There is much anticipation and speculation about the nature of ANC President Jacob Zuma's commemorative lecture on Thabo Mbeki.
Throughout the year the ruling party has hosted regular commemorative lectures to honour all their former presidents, with the final lecture to be about the incumbent, President Jacob Zuma.
The Thabo Mbeki lecture is being delivered in Aliwal North in the Eastern Cape today.
Mbeki's mother, Epainnette Mbeki, has said she was anxiously waiting to hear how the ANC was going to celebrate her son after they humiliated him in 2008. Mbeki was removed from office a few months before he could complete his second term as president of the country. This was after he was defeated by President Jacob Zuma to lead the ANC at its Polokwane congress in 2007.
Yesterday, Mbeki received a continental award as African of the Year, following his work in mediating between Sudan and South Sudan.
The ANC has said the absence of former President Thabo Mbeki at the lecture in his honour would not affect the staging of the event.
In his recent OR Tambo lecture at the Fort Hare University, Mbeki lambasted the current leadership of the ANC, warning that the country was losing direction and progressing towards a protracted crisis. His comments were met with outrage by ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu) president Sdumo Dlamini, and the South African Communist Party (SACP)'s Blade Nzimande.
Political Analyst, Dr. Somadoda Fikeni, said today's lecture would be watched closely by those who have invoked Mbeki's legacy to criticise President Jacob Zuma's administration.
Fikeni said: "Of all the lectures that President Zuma has delivered (this one) will be the most tricky, because he has to speak positively about the person that his leadership removed and, as such, if he is too negative, those people who are observing might feel that he has not risen above the predicament of their differences. If he is too positive only one month before ANC elections, then he might invoke nostalgia for the people to say we miss him."
Негізгі бет ANC CENTENARY LECTURE ON THABO MBEKI
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