South African President Mbeki forced to resign

The ANC’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, said Mbeki would remain president until an interim leader was appointed, but Mbeki was already stepping back. He sent the foreign minister to head the delegation Mbeki had planned to take to the U.N. General Assembly.

Mantashe said parliament, which is controlled by the ANC, would meet to formalize the process for replacing Mbeki, likely to happen this week. Parliament elects the president in South Africa.

A major concern was threats by key Cabinet ministers to quit over Mbeki’s removal. Attention was especially focused on Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, who has shared the credit with Mbeki for South Africa’s sustained economic growth and investor-friendly policies over the past decade.

Mantashe said Zuma was meeting with Cabinet ministers hoping to persuade them to stay on, saying the top priority was “ensuring the smooth running of the country.”

Speaking to reporters, Mantashe said that after meeting all day last Friday and into the early hours Saturday, a high-level ANC committee “decided to recall the president” before his term expires in April.

Hours later, the president’s office issued a terse statement:

“Following the decision of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress to recall President Thabo Mbeki, the President has obliged and will step down after all constitutional requirements have been met.”

South Africans vote for parties, not individuals. That puts a premium on party loyalty and discipline among legislators, and allows political leaders to quickly make radical changes.

Although Mbeki’s removal came quicker than many expected, South Africans had been anticipating a shift to Zuma at least since last December, when Zuma won a party election for the ANC’s leadership.

Helen Zille, leader of South Africa’s main opposition party, told state television that the ANC has made its internal problems a national crisis.

“It’s about revenge, it’s about settling political scores,” she said.

Mantashe insisted the move to remove Mbeki was meant to restore unity and stability to party and country, not to punish him.

But many saw it as Mbeki’s defeat, and it opened the way for opponents to question the ANC over how a leader who tried to oust an allegedly corrupt aide was removed while the accused stands on the brink of becoming president.

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.

Initial charges were withdrawn against Zuma, but the chief prosecutor said last December that he had enough evidence to bring new ones. That comment came within days of Zuma’s defeating Mbeki in running for ANC president.

In his ruling Sept. 12, Judge Christopher Nicholson said it appeared Mbeki and his justice minister colluded with prosecutors against Zuma as part of the “titanic power struggle” within the ANC. Mbeki indignantly denied the accusation.

South Africa emerged 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.

Many poor blacks disdained those achievements, complaining the benefits weren’t reaching the masses. Others criticized Mbeki for failing to fight the country’s crippling crime, and health activists were dismayed that he played down South Africa’s devastating AIDS crisis.

Mbeki is regarded by many Africans as a statesman for promoting what he calls Africa’s renaissance and mediating conflicts ranging from Sudan to Ivory Coast to Congo.

For many years, his quiet diplomacy in troubled Zimbabwe was criticized as ineffective and biased toward Robert Mugabe, the autocratic president. But earlier this month, he persuaded Mugabe to share power with the opposition.

(Associated Press)

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