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Former president Thabo Mbeki. Picture: MASI LOSI
Former president Thabo Mbeki. Picture: MASI LOSI

Former president Thabo Mbeki has rubbished EFF leader Julius Malema’s claims that he was plotting with former spy boss Arthur Fraser to oust President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Mbeki believes Malema’s claim was birthed by the “old” apartheid intelligence machinery.

According to the former president, the intention is to deepen divisions within the ANC and frustrate its efforts to forge renewal, a process Mbeki is part of.

“[Former] president Mbeki rejects Mr Malema’s scuttlebutt with the contempt it deserves,” said Thabo Mbeki Foundation spokesperson Siyabulela Gebe.

“He is certain that it originates from the old apartheid intelligence machinery [and] it is intended to deepen divisions within the ANC and to frustrate efforts towards the organisation’s renewal.”

Malema on Wednesday dropped a bombshell when he alleged that Fraser was working with Mbeki to unseat Ramaphosa.

This after Fraser opened a police complaint against Ramaphosa claiming the incumbent ANC and country’s president was involved in concealing a crime committed at his Phala Phala farm in Limpopo.

The red berets firebrand claims that Mbeki was keen on seeing Ramaphosa fall and was looking at making a comeback to lead the ANC.

“RET forces of the ANC have never in jubilation celebrated Fraser, including on the Phala Phala allegations. They have never declared Fraser as a hero and used Phala Phala as a way of decampaigning the president. That is why it was difficult to raise it in the policy conference of the ANC, because it was not their initiative,” alleged Malema.

“They are asking themselves whose agenda Fraser is driving. The answer is Fraser is with [former] president Mbeki in the unseating of President Ramaphosa, because Mbeki says he is still disgruntled for not finishing his term [as president]. Fraser is actually working with Mbeki and not the RET forces.”

TimesLIVE


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