Thursday, July 5, 2012

Chikane Says the ANC Won't Survive Another 100

Sthembiso Sithole 
@sitholeexpress

The African National Congress (ANC) celebrates 100 years as a political organisation this year but some former insiders are the biggest critics of the party’s current leadership. Expelled ANC Youth League president, Julius Malema, has been on a campaign of telling South Africans that President Jacob Zuma isn’t fit to lead South Africa’s ruling party and thus the country. Malema was one of the men that campaigned heavily for President Jacob Zuma when former president Thabo Mbeki was asked to resign and was replaced by his deputy Kgalema Motlanthe. Malema has apologised to South Africans saying he misled them when he supported Jacob Zuma.

Rev. Frank Chikane who was Director General in the Presidency when Mbeki was recalled authored his version of those events in a book called, Eight Days in September. Chikane spoke at the Think! Fest in Grahamstown earlier this week as part of The National Arts Festival at Rhodes University. He says the organisation that fought for the end of apartheid and eventually led South Africa’s first democratically elected government will not survive another hundred years as the party is already divided. “If you put a list of factionalism you institutionalise it. The elected group became a faction rather than leaders of the organisation.”