Shock! Horror! Is Mbeki Lying?

Fortunately I’m not the type of person that would refer to the president of a country as “a fucking unrepentant liar that should be strung up by his feet.”

Thanks goodness for that else this Blog would have been full of expletives and derogatory statements.

However, someone is lying.

You decide who it is.

In the green corner we have Thabo Mbeki the president of South Africa and the ANC who is clearly busy with election campaigning and stating that GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution Strategy) was making steady progress in meeting the basic needs of poor people. Things are thus improving according to Mbeki as reported in this article dated October 26th.

In the red corner we have Zwelinzima Viva the General Secretary of COSATU. (Congress of South African Trade Unions) who maintains that GEAR has led to the scandalous situation of a supposedly "booming" economy that left 40% of workers unemployed.
Viva also said that: “Unemployed and casual workers were better off under apartheid than now.”
Earlier this year he clashed with Mbeki by saying the country's economic growth was merely a government ploy to create hype and no different to Nazi propaganda. (Read the full article dated October 27th here.)

Mbeki have rubbished Vavi’s statements as shameless fabrication by the "left alternative" to discredit the ANC.

Clearly the honeymoon is now over between these previously staunch allies.

Mbeki based his opinions on the results of a Community Survey 2007 published by Statistics South Africa. (An important sounding name for an organisation that can not even give you the correct population figures for South Africa to the nearest 10 million.)

Viva on the other hand is a trade union representative and thus exposed to wage and employment facts and figures on a daily basis.

Who would you have listened to?