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CAPE TOWN — A fire-bomb attack on the headquarters of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) drew outrage from the politics arena yesterday. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), an alliance of the ANC, called the attack “an attempt to terrorise and intimidate a political movement.”
The attack took place on Tuesday evening at the ANC headquarters, known as Chief Albert Luthuli House. A fire, caused by a fire-bomb, broke out at the reception area next to the main entrance. Security personnel managed to put the fire out before it spread.
“This criminal act should be treated as attempted murder, since had the fire spread throughout the building, many lives could have been lost.
“This is not just an attack on the ANC, but on our constitutional democracy, an attempt to terrorise and intimidate a political movement,” Cosatu national spokesperson Patrick Craven said.
This terror attack would not deflect the ANC and Cosatu from the struggle to build a democratic, non-racist and non-sexist South Africa, Craven said.
Also yesterday, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) condemned the suspected arson attack, saying such incidents undermine the spirit of democracy and the freedom of political parties to campaign without fear of intimidation.
“The DA hopes that the perpetrators of this alleged crime will be caught and prosecuted in terms of the law,” DA spokesman Mmusi Maimane said.
“In a country where constitutional freedoms have been achieved through great sacrifice, we cannot allow such actions to take us back to a place of fear or intolerance,” said Maimane.
The motive for the attack remains unknown. So far no arrests have been made.
The ANC said it viewed the attack in serious light as it appeared “as an act of attempting to destabilize the ANC through acts arson and sabotage.”
Meanwhile, the suspension of seven ANC members linked to recent sanitation protests in Cape Town was the result of a provincial government investigation, the DA said yesterday.
“I am convinced that if it were not for the investigation by the provincial government and the unequivocal identification of the culprits, the seven would probably still have been members of the ANC,” Western Cape Democratic Alliance leader Ivan Meyer said.
There have been at least a dozen incidents of human waste being dumped in front of buildings, at the airport, or on city highways over the past four months. — Xinhua- Sapa.
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