'The question is never asked if a President is capable and a fit and proper person.'
Former president Thabo Mbeki says the way South Africa elects its president is “wrong.”
Mbeki delivered the keynote address under the theme “Making Sense of the National Dialogue – A People in Conversation,” at the launch of the National Dialogue for the Eastern Cape higher education sector at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha on Saturday.
The former president said a National Dialogue was urgently needed to address South Africa’s numerous crises and called for reform of the country’s presidential election system.
Electing a president
Mbeki said questions need to be asked whether a proposed presidential candidate elected in Parliament is capable of carrying out the tasks of the president of the country and addressing the needs and challenges of the people.
“One of the things they must say in the National Dialogue, the Intelligencia, we have to change the manner in which we choose our president. Because we must ensure that the person who becomes president is competent to carry out all the tasks,” Mbeki said.
“The manner in which we elect the president is wrong. The question is never asked if a President is capable and a fit and proper person.
“When Parliament said I must become president, they did not have a clue what I was capable of doing, and they never asked,” he said to the laughter of the audience.
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‘Civic disengagement’
Mbeki emphasised that South Africa faces “unprecedented and dangerous levels of civic disengagement and despondency” and that “urgent intervention” is required.
“If you look at South Africa at the age of thirty, the economy is in crisis, the politics are in crisis, crime and corruption crisis, even our relations with the rest of the continent are in crisis, there is nothing you can look at in South Africa at thirty which does not say crisis.”
National Dialogue
Mbeki said before the national elections last year, he examined the manifestos of political parties and concluded that politicians did not have the answers.
“It is time for South Africans to provide the answers,” said Mbeki. “And by answers, I don’t mean [political] promises. Answers can only come from the people, not political parties.”
Mbeki said this was the basis of his proposal for a National Dialogue.
The former president called on the nation’s scholars and civic leaders to “take the lead in finding practical answers to the country’s crises” and urged them to “move beyond wishlists” toward actionable solutions.
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