Thabo Mbeki: People are joining ANC to enrich themselves

Former president Thabo Mbeki has reportedly admitted that corruption has been plaguing the African National Congress (ANC) for years, saying even some senior party members had joined the party for opportunistic reasons, Huffington Post reports.

Addressing ambassadors and high-level delegates at an event in Johannesburg to commemorate the African Peer Review Mechanism’s (APRM) 14th birthday, Mbeki said these individuals had joined the governing party to gain access to state power through leadership positions.

“The ANC raised a problem repeatedly … what we were picking up was that there were people who were joining the ANC, not because they upheld the values and perspectives and aspirations of the ANC, but because it was an instrument to access state power.

“So you join, and so that I can become a minister, mayor, president or something. And the reason you want to access this power is for self-enrichment.

“This matter is discussed in documents of the ANC for the last I don’t know how many years … Here is a challenge, this is a problem, even old members of the ANC are now abusing this membership to access state power to enrich themselves,” he said.

Mbeki said it was difficult to tell what motives were behind some people joining the ANC, as it was easy to become a member of the party. He said what the continent needed was people who had a “level of commitment to the kind of Africa we seek to build.”

However, the former statesman did not name any of his colleagues or successors.

“In the end the people who pay for the corruption are the ordinary poor people. So that kind of mobilisation to say corruption is our common enemy as ordinary people, that becomes important,” he said.

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