Hidden force trying to destroy the ANC – Mbeki

Former President Thabo Mbeki asserts that apartheid-era agents have infiltrated the African National Congress (ANC) and society at large, intending to destroy the party and take back power.

The former President delivered a keynote address at the inaugural conference of the uMkhonto weSizwe Liberation War Veterans, where he took the opportunity to explain the downfall of the ANC.

“Some people within the apartheid formation said in 1994 that ‘the ANC is celebrating when they have won a battle. They have not won the war,’ and they said ‘we will win,’” Mbeki said.

“That, comrades, resulted in the formation of an actual group, a formation with two strategic tasks: to defeat the ANC and to defeat the National Democratic Revolution.”

Mbeki asserts that these “counter-revolutionaries” have been placed in strategic positions both in the party and throughout society. They are working to this day to bring the party down, Mbeki claims.

The former President said that a conversation he had with Judge Richard Goldstone made him concerned about the power of the National Party to deploy its agents.

This followed the implementation of the Goldstone Commission to investigate third-party forces in violent outbreaks leading up to the 1994 elections.

Mbeki said that Goldstone told him he learned through his work that the apartheid regime was very effective at infiltrating society with its own agents.

“Not only within the ANC but society as a whole: academia, technology, the economy, whatever,” said Mbeki.

“They made certain that they put their agents everywhere in South African society to put in place a machinery that would be part of the effort to achieve the strategic objective of counter-revolution.”

This objective would be achieved when the ANC government fails, Mbeki explained. To this end, Mbeki blames these agents for operational challenges at the South African Revenue Service (SARS), the electricity crisis, and the 2021 riots.

A deliberate attempt to destroy SARS

“At some point after the liberation, the South African Revenue Service was outperforming itself. Every year, the results would say that you are going to collect a billion rand at the end of the financial year, and it collected a billion and a quarter,” the former president said.

“Then, around 2014, it started behaving in the opposite direction, underperforming.”

After Tom Moyane was appointed SARS commissioner in 2014, a controversial restructuring process, purges of staff, suspensions, and lost revenue followed.

President Cyril Ramaphosa convened a judicial commission of inquiry, the Nugent inquiry, into SARS to explain how its performance declined.

“What the report says is that there was a deliberate decision by some people to destroy SARS,” Mbeki said. The inquiry did, indeed, describe this as a “deliberate undermining of SARS’s capacity.”

“SARS is responsible for 95% of state revenue. If you destroy SARS, you destroy the democratic state.”

Mbeki said that, while the Zondo Commission of inquiry into state corruption uncovered the looting of several state agencies following President Jacob Zuma’s tenure, but that SARS was not looted – it was deliberately damaged

Load shedding was caused by sabotage

On the electricity crisis, Mbeki discussed the first instances of load shedding, which occurred during his presidency in 2008.

He said he had to apologise to the country because, at the time, he did not know what happened to Eskom to cause the first blackouts.

The electricity crisis came to a peak in 2023, when South Africa experienced 335 days of power cuts.

The collapse of Eskom that led to load shedding is often blamed on ageing infrastructure, delays in new power stations like Medupi and Kusile, and issues of state capture and corruption during former President Jacob Zuma’s tenure.

Now, Mbeki says that this was not the case. he said that there was a deliberate attempt to destroy Eskom from the inside.

“We had an internal monitoring system. There was a rule in Eskom that at each one of the coal-fired power stations, there must be at least 22 days of supply of coal,” he said.

Mbeki says that these systems began alerting authorities that coal stations were running out of coal in November 2007. “They ignored it,” he said.

“They ran out of coal deliberately. The managers at the power stations did not replenish. It was an internally generated crisis,” he said.

“Some people in political parties say ‘no, no, no,’ that was [the ANC’s] failure because of cadre deployment. It had nothing to do with that. It was a deliberate intervention by the counter-revolution to produce a crisis so that this government fails.”

The July 2021 riots were a test

Finally, Mbeki dismissed the idea that the July 2021 riots were a spontaneous defence of Jacob Zuma. Instead, he said it was a test.

The July 2021 unrest was the deadliest and most destructive period of civil unrest in South Africa since the end of apartheid. It primarily affected the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and Gauteng.

It was widely reported that the unrest, also known as the July Riots, was triggered by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma.

“The story that is told about the mayhem in July 2021 is that the people were angry because the ANC allowed Jacob Zuma to be sentenced and sent to jail,” he said.

“The story that the people were so angry that they stood up in solidarity with former President Jacob Zuma is a lie. It is a complete lie.”

Mbeki said what really happened was that the counter-revolution set out to test its strength. “They wanted to see if they could destabilise a country,” he said.

“It acted and caused the mayhem to see if it could paralyse South Africa for its own purposes.”