In the UK, 40% of voters boycotted the July 4 elections while in the South African context 60% had stayed away from the May elections.
“As in the UK, these are not right-wing people. However, they feel that democratic politics is not working for them. In many instances in the past, they did not vote for the ANC or any other party. They continue to belong among ‘the neglected, the ignored, the impoverished, the reviled, the mutinous’.”
He warned this might be used by “negative forces to incite a similar riotous rampage” in the country.
“Given the sordid response to the Miss South Africa candidacy of Miss Chidimma Adetshina, it could easily happen that such negative forces in our country could use xenophobic Afrophobia to engage in the moronic inferno to which Jason Cowley referred.”
Should such a grouping arise, Mbeki warned that they would be encouraged because those “who take great pride in demanding ‘Mabahambe!’”, and others of their ilk, are now sitting in both parliament and government.
One proponent of this “they must go” statement is current sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie and his Patriotic Alliance party which boasts nine seats in parliament, he said.
The former president claimed that the country must also underline the “xenophobic Afrophobia” as an important part of the political agenda of the counter revolution.
Quoting Cowley, he highlighted this interpretation of the UK riots saying that the harrowing ethno-sectarian violence and racist attacks of recent weeks on mosques and hotels sheltering asylum seekers in provincial towns have revealed something dark and shocking: an England atomised, an England in pieces.
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