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Mbeki Out As South African Leader

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The Associated Press

Published: September 21, 2008

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Thabo Mbeki is fond of packing his speeches with passages from "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," so it is perhaps fitting his downfall had the hallmarks of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Mbeki devoted his life to the African National Congress, joining as a youth of 14. Yet the party rejected him months ago as its president and, on Saturday, in a final betrayal, ordered him to quit as South Africa's president.

Gwede Mantashe, ANC secretary general, said at a news conference that Mbeki had taken the news in stride: "He did not display any shock or any depression," Mantashe said. "He welcomed the news and agreed that he is going to participate in the process and the formalities."

Mbeki's departure paves the way for rival Jacob Zuma to take power and leaves the country in a state of political and economic uncertainty.

Mbeki's departure could presage a major shift in economic policy and the resignation of numerous Mbeki loyalists in the Cabinet.

However, Mantashe said Zuma was calling on Cabinet ministers to stay on for the sake of stability.

A trusted Zuma ally, parliamentary speaker Baleka Mbete, is expected to be appointed interim president.

The party's decision is a harsh rebuke to the man who succeeded anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela in 1999.

Mbeki had first served the congress as an acolyte in the nation's freedom struggle and later for two decades as one of its most prominent leaders.

While Mandela brought reconciliation to a troubled land, Mbeki ushered in a period of stability and growing prosperity. His economic policies won him accolades from big business and foreign investors but failed to lift millions of South Africans out of poverty or ease crushing unemployment.

Variously estimated at between 25 percent and 40 percent, unemployment has remained a manacle on the millions living in the shanties.

His government did much to improve housing and health care, but his refusal to accept the causes and scale of the AIDS crisis reversed many of the social advances.

He joined maverick scientists in questioning whether a virus was the cause of AIDS. He led the resistance to antiretroviral treatment, acting as if the AIDS epidemic were a defamatory plot against Africans and con job by avaricious pharmaceutical companies.

The populist Zuma, expected to take over after parliamentary elections next year, has made several comebacks from near political oblivion: He beat rape charges in 2006 and just over a week ago had fraud and racketeering charges thrown out on a technicality.

Information from The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times was used in this report.

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