Fired+spy+boss+warns+Mbeki+and+cabinet,+Karima+Brown,+B+Day



=Fired spy boss warns Mbeki, cabinet=


 * Karima Brown, Political Editor, Business Day, 28 December 2007**

Former National Intelligence Agency boss Billy Masetlha, newly elected to the African National Congress (ANC) national executive committee (NEC), says President Thabo Mbeki and his cabinet will be “recalled” from their government positions unless they “account” to Luthuli House.

Masetlha said this would happen because ANC leaders were deployed in government posts and were not elected directly to public office.

Masetlha told a gathering of the veterans’ association of the ANC’s disbanded military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, yesterday that the next couple of months were going to be “very difficult” if the government merely paid lip service to ANC resolutions taken at its watershed 52nd conference, which resulted in Mbeki being booted out and Jacob Zuma being elected as its new president.

Masetlha, who was fired by Mbeki, also warned that Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota and his deputy, Mluleki George, could face “disciplinary action” for their conduct leading up to and during the ANC conference in Limpopo last week.

The two diehard Mbeki loyalists went public over their opposition to Zuma for president of the party.

Lekota berated Zuma supporters, saying that they were not “thinking properly” and were hooligans for wearing ANC T-shirts emblazoned with Zuma’s picture. George held a rally on the sidelines of the ANC’s conference, and referred to Zuma supporters as “howlers” who had to be stopped lest they hijacked the “revolution”.

Masetlha said: “It’s one thing to be opposed to a certain candidate for the presidency, but going around calling some people a rapist and a criminal, that is not building the ANC, it is dividing the movement.”

Zuma was acquitted of rape charges, and his corruption case was thrown out of court because the National Prosecuting Authority could not present the Durban High Court with a final indictment, despite having investigated Zuma for more than seven years.

Masetlha said that while the ANC had to “heal” itself, certain “tough questions” had to be asked. “We were elected to be of service to the people. Accountability starts now,” he said.

“With due respect to the cabinet, they are going to have to account, and if they defy conference resolutions, they must be recalled.”

Masetlha said the ANC had passed several resolutions on the fate of the Scorpions crime-fighting unit.

Although the party had decided the unit would be moved to the South African Police Service, the government was “refusing to implement” the ANC’s decision.

“The ANC has spoken on this matter at least four times, and we have an ANC government who cannot carry out this resolution.

“If they (government) defy us (the ANC), we will punish them.

“The ANC has done it in the past,” Masetlha said.

Regarding Lekota’s goading of Zuma in public, Masetlha said that at its next meeting the NEC would have to look into “disciplinary procedures” against the defence minister and George.

One NEC member said that Mbeki’s decision to appoint the controversial SABC board signalled that the president was determined to take matters to the wire with the new order at Luthuli House.

Another member of the NEC said: “It’s going to be a very trying time. The president is trying to incite us by not showing any kind of respect for the new leadership.

“I am afraid that he is trying to push us to do things that I personally do not think we should be doing.”

Several newly elected NEC members said they did not want a situation such as that in Zambia, where an outgoing president suddenly found himself on the wrong side of the law because political scores were being settled after the ruling party underwent a change in guard.

However, should Mbeki continue the standoff with the ANC, things could “ well go that way”, they said.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/TarkArticle.aspx?ID=3108306**

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