Mbeki fears South Africa is 'losing sense of direction'
Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, has broken a four-year silence to deliver a withering verdict on the state of the nation as it reels from violent strikes and dampened self-confidence. Although he did not mention the president, Jacob Zuma, by name,Mbeki's first intervention in domestic politics since being forced from office in 2008 was widely interpreted as an attack on his successor. The 70-year-old said he was "deeply troubled by a feeling of great unease that our beloved motherland is losing its sense of direction, and that we are allowing ourselves to progress towards a costly disaster of a protracted and endemic general crisis". Mbeki continued: "I, for one, am not certain about where our country and nation will be tomorrow, and what I should do in this regard, to respond to what is obviously a dangerous and unacceptable situation of directionless and unguided national drift."
Having succeeded Nelson Mandela as president in 1999, Mbeki was forced to resign after the governing African National Congress (ANC) turned against him and elected Zuma. He has subsequently declined to comment on day-to-day politics inSouth Africa and the ANC. But the killing by police of 34 striking miners at Marikana and continued violent unrest in the mining sector, along with a deepening sense of national malaise at home and abroad, may have prompted Mbeki to speak out. Zuma is facing a leadership contest in December.
"Among others, that feeling of unease is informed by questions I have not been able to answer about what happened which allowed the eminently avoidable massacre at the Lonmin Marikana mine in the north-west province to happen," said Mbeki, who was giving a lecture at Fort Hare university in Eastern Cape province. "My feeling of unease is also informed by what I sense is a pervasive understanding throughout the nation that there is no certainty about our future with regard to any of our known challenges, and therefore the future of the nation." Mbeki warned: "I am convinced that it would be treacherous to hide our heads in the sand and behave as though we remain on course in terms of the achievement of our shared and various national objectives."
He went on to quote some lines from Hamlet: "'The time is out of joint. O curséd spite/ That ever I was born to set it right!' I dare say that the time during which we live is out of joint. The challenge each one of us faces is whether we have the courage to set it right."
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