Zuma puts a cork in Juju
THE ANC and police have pulled out all the stops - including staging roadblocks on major routes leading to Mangaung - in a bid to ensure that the party's momentous centenary celebrations are incident-free amid claims that a section of youth league members wanted to embarrass President Jacob Zuma.
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Zuma is scheduled to address more than 100000 party supporters and 6000 VIP guests - who include 46 heads of state - at a rally in Mangaung in the Free State today, to celebrate the ruling party's 100th anniversary.
Roadblocks were mounted on major roads leading to the Free State. Buses carrying supporters were searched following rumours about Limpopo youths carrying stones with which to pelt the president. No stones were found.
SAPS spokeswoman Brig-adier Nonkululeko Mbatha said: "We are receiving intelligence and we are able to act pro-actively. We are leaving no avenue open [to disruption]."
In a move seen as an attempt by party leaders to shield Zuma from possible embarrassment in front of international guests, the ANC announced earlier this week that only the president would be allowed to address the crowds today.
Zuma's detractors have alleged that this was an attempt by the leadership to ensure that suspended youth league leader Julius Malema does not get an opportunity to greet the crowd.
But ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe rejected that interpretation of the change in programme from recent years.
He said throughout most of its history the ANC had not let its leagues and alliance partners, Cosatu and the SA Communist Party, speak on such occasions. The practice of doing so began after a new party leadership, under Zuma, was elected in 2007, he said.
"This thing of creating space for the youth league is a post-Polokwane practice. You're having a centenary, usually the president speaks at 12, but now he will speak at 5pm. To think that we can run that programme as if we are running last year's January 8 statement ... you are expecting too much from us.
"[The reason] why historically the youth league has not spoken is because the statement presented by the president is the statement of the NEC, where the leagues are represented," Mantashe said.
The celebrations come at a time when the ANC is embroiled in a bitter battle between Zuma and Malema's youth league, which wants the president replaced by his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe, at the party's national conference in December this year.
At "mini-rallies" addressed by Malema this week as part of the build-up to today's festivities, Malema called on his supporters to be on their best behaviour when Zuma speaks. He did, however, warn that hostilities would resume in weeks to come.
The decision to let only Zuma speak has angered some ANC leaders who believe that former president Thabo Mbeki, as one of the former party leaders who is still alive, should have been allowed to address the gathering.
Members of the ANC's centenary steering committee were at odds this week over Mbeki's role during the event. It was eventually decided he would be limited to the small role of lighting a torch at midnight and handing it over to Zuma today.
Zuma hosted a gala dinner last night attended by the heads of state invited to the centenary celebrations.
The event was held in a giant white marquee at the University of Free State's Vista campus, with Home Affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and ANC NEC member Cyril Ramaphosa as MCs.
Mbeki walked in beside former Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings. Rwandan president Paul Kagame, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo and other leaders also attended.
The event went well into the night with 21 heads of state expected to speak.
Mozambican president Armando Guebuza urged the people of Southern Africa to "join hands" in creating a society without discrimination. He was followed by Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, who had the gathering in stitches when he said that, as a young man, he had thought all South Africans "were Zulus" after he first heard Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika at school in 1955.
Zuma's address will capture the ANC's rich history and, said his aides, reveal a new vision to professionalise the ANC.
Among the heads of state who arrived yesterday were President Andry Rajoelina of Madagascar, President Armando Guebuza of Mozambique and President Michael Sata of Zambia. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe was too ill to travel and was replaced by Deputy President Joyce Mujuru. The heads of state are accommodated at the exclusive Woodland Hills Estate in the town.
Preparations for the celebrations were not without hiccups. Zuma and Motlanthe failed to show up at side events where they were meant to officiate.
Motlanthe's office said the ANC's steering committee had failed to inform it that it had billed the deputy president to officially open an ANC golf challenge on Friday. Motlanthe was on holiday in Cuba and returned on Thursday. His spokesman, Thabo Masebe, said Motlanthe was too tired to travel before the weekend.
An official at the Presidency said the steering committee had not confirmed with Zuma's office his availability to address a rally in Thaba 'Nchu.
