“I did not campaign because ANC did not have a good story to tell.” – Mbeki. Photo: Britanica
Former president of the ANC and the Republic of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, has revealed that he did not campaign for the party that he had led for many years after he was deposed because he did not believe in the storyline that the party was selling the voters. Mbeki was speaking in East London during an extended Provincial Executive Committee meeting of the Eastern Cape chapter.
Mbeki said that he did not campaign for the party in the year after he stopped being its leader because they were using the leadership of the party to communicate a false message to the people. He added that the message that they were selling to the voters was that the party had a good story to tell. Mbeki went on to say that he could not imagine himself going around the country telling their supporters that when he knew for sure that it was not true. He said, “I couldn’t campaign these other times. This is because we were using the leadership of the ANC to communicate a false message, and this message was, ‘we’ve got a good story to tell’. Now I couldn’t imagine myself going around saying to our people we’ve got a good story to tell because we didn’t.”
Continuing with his story, Mbeki said, he had not campaigned for the party in 2009, 2011, 2014, and 2016 but he had voted for it, adding that he hoped that people had not noticed. However, in 2019, he had campaigned for the ruling party. This, he says, is because the party had admitted, in its manifesto, that it had made mistakes. He added that the admittance on the part of the party indicated that there were ethical problems where state institutions were not delivering to the people. In addition, the party was making a commitment to correcting these wrongs. Mbeki added that he was more at ease to say to the people, “vote for the ANC”. He then concluded the message by saying, “If we do not achieve this objective of renewing the ANC, none of the major problems of our country is going to be solved. Not one.”
