To Comrade Thula Bopela: A reply.
I must say that you comrade Bopela never fails to amaze me with your angry and personalised attacks on former president, comrade Thabo Mbeki. The way you stage-manage this project always gives a sense of warning to anyone wishing to say anything positive about the former president. Your attacks actually border on personal hatred for comrade Mbeki. This hatred seems to be informed by a certain level of tribalism, political jealousy and a strange political low-self esteem on your part comrade. This is evident in many of your writings about the former president and your latest article is no different.
This all-out attack on the former president is in fact designed to make comrades feel guilty of praising comrade Mbeki for the good things he did for the ANC and the country. It makes comrades to always think that praising comrade Mbeki's positive elements, as we always do with many other former leaders of the liberation movement, will lead to them characterised as part of one or another faction, clique and cabal within the ANC. This is unfortunately the consequence of the threatening and factional tone in your article against Rev. Chikane's book.
Like some media commentators, you couch your attacks on the former president with the usual negative brush of Gear, Aids denial and Arms deal. Well, that's fair enough because these are serious stains in the leadership of former president Mbeki. But in your tirade you say zilch about the role played by other leaders in these blunders as they were part of the previous administration under the leadership of Thabo Mbeki. Is it because those you say nothing about are your 'friends', like Marc Anthony?
Not surprisingly, you say nothing about the view that the overall thrust of the current economic policy is predicated on the philosophical tenets of the Gear policy. In fact, how different do you think is the detail of the New Growth Path from Gear? You avoid getting into such debates for an obvious reason, hence you end up doing exactly the same thing you criticise Rev. Chikane about.
The fact is that you are the one who take us for fools comrade Bopela. The manner in which you attack Rev. Chikane clearly shows that you want people to have the same vicious understanding as you about the removal of comrade Mbeki from office, as if in the ANC we think alike. How mischievous! In case you forgot, the ANC is a multi-class liberation movement buttressed by a mass character. In such an environment you cannot expect us to interpret the removal of Mbeki from office the same way. That would be the death of the ANC as we know it.