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Zuma puts a cork in Juju
For Commenters Consideration | Please stick to the subject matterCOMMENTS [24]
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Posted 139 days agoFabio
Posted 139 days agoNaidooA
Posted 139 days agoIt's time the ANCYL get rid of the donkeys cricketed by Nelson Mandela
The new South Africa is nothing but a black administered white racist apartheid state
What kind of liberation has Mandela created where white South Africans own more land in black ruled South Africa than white ruled South Africa
What kind of liberation has Mandela created where white South Africans in the Western Cape own more than 99% of farmland in thre region, land that has been guaranteed to them by the ANC
What kind of liberation has the ANC achieved when they have made Verwoerds apartheid stem as part of South Africa's national anthem
The rally will open with 100,000 black fools singing the apartheid anthem with the same zeal as passion as the apartheid stem was sung by P.W Botha and Verwoered
P.W Botha and Verwoered must be smiling in their graves
YvonneHorak
Do you not know that there were NEVER any Blacks in the Western Cape at all ( neither IndianIndentures) in 1652.? They did not even know there was a place like the Western Cape and a Mountain there. So yes, the Genuine Western Cape People, the Malays/Cape Coloured and White people should own 100% of the Western Cape. - it belonged to them before a Black man even knew it existed. Go and have your land in Kwa Zulu/Free State/Eastern Cape Transkei or wherever- Western Cape and White people are NOT interested my dear , in your areas and whther you own 120% there, because we were not there FIRST! in any case, YOU have no claim to the Western Cape area just like the Black people. You are not Khoi or San or any of the Indeginous people of the Western Cape! Now are you? We have more right here in the Western Cape that you have even got being in South Africa today ! The ANC cannot just run over History and Facts- there is a BIG World out there and a World Court and a United Nations and maybe it is high time the Western Cape is
separated from the rest of South Africa for the rightful inhabitants. Do you think for 1 MINUTE that people in the Western Cape are just going to be shunted around forever? NEVER ! Your history will be interesting? Please advise from where your family arrived from in India as Labourers here to the British !? We are very interested.! because the Brits/Zulus etc were there before 1 single Indian was ever seen on this Continent - so you actually even have strayed away from your roots! into their Lands! The fact is blacks will die black,whites will die white/Indians will die Indian and all the rest also, as and what they are! We are different cultures/different languages/different regligions/different customs/ and each should stay amongst their own and be becomfortable and NOT some always try and always FORCE themselves down the throats of others.Are you not happy amopngst your Indian people?Are the blacks not Happy amongst their own people? Why do you ALWAYS want to PUSH yourselves in amongst the Whites! It will not make anybody white!or of white culture/tradition/values/language etc..Let everyone have their own life. Live where you belong and your are welcome man!
ProudlySouthAfrican101
the_original_MommaCyndi
Are coloured people now considered white?
Metroblitz
zindela
Posted 139 days agothe1eye
Their expressions really sum up the state of our nation.
AMS-Dammer
I Have a friend in SA, that has named her two Boer Bull's, Jesse and Jackson... she occasionally climbs into them with an ugly stick, when they attaclk each other!
It is the nature of the beast!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AnotherTaxPayer
Posted 139 days agoThis is the comment that sums the intelligence up at the event. Who would bring stones all the way from limpopo if you can pick one up anywhere?
On another note. While Mugabe is sitting at an empty table with 5 open seats meant for his now dead dictators. Why didn't he send Morgan Tsvangirai instead?
This party is turning out just like the youth conference, but without the kissing games...
spencerc777
Posted 139 days agoI thought of God’s grace and mercy on South Africa and how he permitted the previous apartheid government to set up all the wonderful infrastructures in this country and how these people of European decent continue to do so through their resourcefulness and expertise – how three world cups - rugby, cricket and soccer was held here because of the infrastructures available at the worlds disposal.
I thought, imagine if these people of European descent, as evil as they were, had been kicked out of South Africa 50 to 70 years ago …we would never have had these wonderful infrastructures.
On the one hand I thought, apartheid was/is evil, yet on the other hand, I thanked God for the infrastructures - roads, highways, cities, business, posts and communications, ports and harbours, military, navy, air force, police international airports, municipalities, parliament buildings it produced.
God (the Lord Jesus Christ) gave all this infrastructure both past and present to the new government, the ANC …and today, they turn their backs on Him and honour and call on ancestral (demonic) spirits to take this nation into the next 100 years
…and that sets up the end of a nation that what would have been a beautiful story!
However…
2Ch 7:14 KJV If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways (ancestral consultation); then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Maxi
the1eye
Hope they stand accountable for the debt that came with these stadia? The country's early infrastructure was built by none other than the people the anc now choose to hate, at all costs.
Excuse the cliche, but at the end of the day, the infrastructure was built as follows:-
* Country's mineral wealth in control of "the Boers";
* Actual value of the wealth stolen by the jews;
* Fraction of the wealth given back to build something as "compensation", but;
** .... "Boers" asked to oversee the construction;
** .... "Blacks" used as cheap labour.
So, in a macabre kind of way Maxi is right, however, the current leadership don't quite see that the jews still hold the purse strings, the "Boers" still do the actual supervising, while the "Not-so-lucky-Blacks" still provide the cheap labour. This is a global phenomenon whereby the jews control the budget, the middle class the supervision and the poor the cheap labour...... Hasn't changed in 2000 or so years and never will, fact!
Talk is cheap, money buys the whisky, but guns get it done! Viva anc, Viva, Viva Coldsteel, Viva, Viva le Revolution, Viva!!!!!!!
Think_Tank
almarie.villiers
Posted 138 days agoSpencer, try and see that though the ANC is doing a lot wrong, they are also trying to do some things right. You may want to go and live in another country or change your views if you are so negative about SA.
Maxi
I understand, like how the French royal families and their close cronies felt after the revolution, you are not happy after the apartheid was disbanded. Ask someone who felt the bite of apartheid and he will tell you that things have become better under ANC's rule.
the1eye
Celebrate our diversity, our sunshine, our friendliness, but heck, make sure you're armed when going out for a walk or run, or mountain biking anywhere in this so-called Rainbow Nation, or all this infrastructure will mean nothing.
NaidooA
Posted 138 days agoThe major policies of both the DA and the ANC is to look after the interests of the big white corporates
White corporates own both these parties.
Metroblitz
Thoth
Posted 138 days agoSuiGeneris
100 year old boys with foreskins ??
EmilLoffler
Posted 137 days ago