Motlanthe hit for a six

SIR — I read Gwede Mantashe’s letter in response to Kgalema Motlanthe’s comments on the African National Congress (ANC), and I read Ben Turok’s reaction to Mantashe’s letter.

Mantashe’s letter was not focused on “ordinary members” of the ANC but decried the tendency of past leaders to criticise the party once they leave office. We know for a fact that Motlanthe was not just an ordinary member of the ANC and he was not just some provincial leader. He was in the ANC top six.

Turok’s criticism of Mantashe relied heavily on the allegation that raising critical issues within the ANC structures is not easy, and outlined the constraints that are faced by ordinary party members: “When commissions draft resolutions, they are watered down by the time they get to the closing plenary to conform with views held by the top six.”

So Turok is basically saying ordinary ANC members’ resolutions were watered down to “conform” with Motlanthe’s views while he was still part of the top six. His statement agrees with Mantashe’s criticism.

Motlanthe’s behaviour first manifested in 2007, when former ANC chairman Mosiuoa Lekota and former Gauteng ANC chairman Sam Shilowa lost out at Polokwane and started claiming that there was no internal democracy in the ANC. There’s a pattern here.

Lekota, who was ANC chairman from the 1997 Mmabatho conference to Polokwane in 2007, wanted to tell us that people were being silenced in the ANC, when he was at the helm and in the top six for 10 years? Who is fooling who here? Matshwenyego Jaabosigo Via e-mail