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In the early days of AfricanCrisis (2000-2003 – I can’t remember the exact year), I was approached by some young Zulus. One of them had stood for election in Natal for the ANC and had won. But now he wanted to go on to bigger things. These young Zulus met me and told me that there is a Xhosa conspiracy in the ANC and that no Zulu can ever become the President of South Africa. They were very impressed by the rise of the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) in Zimbabwe. They wanted to do a similar thing in SA and so they wanted to launch the NMDC – New MDC. They wanted me to help them.

In the end I made arrangements and notified journalists of their launch. The launch took place in a hotel in the Johannesburg CBD (Inner City). The journalists, mostly white ones, arrived and listened to them. But the journalists were not impressed with them at all and literally laughed in their face. They also did not have financial support. So they disappeared and I lost interest in them and lost contact with them.

Their assumption seemed to have been that to launch a political party, all you need is a press conference and big things will flow from that, which actually never happened.

Their notion of the Xhosa conspiracy, has a lot of merit and the only Zulu to survive inside the ANC and to rise was in fact Zuma. In this regard, I have some admiration for Zuma because I do believe that his survival and power inside the ANC is quite unique.