EFF takes aim at Thabo Mbeki over land question

The controversy sparked by SA's ambassador to Denmark‚ Zindzi Mandela‚ refuses to die down‚ with her prime defenders the EFF now taking aim at "aloof" former president Thabo Mbeki.

The Braamfontein-based political outfit fired their salvo at Mbeki after he was reported at the weekend to calling for action to be taken against Mandela for her controversial tweets on the land question.

The EFF said Mbeki was the last person to talk on the land question accusing him of "failing with flying colours" on the issue during his two terms as president of the republic between 1999 and 2008.

According to the EFF‚ Mbeki suffered from "uncontrollable appetite to appear as a paragon of correctness".

Said the party in a statement: "Of all people who must deny Zindzi Mandela to voice this frustration is former president Mbeki. This is because as president of South Africa he failed with flying colours to resolve the land question. In fact he paid no passionate and consistent attention on it as he did the neoliberal restricting of the state.

"The genuine leap of faith by black people to avoid the path of vengeance and punitive justice has however been repaid by 25 years of continued refusal of recognition by white people.

"White South Africans refuse to recognise blacks as rightful owners of the land and subject themselves to a constitutional and peaceful land reform process dictated to by black people."

The red berets also accused Mbeki of seemingly "not be retreating his assault of the Winnie Mandela household".

This in reference to Mbeki's well-documented strained political relations with Zindzi's mother Winnie‚ such that they sometimes fell out in public.

The EFF said Zindzi Mandela must be protected for advocating for the correction of colonial land dispossession that Mbeki had failed to do as president.

Mbeki at the weekend was quoted in the Sunday Tribune saying: "There’s no ambassador who represents themselves and if Zindzi Mandela’s tweets are inconsistent with what the president is saying‚ then that cannot be allowed.

"The president I know has been very insistent on this‚ that land reform must be done on a constitutional and legal basis and such amendments of the constitution are to clarify the circumstance in which you would expropriate land without compensation."
Source: TMG Digital.