Independent Newspapers
Former deputy president, Baleka Mbete stands between the sculptures of Oliver and Adelaide Tambo. Picture: Damaris Helwig
Durban – Nelson Mandela might one day be looked upon as being like Jesus, the DA had no claim on him and should not use his name for electioneering, while the abaThembu king – who had insulted the president – deserved no respect.
These were the messages driven home by the ANC’s national chairwoman Baleka Mbete, who was speaking in Maphumulo, outside Stanger, on Thursday as part of the ANC’s campaign for next year’s general election.
“We must ask ourselves, ‘when was Madiba part of the DA?’ Let us not lie about it. Let us not say all of us were in the Struggle,” she said.
While the ANC’s Struggle history was well known, there were opposition parties who needed to prove where and when they had fought against apartheid, she said.
Mbete was aware that the DA was campaigning in rural areas and giving out T-shirts, food parcels and cash.
“Unfortunately there are people with money and, with their money, they go around lying to people. We know they deceive poor people. They give you money, food and everything to blind you.”
Mbete called on young people to read Mandela’s history to understand how liberation had been achieved.
July 18 had been adopted by the UN as International Mandela Day and South Africans could be proud.
“We should praise God for such a person. We should try to have the same values as him.
“Maybe, after one or two or three centuries, the generations of those times will look at Mandela the same way we look at Jesus Christ,” she said.
Mbete appealed to the crowd to pray for the ailing Mandela to get better and requested prayers for peace and sanity within his troubled family.
“There are bad things that are happening in the Mandela family, and we need to pray for them. I don’t want to interfere in the Mandela family’s problems. All I’m asking for is to pray for peace in that family.”
Mbete lashed out at abaThembu King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo for “insulting” President Jacob Zuma.
“A person who gives such insults does not deserve respect. I don’t understand how a person with a king’s status can insult an old person,” she said.
The Mercury
