Former president says successor should have answered opposition questions about use of taxpayers’ money to upgrade private residence



Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, believes that his successor Jacob Zuma was wrong to duck a question in parliament that led to unprecedented chaos and a fresh round of national soul searching.

In Mbeki’s view, Zuma should have directly answered when asked by opposition MPs when he will repay millions in public funds spent on security upgrades at his private homestead, the Guardian has been told. He thinks it would have been the easiest way to deal with the issue.

Instead Zuma, heckled during his state of the nation address on Thursday evening, sat down as the parliamentary speaker ordered armed security guards and police to drag the Economic Freedom Fighters kicking and fighting out of the chamber.

Several people were injured in the brawl, dubbed a national embarrassment and broadcast around the world.

Mbeki lost a bitter power struggle with Zuma in 2008 and has since offered only coded criticisms of his rival. But addressing students at the University of South Africa in the capital, Pretoria, on Friday, the 72-year-old said: “I think we would all of us agree that what happened in parliament yesterday was very troubling.

“I’m sure that all of us, including the parliamentarians, never expected that such a thing would happen in parliament ... I sat in the same hall from 1994 to 2008 and either listened to or participated in making many state of the nation addresses and nothing of the sort ever happened.”

Mbeki did not make direct reference to the controversy around Nkandla, the homestead on which, anti-corruption watchdog found, 246m rand (£13.73m) of taxpayers’ money was spent in a display of “opulence on a grand scale” amid a sea of poverty. But he said he felt the problem was “bigger than parliament”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma in 2007. Photograph: Jon Hrusa/EPA

In an apparent swipe at speaker Baleka Mbete for insisting that MPs’ questions are not allowed at a state of the nation address, he continued: “My reading of the problem is the problem is political, and you don’t use administrative instruments to resolve a political problem ... If the problem is political, you’re not going to change it by quoting a rule. You’ve got to confront the political problem.”

Politicians are elected by the people to solve problems, he added. “Let’s answer that question. Let’s not say, ‘You’re out of order, you can’t ask that’.”

Mbeki went on: “There’s something that is politically wrong, not administratively wrong. Let’s isolate it. What is the political problem? Let’s put aside for a moment the rulebook. If we start there, it’s not going to solve our problem. That’s what I think.”

On Friday South Africa reflected on the ugly scenes that unfolded 25 years to the week after the release from prison of its first black president, Nelson Mandela. Zuma told a breakfast session in Cape Town: “Our democracy is extraordinarily user-friendly, you can do whatever you want in South Africa, it’s a strength, at the same time it’s a weakness.”

But Julius Malema, leader of the EFF, said: “It is a sad day that elected representatives can be beaten by police. All of us should agree that South Africa is in a crisis. This has put our democracy in a serious danger.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema. Photograph: Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty Images

Mmusi Maimane, parliamentary leader of the biggest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, which staged a walkout over the use of armed security, said: “The scenes last night inside parliament’s chambers tell the story of a national embarrassment that played itself out not just here, but on news networks across the globe.

“The forceful invasion of the chambers by armed police officers was a fundamental violation of the constitution, and the separation of powers between two spheres of state.”

Many commentators pointed to the jamming of mobile phone signals in the parliament chamber ahead of Zuma’s speech, preventing journalists from filing stories and pictures, as a worrying sign of a government crackdown freedom of expression.

The influential Business Day newspaper declared in a front-page headline: “Chaos sign of SA’s democratic decline.” It argued: “Unthinkable less than five years ago, the disturbing scenes that unfolded in and outside the national assembly last night are cause for SA to pause and reflect on why and how the country has arrived at this point. SA is in the mess that played out in parliament precisely because it has prioritised acquiescence to executive sensibilities over the critical need to do what is right.”



