标题:'The ANC Has Dug Its Own Grave' 新闻来源:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,580387,00.html (需有正确连结) By Karl-Ludwig Günsche in Cape Town South Africa's government is in a crisis. President Mbeki has been forced to resign, and 11 ministers have gone with him. The venerable ANC party could even break apart. Party chief Jacob Zuma hopes to take over as president next year -- but the new interim president, Kgalema Motlanthe, could stand in the way. Chris Nicholson seems truly surprised. "I did not foresee the consequences of the judgement," says the judge, seeming troubled. "This case is like any other I have presided over and I was just doing my job as a judge that has only one master -- that's the constitution." In his verdict on Sept. 12 Nicholson set off a political earthquake in South Africa: Because of a procedural error, he stopped a corruption trial against Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa's major political party, the African National Congress (ANC). He also accused President Thabo Mbeki of politically motivated interference. Now the nation faces its deepest political crisis since the end of apartheid. The rand is sinking, prices on the Johannesburg stock exchange have slipped into a dramatic decline, Mbeki has resigned as president and 11 ministers have followed him. Above all, the unexpected resignation of Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has raised fears in South Africa -- perhaps more than Mbeki's departure -- that the situation might spin out of control. Manuel has a reputation both within South Africa and abroad as a guarantor of political growth, financial stability and political dependability. The last twelve years of relative economic prosperity in South Africa have largely been credited to him. Crisis management was required. Zuma hastily reassured the public: "There is no need to panic. We know exactly what we should do and are doing it with speed, precision and sensitivity." ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe had assembled the most influential political commentators to reassure them, "There is no crisis." Naturally Manuel would also belong to any future cabinet, he said, and no one was behind the mass exodus of the 11 ministers but the president himself, Mbeki, who was forced to resign by the ANC. But Mantashe couldn't answer the question of whether the president acted in bad faith with a simple yes or no. In any case his action was "a dangerous mistake … If there's another dangerous mistake before Thursday we would pick up a trend. But I don't think he tried to embarrass us." So on Thursday the Mbeki era was finally laid to rest by the will of his own party. Kgalema Motlanthe was elected the third president of post-apartheid South Africa, after Mbeki and Nelson Mandela. He will be an interim president, though, only for seven months -- until Jacob Zuma can win office, as he probably will, after the next election in April 2009. For now the road to the Union Building in Pretoria is blocked for Zuma because he has no mandate within the ANC's parliamentary faction. But he's already the party's presidential nominee for April. Dangerous to Zuma? The surprise is that Zuma chose Motlanthe to act as interim president. Insiders were counting on the president of the parliament, Baleka Mbete, to be nominated. Mbete is a resolute woman, mother of five children, an author and an educator. She's a Zuma loyalist who tends to do solid work wherever the party installs her. Compared to her, Motlanthe could be thoroughly dangerous for Zuma. The 59-year-old is a compromise candidate who will be acceptable to both wings of the party that arose during the power struggle between Zuma and Mbeki. He has always suggested that he has no ambitions for the presidency, but Motlanthe is also known within the party as a power-conscious man who is valued and respected in South Africa far beyond the headquarters of the ANC. He's the son of a washerwoman and an office messenger, with the classic biography of an ANC leader. He joined the peace movement as a young man and was thrown in jail for 10 years -- on the notorious Robben Island -- by the apartheid government. (Doing time on Robben Island was a point of honor for ANC fighters.) Like many of his comrades in arms he earned a long-distance degree from the University of South Africa and forged a career in the labor union movement after his release. He became ANC secretary-general in 1997 and performed this difficult job for 10 years. Molanthe earned a reputation as a man of compromise and equilibrium. He mediates, he belongs, but he also has toughness and stamina when it is required. Motlanthe may now have a chance to remain at the top of South African politics for years to come. The corruption trial against Zuma could be revived at any time. And Mbeki is far from giving up -- his power struggle with Zuma will just shift to another round. Mbeki needs to free himself of the charge of abusing his office first, though. He has therefore appealed Nicholson's verdict, and the highest judge in the land, Pius Langa, has given the case top priority. A Rift in the ANC Nicholson's charge that Mbeki manipulated the judiciary to harm his rival, Zuma, is "vexatious, scandalous and prejudicial," Mbeki says in his appeal petition, and it cost his job as president as well as harmed his good name. But Mbeki clearly has further plans: There is already behind-the-scenes speculation that Mbeki loyalists in the ANC want to break away. Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, his deputy Mluleki George and the president of Gauteng province, Mbhazima Shilowa, are the driving forces in this movement, according to media reports. George has said a decision will be reached this week on whether the Mbeki wing of the ANC will enter April elections as a separate party. The debate over a party split received new momentum from an unexpected corner on Tuesday. Mbeki's mother Epainette said in an interview that she would give "100 percent support" to such a new party. The 92-year-old, an icon of the ANC, who was active in both the peace movement and the fight against apartheid, explained: "Naturally the people will say I'm defending my son. That's okay. But I'm speaking as an old ANC member." She said many veteran party members thought the same way, though she wouldn't name names. But her judgment on Jacob Zuma's wing of the party is devastating: "The ANC has abandoned us, people are being pushed out of the organization." The expulsion of her son from office was a question of revenge, she said, not South Africa's interest. "In a plain language," she told her interviewer, "the ANC has dug its own grave." -- 「就像其他各类集体主义一样，种族主义也寻求不劳而获。它寻求自动获得知识﹔它寻求 自动评价人们的品质而忽略运用理性或道德判断的责任﹔而更重要的是，它寻求自动的自 尊（或伪自尊）」 Ayn Rand<The Virtue of Selfishness> 致台湾之光的影迷跟球迷 --

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