in the balance Friday, as the ruling African National Congress's top decision-making body met to decide if he should be forced out of office at the risk of plunging the continent's powerhouse into turmoil.
Mbeki was due to stand down next year after 10 years in office, but he has lost a prolonged power struggle to the man expected to be South Africa's next president, former Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
Militant Zuma supporters headed by the ANC and Communist Youth Leagues want to force Mbeki out before his term ends. They are calling for the ANC _ to which the 66-year-old Mbeki has belonged since he was 14 _ to throw him out of the party as well as out of office.
"It's all out war," The Star newspaper declared Friday.
The ANC's National Executive Committee scheduled a news conference Friday evening, prompting speculation that it had decided to give Mbeki the push _ or he had agreed to jump.
But ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe said only that discussions would continue.
"We came to tell you that there is nothing to tell you. The debate is not concluded," he said _ indicating there were deep divisions within the 86-member executive.
He said Mbeki was not at the meeting.
"All I hope for is that, if they decide that Mbeki should go, they will put in place the required and proper transitional mechanism," political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi said at the independent Center for Policy Studies in Johannesburg.
"If they are looking for a situation where they decide Mbeki can go and hope there will be no instability at all, they are being Utopian in the extreme," he said.
Half the Cabinet is reportedly threatening to walk out if Mbeki is forced to leave.
The latest ammunition against Mbeki is a judge's ruling last week throwing out years-old corruption charges against Zuma, saying he agreed with Zuma's complaint that he was the victim of a political conspiracy in the "titanic power struggle" within the ANC.
Mbeki indignantly denied this Friday.
"It impoverishes our society that some resort to the tactic of advancing allegations with no fact to support these," the presidency said in a statement. "The question will have to be answered now _ what kind of society are we building, informed by what value system and with what long-term effect to the political and overall moral health of the nation?"
The political and personal humiliation at home is overshadowing Mbeki's greatest foreign policy achievement to date _ persuading Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe this month to share power with opposition leaders.
South Africa emerged victorious from years of institutionalized racism in 1994 and entered an era of reconciliation embodied by anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela. Mbeki took over in 1999 and ushered in sustained economic growth averaging nearly 5 percent a year.
Mbeki was heralded by the international business community, but his aloofness has alienated many people at home where millions remain on the margins of society. His foes accuse him of failing to fight the country's crippling crime and AIDS crises.
The South African Council of Churches appealed to the ANC to put national stability first, saying the negative political and economic fallout from the government's collapse "are too ghastly to contemplate."
Zuma has remained silent amid the calls for Mbeki's downfall, saying only that wasting energy on Mbeki was like "beating a dead snake."
Mbeki fired Zuma as his national deputy president in 2005, after Zuma's financial adviser was convicted of trying to elicit a bribe to deflect investigations into a multibillion-dollar international arms deal.
The charges were withdrawn against Zuma, but the chief prosecutor announced in December he had enough evidence to bring new ones.
In his ruling last Friday, Judge Christopher Nicholson said it appeared Mbeki and his justice minister had colluded with prosecutors against Zuma.
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MICHELLE FAUL | September 19, 2008 03:54 PM EST |
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