'Time to deliver, ANC'

Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya argued that the stasis gripping SA following the ANC's December 2007 Polokwane conference where Mbeki was ousted as party president and Jacob Zuma was voted in was "the worst time in this young republic".

"South Africa needed Mbeki to make way because, in many ways, this transition was more difficult than the transition from the apartheid government to the democratic order," he wrote.

Makhanya said the pro-Zuma leadership "should be preparing to govern spends all its energy trying to create a cult around its top man": "We need to start building,".

City Press editor-in-chief Mathatha Tsedu focused on the character and policy-choice flaws that led to Mbeki's fall, saying that his demise was rooted in his personality.

Describing Mbeki as "someone with no time for fools" who "expected everybody to understand", Tsedu wrote: "Believing in his own intellectual superiority, President Thabo Mbeki could not accept that he was not trusted implicitly."

Political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki, who is the president's brother and has been critical of his presidency, told the Sunday Times that the ANC move's was a "recipe for civil war".

"My view is that what the ANC national executive is doing or has done is setting a very dangerous precedent for South Africa, which could lead to the kind of civil war we saw in Kenya at the beginning of this year," he said.

Threats for SA

Opposition party leaders also condemned the ANC's decision to recall Mbeki.

The United Democratic Movement's leader, Bantu Holomisa, said it was "an act of political barbarity to remove the head of state like this - it threatens to plunge the country into anarchy".

Independent Democrats head Patricia de Lille called for "a clear plan by the ANC to deal with the impact Mbeki's exit will have on the running of government, service delivery, economic stability and international relations".

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said the decision meant the ANC's internal battles had turned into a crisis for South Africa.

"ANC factionalism has long undermined government's ability to deliver, and it now threatens to destabilise the entire country."

She said the move was a clear attempt to find a "political solution" to Jacob Zuma's legal problems: "Replacing President Mbeki with a Zuma proxy will open the way for them to ensure that he does not have to face a court of law. If Zuma is put above the law it will do more to undermine the constitution than anything else."

She said it was "untenable" for Zuma to assume the presidency without being acquitted of corruption charges by a court of law. "Judge Nicholson's judgment was not an acquittal."

Inkatha Freedom Party president Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi said the ANC national executive committee's decision represented the biggest challenge to SA since apartheid.

He said history would judge Mbeki as a "towering figure" who consolidated President Nelson Mandela's remarkable legacy and promoted the notion of an "African Renaissance".

The Financial Times newspaper noted that investors and business leaders will now be watching to see whether Mbeki's conservative economic stance "will be swept aside along with his presidency".

It said a senior Zuma ally recently told the paper that the "new, left-leaning dispensation in the party and the unions and communists with which it governs would seek 'a complete review of the conservative strategies that we've pursued - all of them' once in government".

The FT said that after months of paralysis, rumour and infighting, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said investors should take heart that the party had made a decision. "We want the market to be sure and certain about where we are going. If there is certainty, it can mitigate the risk that goes with the vulnerability of the economy, which is carrying a precarious 9% current account deficit, leaving it exposed to sudden withdrawals of foreign exchange," the paper quoted him as saying.

- Fin24.com