US embassy fuelling regime change – Gwede

ANC SECRETARY-general Gwede Mantashe set off a social media frenzy yesterday when he charged that clandestine meetings, promoting regime change in South Africa, were held regularly at the US embassy in Pretoria.

“As we mobilise our people, we must say, be vigilant. You must see through anarchy and people who are out there in a programme of regime change. We are aware of the meetings taking place regularly at the American embassy,” Mantashe told tens of thousands of ANC supporters at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

“Those meetings in the embassy are about nothing else other than mobilisation for regime change. We’re aware of a programme that takes young people to the United States for six weeks, brings them back and plants them everywhere in the campuses and everywhere.”

Mantashe said “regime change elements” which gripped countries like Libya and Egypt had crept into South Africa.

“Anarchists” had been given “so much rights” (sic) here that they were “making our Parliament a joke”. “Democracy is about us exercising our right of being the majority party. It can’t be that every time we take a decision in the legislature, it must go to the judiciary for ratification. I’m not attacking the judiciary, but we are the majority,” Mantashe declared, adding that the ANC had the right to make decisions and enforce them.

Yesterday’s march, attended by thousands of ANC supporters, was aimed at promoting an end to racism nationwide.

“It’s a positive march. We want to build a united, non-racial, nonsexist, democratic and prosperous society. We are not marching on ourself. We are mobilising society to appreciate that building the ideal South Africa is not an event, but a journey,” Mantashe said.

Freedom, he said, was not enough.

“What we achieved in 1994 was the beginning of a long journey, not the destination. We’ve not achieved economic freedom. That economic freedom required a united people. If we’re not united, the land reform will remain distorted. Poverty, inequality and unemployment is traceable to land hunger.”

South Africans needed access to arable land so they could contribute to the nation’s food security.

“The question of food security cannot be left to the preserve of TAU- SA ( Transvaal Agricultural Union SA), a racist farmers’ organisation,” he declared, claiming farmers in South Africa “want to

ACCUSATIONS: Gwede Mantashe.