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Johannesburg - Two senior ANC members lashed out at Nedbank
Group [JSE:NED] chairperson Reuel Khoza in media reports on Friday for his comments
about a lack of leadership in South Africa.
"Badmouthing the country affects its competitiveness
globally and this can best be defined as economic suicide of the worst
sort," ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe wrote in the New Age
newspaper.
"As the ANC, we may have views about business
leadership, some of these views may be positive or negative, we will never use
any platform to castigate them publicly."
Khoza, writing in Nedbank's latest annual report last month,
said South African's "strange breed" of leadership needed to adhere
to the institutions that underpinned democracy.
The political climate was not a picture of an accountable
democracy.
"Our political leadership's moral quotient is
degenerating and we are fast losing the checks and balances that are necessary
to prevent a recurrence of the past," he wrote.
"We have a duty to build and develop this nation and to
call to book the putative leaders who, due to sheer incapacity, cannot deal
with the complexity of 21st century governance and leadership, cannot
lead."
Mantashe said any business leader who behaved like an
analyst was in the wrong profession.
"Any view expressed in the Nedbank annual report is
based, at best, on the sympathy one has with those who throw stones at the
ANC."
He said companies that were serious about the country's
future had met the ANC "irrespective of what they think of the
leadership".
Also writing in the New Age, Higher Education Minister Blade
Nzimande said Khoza's comments were built on the "media-backed liberal
offensive" to discredit ANC leadership,
targeting particularly President Jacob Zuma.
He said the offensive was aimed at discrediting Zuma ahead of the party's elective conference in Mangaung.
