Johannesburg - Former president Thabo Mbeki has warned the country that it faces serious problems in future if it doesn’t address existing race and wealth-distribution problems.
Mbeki said South Africa remained a two-nation country more than a decade after he raised concerns about the problem when he was still president.
Speaking on newly launched Gauteng talk radio station Power FM on Thursday night, Mbeki also urged members of the public to hold elected representatives accountable to ensure they pursued the objectives of the constitution and delivered on their promises.
Mbeki made the warning while speaking on the Power Perspective show hosted by Tim Modise. “South Africa remains divided in terms of race and colour, in terms of wealth. If we don’t address it properly, tomorrow, we are going to have very serious problems,” Mbeki said.
Giving South African Airways’s plan to train more black pilots as an example, Mbeki said the aim was “not to discriminate against white people, but to achieve the objectives of our constitution”.
These objectives included non-racialism, non-sexism and building a prosperous country.
Urging ordinary South Africans to hold public representatives accountable, Mbeki said they should “keep a check on them and say ‘have you done the things you promised after we elected you?’ ”
He also called on the country and the world not to have sleepless nights over Nelson Mandela’s health, saying he knew for sure that his condition was improving because he was in touch with the Mandela family and his doctors.
“Nelson Mandela is indeed improving in terms of his health. I don’t think anybody should entertain wrong notions that Nelson Mandela is going to die tomorrow. It’s not going to happen,” he insisted.
Asked for his thoughts about the state of affairs in the country, in particular whether the centre was still holding, Mbeki replied: “I have said before that I really don’t want to insert myself into the current partisan politics of the country.”
The Star