Mugabe envoy blames ANC for failing to get two thirds majority

Presidents Mugabe's spokesperson George Charamba has blamed three blunders by South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) that prevented the revolutionary party from garnering a two thirds majority in the recent national elections.

In his Nathaniel Manheru column at the state run Herald newspaper, Charamba said the Jacob Zuma led ANC made three particular blunders by firing youth leader Julius Malema, the Marikana killings by police and the Nkandla scandal.

"Between elections, the ANC made three key blunders, and this column did not spare it. My relationship with liberation movements has always been a conscious one, well founded on critical view within a framework of unconditional broad support. First, Marikana was a disaster.

"No liberation movement should shoot the citizenry, worse so in the interest of foreign capital which has enervated the continent, which has pillaged our destiny.

That must never happen and the ANC has paid somewhat for Marikana. Thank God there was the EFF to supply some form of release to the dissent wrought by this never-to-be-repeated outrage. My mortal fear was in this organic vote of the liberation movement migrating to some unseemly home, worst of all the DA. "

Charamba said the expulsion of Malema created an unnecessary dilemma to members and supporters of liberation movements.

"Inside the ANC, it triggered a needless debate which loosened its cohesion, all for very little benefit. Ideologically, this was a dispute of little stakes, but high costs. Simply, the whole altercation suggested (and still does) some poor skills in handling energy in the movement.

"Definitionally, the youth wing of any party generates lots of heat, much of it scalding, destructive even. The youths know no measure. But it is heat that is managed by lengthening distance between its smoulder and the stool on which warming elders are perched. Not by dousing the fire against creeping winter."

Mugabe's spokesperson added, "Nkandla was a perception disaster for the ANC, principally its leadership. Whatever the facts about the project, whatever the amounts involved, whatever the number of rules allegedly bent or upheld, Nkandla was skilfully used by the combined opposition to project a venal leadership ANC did not deserve."