標題:'The ANC Has Dug Its Own Grave'
新聞來源:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,580387,00.html
(需有正確連結)
By Karl-Ludwig Günsche in Cape Town
South Africa's government is in a crisis. President Mbeki has been forced to
resign, and 11 ministers have gone with him. The venerable ANC party could
even break apart. Party chief Jacob Zuma hopes to take over as president next
year -- but the new interim president, Kgalema Motlanthe, could stand in the
way.
Chris Nicholson seems truly surprised. "I did not foresee the consequences of
the judgement," says the judge, seeming troubled. "This case is like any
other I have presided over and I was just doing my job as a judge that has
only one master -- that's the constitution."
In his verdict on Sept. 12 Nicholson set off a political earthquake in South
Africa: Because of a procedural error, he stopped a corruption trial against
Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa's major political party, the African
National Congress (ANC). He also accused President Thabo Mbeki of politically
motivated interference.
Now the nation faces its deepest political crisis since the end of apartheid.
The rand is sinking, prices on the Johannesburg stock exchange have slipped
into a dramatic decline, Mbeki has resigned as president and 11 ministers
have followed him.
Above all, the unexpected resignation of Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has
raised fears in South Africa -- perhaps more than Mbeki's departure -- that
the situation might spin out of control. Manuel has a reputation both within
South Africa and abroad as a guarantor of political growth, financial
stability and political dependability. The last twelve years of relative
economic prosperity in South Africa have largely been credited to him.
Crisis management was required. Zuma hastily reassured the public: "There is
no need to panic. We know exactly what we should do and are doing it with
speed, precision and sensitivity." ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe had
assembled the most influential political commentators to reassure them,
"There is no crisis." Naturally Manuel would also belong to any future
cabinet, he said, and no one was behind the mass exodus of the 11 ministers
but the president himself, Mbeki, who was forced to resign by the ANC. But
Mantashe couldn't answer the question of whether the president acted in bad
faith with a simple yes or no. In any case his action was "a dangerous
mistake … If there's another dangerous mistake before Thursday we would pick
up a trend. But I don't think he tried to embarrass us."
So on Thursday the Mbeki era was finally laid to rest by the will of his own
party. Kgalema Motlanthe was elected the third president of post-apartheid
South Africa, after Mbeki and Nelson Mandela. He will be an interim
president, though, only for seven months -- until Jacob Zuma can win office,
as he probably will, after the next election in April 2009. For now the road
to the Union Building in Pretoria is blocked for Zuma because he has no
mandate within the ANC's parliamentary faction. But he's already the party's
presidential nominee for April.
Dangerous to Zuma?
The surprise is that Zuma chose Motlanthe to act as interim president.
Insiders were counting on the president of the parliament, Baleka Mbete, to
be nominated. Mbete is a resolute woman, mother of five children, an author
and an educator. She's a Zuma loyalist who tends to do solid work wherever
the party installs her.
Compared to her, Motlanthe could be thoroughly dangerous for Zuma. The
59-year-old is a compromise candidate who will be acceptable to both wings of
the party that arose during the power struggle between Zuma and Mbeki. He has
always suggested that he has no ambitions for the presidency, but Motlanthe
is also known within the party as a power-conscious man who is valued and
respected in South Africa far beyond the headquarters of the ANC.
He's the son of a washerwoman and an office messenger, with the classic
biography of an ANC leader. He joined the peace movement as a young man and
was thrown in jail for 10 years -- on the notorious Robben Island -- by the
apartheid government. (Doing time on Robben Island was a point of honor for
ANC fighters.) Like many of his comrades in arms he earned a long-distance
degree from the University of South Africa and forged a career in the labor
union movement after his release. He became ANC secretary-general in 1997 and
performed this difficult job for 10 years. Molanthe earned a reputation as a
man of compromise and equilibrium. He mediates, he belongs, but he also has
toughness and stamina when it is required.
Motlanthe may now have a chance to remain at the top of South African
politics for years to come. The corruption trial against Zuma could be
revived at any time. And Mbeki is far from giving up -- his power struggle
with Zuma will just shift to another round. Mbeki needs to free himself of
the charge of abusing his office first, though. He has therefore appealed
Nicholson's verdict, and the highest judge in the land, Pius Langa, has given
the case top priority.
A Rift in the ANC
Nicholson's charge that Mbeki manipulated the judiciary to harm his rival,
Zuma, is "vexatious, scandalous and prejudicial," Mbeki says in his appeal
petition, and it cost his job as president as well as harmed his good name.
But Mbeki clearly has further plans: There is already behind-the-scenes
speculation that Mbeki loyalists in the ANC want to break away. Defense
Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, his deputy Mluleki George and the president of
Gauteng province, Mbhazima Shilowa, are the driving forces in this movement,
according to media reports. George has said a decision will be reached this
week on whether the Mbeki wing of the ANC will enter April elections as a
separate party.
The debate over a party split received new momentum from an unexpected corner
on Tuesday. Mbeki's mother Epainette said in an interview that she would give
"100 percent support" to such a new party. The 92-year-old, an icon of the
ANC, who was active in both the peace movement and the fight against
apartheid, explained: "Naturally the people will say I'm defending my son.
That's okay. But I'm speaking as an old ANC member." She said many veteran
party members thought the same way, though she wouldn't name names. But her
judgment on Jacob Zuma's wing of the party is devastating: "The ANC has
abandoned us, people are being pushed out of the organization." The expulsion
of her son from office was a question of revenge, she said, not South
Africa's interest.
"In a plain language," she told her interviewer, "the ANC has dug its own
grave."
--
「就像其他各類集體主義一樣，種族主義也尋求不勞而獲。它尋求自動獲得知識﹔它尋求
自動評價人們的品質而忽略運用理性或道德判斷的責任﹔而更重要的是，它尋求自動的自
尊（或偽自尊）」
Ayn Rand<The Virtue of Selfishness>
致台灣之光的影迷跟球迷
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc)
◆ From: 59.113.19.41