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Pres ident Thabo Mbeki yesterday rejected claims the ANC wanted to change the Constitution after the April 14 elections, and instead accused opposition parties of wanting to change it.

Writing in the African National Congress' online publication, ANC Today, he said some people were trying to frighten the electorate against voting for the ANC by telling the "outright untruth" that the party wanted a two-thirds majority to enable it to change the Constitution.

Because the ANC played a central and decisive role in drafting and adopting the Constitution, it had an obligation to be its principal defender.

"The parties that loudly proclaim their opposition to the ANC are opposed to some of the fundamental values underlying and expressed in our Constitution," he said.

"The ANC seeks no fundamental changes to the Constitution, precisely because our basic law reflects the value system espoused for decades by the masses and the struggle it led and leads.

"To the contrary, our opponents seek political power to ensure that our country changes course, developing on a basis opposed to the very value system for which so many sacrificed their lives," Mbeki said.

Contrary to the ANC's position, a number of political parties proclaiming their main electoral objective to be the weakening of the ANC, were "interested that our Constitution should be amended".

"In all instances, the changes they desire would be fundamentally at variance with the value system that informs our Constitution".

The African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), for example, said in its manifesto it "believes in a constitutional state that promotes Christian moral values and as such rejects the concept of South Africa as a secular state".

"Thus the ACDP wants to take the country backwards towards the period of the apartheid years, when the then ruling National Party imposed Christianity as, to all intents and purposes, the state religion," he said.

"This would reintroduce religious bigotry into our politics, entrench inequality in our society, and block the advance towards national unity and reconciliation in a diverse society, thus condemning all of us to increased tension and conflict".

To bring this about would require a radical rewriting of the Constitution, fundamentally at variance with the basic values affecting society that informed the Constitution.

The ACDP and other parties also wanted, among other things, the return of the death penalty, which had been declared unconstitutional.

Both the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Democratic Alliance "proclaimed their attachment to federalism", which would seriously undermine the constitutional objectives of healing the divisions of the past and improving the quality of life of all South Africans, Mbeki said. – Sapa.

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