By Zukiswa Mqolomba Former President Thabo Mbeki’s OR Tambo lecture is indeed most welcome as it is a timely call to action to save the African National Congress (ANC) from a burgeoning trend of greed, avarice and an insatiable appetite to amass personal wealth, while millions of South Africans continue to live in wide-spread poverty […]
Mbeki
Posted inNews/Politics
On Zim’s wounded political beasts
Addressing the recent ZANU-PF annual congress, party leader and Zimbabwe president, Robert Mugabe likened the (mis)fortunes of his party to those of a wounded beast. “We are now like a wounded beast,” Mugabe said, adding emphatically, “You know how a wounded beast fights. Let’s fight back and restore our own pride.” Mugabe’s unhappiness with the […]
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How should we remember Zuma’s presidency?
History is a complex social construction but a few grand narratives tend to stick out. Among other stories we’ll remember Mandela as the reconciliatory president, asking us to throw our “pangas into the sea” and forgive. We’ll remember Mbeki’s poetic appeal to our African identity, an aloof renaissance man and, bitter-sweet, as the statesman who […]
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Nkosazana good for AU, good for SA
As Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma prepared to take over her responsibilities as the new and first female leader of the African Union Commission, the reaction back home was somewhat bitter-sweet. Many said the former foreign affairs minister was being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. They argued SA was losing one of its finest. That she […]
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Mbeki eyes the post-Zuma limelight
After three years — almost to the day — former president Thabo Mbeki is emerging from political purdah. Mbeki, who retreated into virtual isolation after being booted by the African National Congress (ANC) in September 2008, is suddenly popping into the public eye again. True to party loyalties of a lifetime and to reclaim his […]