The agenda behind the July riots in South Africa, a lack of skilled workers in municipalities and the need to clean up political leadership in local government were some of the key issues former president Thabo Mbeki tackled when he addressed the business sector and professionals on Thursday night.

"You may generate huge resources. If you do not change the political character, the value system of that political leadership, those resources will disappear into people's pockets," he warned.

Turning to the civil unrest and looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in July, he said it was engineered by people who had a political agenda.

"Those people wanted to incite racial conflict, those who were responsible, I wouldn't be surprised if they were also involved in ensuring that the deaths take place," he said.

"They are racially divisive, so let us unite to make sure we fish our country out of a crisis," he added.

He was speaking at the International Convention Centre in Durban, which was impacted by the riots.

Mbeki said, "What happened here was deliberate and conscious. It's people who had a particular political agenda. Targeting the government – not provincial government – national government. One of the outcomes is to incite racism. To incite racial conflict."

He said former president Nelson Mandela warned in 1997 that the African National Congress (ANC) was changing negatively because since it became a governing party in 1994, people joined - not because they believe in its policies but because they saw it as a route to power and self-enrichment.

"That message has been repeated by the ANC since then, up to the last conference in 2017 - [the] same message over a period of 20 years. And the reason for that is because, in truth, we in the leadership of the ANC did not know how to deal with this problem."

According to Mbeki, Mandela said those kinds of people should be kept out of the ANC because they were "not ANC people", and would kill the party from the inside.

"I'm saying we failed to deal with this problem."

As the number of people joining the party for self-enrichment accumulated, it was bound to have an impact on the organisation, he added.

This is why the ANC's process of renewal was a "matter of life and death" for the party, Mbeki said.

"The ANC must show publicly that it is renewing itself." 

ANC renewal

Mbeki reiterated his stance that the ANC was too big to fail. He said to effectively fight corruption, the ANC must face internal renewal.

"It (the ANC) owes itself in order to survive. If the ANC does not correct itself, the country is in trouble. If it collapses, the country will be ungovernable."

Ahead of the municipal elections on Monday, the former president said municipalities needed to prioritise hiring skilled people. He recalled a meeting with a "very big corporation" about a fortnight ago during which the need for skilled workers in municipalities was discussed.

He said, "Municipalities need skilled people, professional people, and this company said they themselves have been talking about that and they said, there is no particular reason that we as a company cannot contribute towards that, to help the municipalities to get the kind of skills that are needed to be able to produce the kind of services that are required in the municipalities."

"We need engineers," he added.

But it was not all doom and gloom.

Mbeki praised President Cyril Ramaphosa for using the Covid-19 crisis to work with social partners, like businesses, to improve the economy.

"In September last year, the president [issued] a statement that social partners agreed on a common statement on what needs to happen to this economy. I was watching President Ramaphosa say that and I stood up [and] gave him a standing ovation...at last, since 1994...social partners came together and said this is what we are going to do together to address this fundamental problem."

He also spoke about the Nugent Commission of Inquiry that investigated governance at South African Revenue Services (SARS), saying that the collapse of SARS would have been detrimental to the country.

"If it had succeeded, democratic South Africa would have collapsed. Who is this person, who would take it upon themselves consciously that the revenue services must be destroyed?"