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Mathews Phosa criticises ANC‚ praises FW de Klerk

Former African National Congress treasurer-general and Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa has harsh words for the ANC‚ but says he will always remain an ANC member and voter.

Addressing a gathering of the FW de Klerk Foundation in Cape Town on Tuesday to celebrate the 26th anniversary of De Klerk’s speech ushering in the death of apartheid‚ Phosa praised De Klerk‚ who has been under fire recently for statements on race he allegedly made.

Phosa said De Klerk had made the selfless choices leadership demands‚ and thanked him for his role in the liberation of South Africa.

The ANC stalwart criticised the current ANC top brass‚ whom he said was no longer always exhibiting the same principled leadership De Klerk exemplified.

In this regard‚ he referred to the Marikana massacre‚ the upgrades at President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla home‚ the way Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir was allowed to leave South Africa in violation of a court order‚ loadshedding and the firing of former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene.

“The ANC does not want uncritical members‚” he added‚ quoting Afrikaans poet NP van Wyk Louw’s maxim of “loyal resistance“.

In an apparent reference to the Gupta family‚ he said there were too many people eating at the main table.

While denouncing racism‚ Phosa said the dangers of tribalism should not be understated either.

Former human rights commissioner Rhoda Kadalie said that freedom in 1994 had not liberated her from Coloured identity.

She explained that the ANC would never garner the majority of the Coloured vote as long as it believed in a hierarchy of oppression — that blacks were the most oppressed‚ followed by Coloureds and Indians.

“Were coloured leaders truly co-opted more by the Coloured Representative Council than black leaders were by the bantustans?” she asked.

She believes much subliminal anger against the Coloured population resides in the ANC‚ and challenged ANC and Democratic Alliance-controlled authorities to tackle gangsterism and other problems confronting Coloured communities.

Solidarity CEO Flip Buys said one of the greatest challenges South Africa faces is that its monoculturally focused governance belies its multicultural reality.

Buys does not believe the constitutional guarantees of multiculturalism are honoured in reality.

He disputed the view that Solidarity is confrontational‚ listing scores of service delivery and infrastructure upkeep agreements between municipalities and Solidarity’s civil rights wing‚ Afriforum.

“We do all that‚ but it is the court cases which grab the headlines‚” Buys explained.

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