Land argument ‘not attack on ANC leaders’
● Thabo Mbeki Foundation calls for reasoned debate
The Thabo Mbeki Foundation’s internal discussion document on the land debate – in which it accuses the ANC of abandoning its historical values of non-racialism – must not be misconstrued as an attack on the ANC or its leadership‚ CEO Max Boqwana says.
The 30-page document‚ which was leaked from the foundation‚ questioned the ANC’s approach to the land issue‚ saying it marked a shift from the party’s values expressed throughout its 106year history.
Boqwana said in a statement on Tuesday that the document was an internal discussion document, which resulted from discussions involving various stakeholders‚ “including the mass democratic movement at home and progressive forces abroad”.
As a working document‚ he said, it was not yet intended for public consumption.
He called it “a constructive response to the ANC and parliament’s call to the nation to engage in this important debate‚ doing so in the interest of nation-building”.
“The foundation and its patron‚ [former] president Thabo Mbeki‚ [have] therefore taken a keen interest in this debate‚ informed largely by the historical positions the ANC has taken over [the] years‚” Boqwana said.
“The document must be accepted as a call for a serious‚ reflective and constructive discourse on the matter that has bedevilled our country throughout the colonial and apartheid periods,” he said.
The discussion paper says the communication from the ANC around the land question‚ which has framed the debate on black versus white‚ indicated that the ANC is no longer “a representative of the people of SA”.
It argues that while the land question is an imperative that should be addressed‚ it has to be done while simultaneously responding to the “national question”‚ which was uniting South Africans across race and class divides.
The paper said the posture of some leaders in the ANC mirrored more the position of the EFF than that of the governing party‚ which was “long established through its history and its former leaders‚ as well as in the Freedom Charter”.
Boqwana said the foundation was in full agreement with the national sentiment that the land question as a historical injustice required urgent redress.
However, in doing so‚ it was of the view that the matter should be attended to with “the due seriousness its complexity requires”.
He said the foundation made the point of drawing the public, and particularly the ANC, to the argument that the land and national questions were intimately interconnected and that they could not be addressed outside the national question.
He said the historical debates and positions of the ANC must be affirmed‚ and that the ANC must lead a critical engagement on the policies of the past 24 years adopted by the democratic government to address the land question‚ but also to answer the question: “What is to be done?”
In the event of any departure from its historical positions‚ Boqwana said, “the ANC as the leader of society has the responsibility honestly to engage society and explain what occasioned such departure”.
The foundation urged the public to engage critically with the document. –