You should have withdrawn from GNU: Mbeki's open letter to Steenhuisen

Former president Thabo Mbeki has penned a scathing open letter to DA leader John Steenhuisen, saying he would have found it logical for the DA to withdraw from the GNU. 

Mbeki labelled Steenhuisen and DA federal council chair Helen Zille “arrogant” after the party’s decision to pull out of the national dialogue. In the 11-page letter, Mbeki said it was clear that the DA had serious problems with President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC concerning the functioning of the GNU after Ramaphosa removed deputy minister of trade, industry and competition Andrew Whitfield of the DA. 

“It is also obvious that despite this you and the DA decided that you will not withdraw from the GNU and it is established that instead with the final straw ... you and the DA have decided not to participate in the national dialogue,” he said.

Mbeki criticised Zille’s statements that the dialogue was an ANC campaign strategy. He said the dialogue had absolutely nothing to do with Zille's “fertile imagination of an ANC's 2026 election campaign, or what you called an ANC-run national dialogue”. 

“And as you know, Zille, and therefore presumably the DA's view, is that the absence of the latter from the 'Parliament of the People' will make the Parliament 'a sham' and 'a hollow exercise'. It is very good that, at last, Zille has openly expressed her eminently arrogant and contemptuous view of the masses of the people, that these cannot think and plan their future correctly, without the DA. 

“That, presumably, is also the view of the federal leader of the DA who must have felt very proud when he announced that effective immediately, the DA will therefore 'have no further part in this process. We will also actively mobilise against it.' I hope that in time the DA will explain to the people why it signed up to the commitment in the statement of intent of the parties in the GNU that parties commit to an all-inclusive national dialogue process, whereas, as Zille said, she had been very opposed to it from the start.”

Mbeki said he would like to assure Steenhuisen that representatives of South Africans would attend the dialogue, adding that he was confident the dialogue would make historic and seminal contribution to the efforts to chart a way forward for the country.

“I sincerely hope that all political leaders and the parties they lead will recognise the inalienable reality that the people are our country’s sovereign authority ... As I have said I have no doubt that the DA acts against its own direct interests when it decides to isolate itself from its sovereign authority when the latter decides to engage in a national dialogue to determine our country's future,” he said. 

He said the national dialogue was borne out of a 2016 agreement by the FW de Klerk, Thabo Mbeki, Helen Suzman, Desmond and Leah Tutu, Kgalema Motlanthe and Robert Sobukwe foundations who formed the National Foundations Dialogue Initiative with the dialogue as one of its objectives. 

He said while the ANC had agreed to a national dialogue, he advised the party that civil society would not agree to participate in the process led by the ANC and the GNU, proposing that instead the matter should be led by foundations. 

Ramaphosa then constituted a group of four or five people to engage the foundations, he said.

He added that the national dialogue preparatory task team, made up of Nedlac executives, the foundations and four presidency officials, will cease to exist after it hands over the reins to the national convention in August. 

The ministry of finance should provide the funds necessary to hold the dialogue over and above donations from interested parties, he said. 

“In fact, the costs of the preparations to date have been borne by the foundations themselves while the day-to-day work relating to the national dialogue has been carried out by volunteers who are committed to building a better South Africa. These are men and women who are ready to lead the way in ensuring that citizens claim their agency.”

The preparatory team believed that various matters would arise during the dialogue which will require action from government without having to wait for the dialogue’s conclusion, he said. 

This, he said, was why Ramaphosa appointed an interministerial committee to be on standby to act on those matters. 

“It would seem to me that the DA is also saying that the people have forfeited the confidence to the DA. Perhaps the DA ... should distribute leaflets along the Nelson Mandela Boulevard in Cape Town telling the people that they should redouble their efforts to win back the confidence of the DA or face dissolution.”

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