Analysts say the roots of the tension lie in ANC negotiations of the early 1990s, when Mbeki was replaced as chief negotiator by Ramaphosa.
The renewed feud between President Cyril Ramaphosa and former president Thabo Mbeki dates back to before 1994 and their disagreement over preparations for the upcoming national convention has opened old wounds, experts say.
Political analyst Sandile Swana and University of South Africa political scientist Prof Dirk Kotzé said the tension between the two leaders started during negotiations in 1990s for the new democratic dispensation.
Foundations withdraw from dialogue preparations
They were reacting to the decisions by six legacy foundations – the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, Steve Biko Foundation, FW de Klerk Foundation, Chief Albert Luthuli Foundation, Oliver & Adelaide Tambo Foundation and Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation – to withdraw from the National Dialogue preparations.
The foundations said the convention has deviated from the plan to have the process led by civil society, or citizens.
Instead, matters were being rushed without proper consultation by the government, which had centralised the process.
Ramaphosa said this week’s convention would go ahead as planned, implying it would move on without the foundations’ participation.
Roots of the rivalry in the 1990s negotiations
The experts said the tension between Mbeki and Ramaphosa was exacerbated when Mbeki, as the ANC’s first chief negotiator assisted by Jacob Zuma, were removed and replaced with Ramaphosa, who was assisted by Mohammed Valli Moosa.
ANC insiders at the time saw this as a snub for Mbeki and Zuma and an embrace of Ramaphosa, whom they claimed emerged from nowhere into Nelson Mandela’s inner circle after his release from jail.
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Ramaphosa was subsequently elected ANC secretary-general at the party’s 48th national conference in 1991, succeeding Alfred Nzo.
Mandela wanted Ramaphosa as his deputy and successor as president, but the ANC old guard wanted Mbeki, who was Oliver Tambo’s right-hand man in exile.
Mandela gave in to the majority within the party and was further convinced by Kenneth Kaunda and other Southern African Development Community leaders that Mbeki was the right candidate to succeed him, as that was part of Tambo’s plan.
Role of the ANC’s left wing and SACP
Kotzé said Mbeki’s removal as ANC chief negotiator was engineered by the left within the ANC, especially Joe Slovo and other senior SA Communist Party (SACP) leaders.
The left saw Mbeki as unreliable because, as a then SACP politburo member in exile, he acted against the party’s position for a total insurrection against apartheid when he held secret talks with Afrikaner delegations for a negotiated settlement.
Possible reasons for Mbeki’s recent withdrawal
Kotzé said Mbeki was fully involved in the dialogue with Afrikaners and the National Intelligence Service before 1990, but this was opposed by the SACP leadership, of which Mbeki was part.
Subsequently, Mbeki did not continue his SACP membership. “Because of that history, the SACP, particularly Joe Slovo, made it impossible for him to be the chief negotiator of the ANC.
“Instead, they got Ramaphosa in as ANC chief negotiator. From a Mbeki perspective, those things he would never forget. I don’t want to suggest there is open hostility; at the same time, there is no close friendship,” he said.
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Kotzé said, he could only speculate that Mbeki’s decision to pull out of the National Dialogue process was because he saw himself as an initiator of it.
“He is almost a father figure of this. My impression is that the foundations were initially very prominent in the preparations and very recently, the government took over.
“This is exactly what the foundations, the Mbeki Foundation specifically or Mbeki himself, do not like.”
