Cape Town - Suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule has purportedly penned an almost 3 000-word letter to former president Thabo Mbeki after what he describes as venomous attacks he received.
In the letter, Magashule said for the past month he had resisted the temptation to entertain the “attacks” on his name, but he had to respond to an attack from his elder.
He states that his writing to Mbeki is “forced by the burden of my conscience that does not allow me any longer to be silent when there is a sponsored and neatly orchestrated campaign to vilify, annihilate my character and delegitimise my cadreship”.
Magashule said Mbeki’s notion of self-worship and lack of self-critique, usually associated with youthful bliss, unfortunately, details the sunset years of him as a leader who somehow is spoiled to assume he in uniqueness is entitled to be treated differently.
An excerpt of the letter reads: “Comrade Mbeki, you have in this season markedly distinguished yourself as the confirmed face of a campaign to denigrate insult and adjudicate on me. You do so in lecture sense as one who purportedly had apparent foresight and prophetic revelation long before others as you are pontificating in the glee of “I was right on Ace”.
“Comrade Mbeki, you do this less from an honest, presidential or leader of the ANC vantage point but from a self-aggrandising superiority to all mindsets as the entitled meridian of nobility and sense. It appears you had decided to eke out relevance in this season of your third coming less in the stewardship of cognisance that appreciates the multilayers and complexities of challenges the Movement faces.”
He is critical of Mbeki by writing: “Comrade Mbeki, your political posture at a narrow-angle details one obsessed to continue your prism of an ANC that has yourself unfortunately as the maximum symbol of perfection and astute leadership. In a season when you equally claimed such leadership and disrespected the sitting leadership of your successor, the then SG Gwede Mantashe responded, permit me to paraphrase, Mbeki must stop pretending they left things in the ANC in order, we are still mopping up their mess.
’’This notion of self-worship and lack of self-critique, usually associated with youthful bliss, unfortunately, details the sunset years of you as a leader who somehow is spoiled to assume you in uniqueness is entitled to be treated differently to all others for who you are.
“Unfortunately, Comrade Mbeki, as solicited by you, compelled to remind you that history has no blank spaces and managing that history is the work of those who have something to hide. Regardless of how palatable to your taste buds, your truth, is not necessarily the historical or current truth and a fact.
’’Your most recent ANC Eastern Cape address took the latitude to make me the centre of your speech in showing the antithesis of authentic ANC leadership. You gloated how you did not see me fit to be Premier of the Free-State province, notwithstanding my provincial chairperson leadership.
’’You again afford yourself the right to label others in categorising some of us as careerists. Interesting enough, you do not see yourself in your known ambition from the days of exile as one who used the ANC to define your career goals. Again, this is your truth, just not the truth many of us know.”
Independent Media contacted The Thabo Mbeki Foundation for comment but had not received a response at the time of publishing.
* This story will be updated with their comment.
tarryn-leigh.solomons@inl.co.za
Political Bureau