New Age2 Mbeki points finger at Blade Former South African president speaks on accusations of 'aloofness' in third instalment in series of letters Peter Ramothwala, The New Age, Johannesburg, 2 February 2016 Former president Thabo Mbeki accused yet another South African Communist Party (SACP) senior leader, general secretary Blade Nzimande, of propagating the notion of his "aloofness". In his third letter of many to come, Mbeki said his charge of being "aloof" rested on the assertion that whether intentionally or not, "my very style of leadership meant that I deliberately chose to be 'not in touch with the people', (and the membership of the ANC) obviously having arrogated to myself the status of being the source of all wisdom". "Some elected constantly to propagate this notion as an established and self-evident truth which did not even require that any evidence should be produced to substantiate this 'truth'. Thus in September 2009, Blade Nzimande, secretary-general of the SACP, was quoted by the Mail and Guardian as having said: 'there is an almost complete national consensus that Mbeki's aloof and intolerant personality was a disaster. Thankfully we are now once more in a situation in which national dialogue and debate are possible'," Mbeki said. Last week, Mbeki also accused the SACP deputy secretary-general Jeremy Cronin of fabricating facts during his tenure as the president of the ANC. Cronin said he realised that he had sometimes spoken too casually, occasionally in a gossipy way about who had said what in closed meetings of the NEC, for instance. Alex Mashilo Meanwhile, SACP spokesperson Alex Mashilo dismissed Mbeki's claims. "Under Mbeki, Nzimande was subjected to a systematic attack, which the former president formed part of that bloc," Mashilo said. "During Mbeki's tenure Nzimande was labelled 'extra-ordinarily arrogant'. As the workers party we will continue to raise matters of national importance." Mbeki said he was not aloof as under his leadership, he made certain that the National Office Bearers met at least every Monday, the National Working Committee (NWC) met at least every fortnight and the NEC met at least every quarter. "I regularly attended all these meetings as president of the ANC, never standing aloof from the ANC leadership. Further, one of the decisions we took in the NWC to help ensure that we maintain closer contact with the ANC membership was to hold our meetings in the provinces, spending two days in each province. "We would divide the NWC members into small delegations, in which I participated, each of which would spend the first day in one of the regions in the province to familiarise itself with the state of organisation at this lower level," Mbeki said. <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] From: <http://tnaepaper.co.za/DRIVE/main%20edition/02022016/epaperpdf/4.pdf> http://tnaepaper.co.za/DRIVE/main%20edition/02022016/epaperpdf/4.pdf -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
