In @Politicsweb today, Dave Steward wrote a seminal piece in his reading of the Mbeki-report. politicsweb.co.za/news/mbeki… “The Mbeki document is a sad indication of the degree to which its authors – probably including the former President – have lost all contact with reality. Were the SACP and Cosatu – who were primarily responsible for President Mbeki’s defeat at Polokwane and for South Africa’s catastrophic decline – really working for a sinister Afrikaner counter revolution? Or did they manage it all by themselves? If the authors of the document are so bereft of any understanding of the real nature of South Africa’s problems and of how we came to this sorry pass, how can they be expected to make a positive contribution to the search for the solutions that we so desperately need? It is also a reflection of the degree to which they remain enmeshed in the racial/Marxist gobbeldy-gook of the NDR. Afrikaners are not their enemy. They are not involved in a sinister counter-revolution to re-establish apartheid. They are simply providing for themselves – and for others – the basic services that government at all levels is so manifestly failing to provide. They have no wish to re-establish any form of apartheid: they are just claiming their right, as one of South Africa’s constituent communities, to the cultural and language guarantees that are core elements of the 1996 constitutional accord”.