Absence has not made the heart grow fonder for former South African President Thabo Mbeki, South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande said on Monday.

"Today, apart from some Cope [Congress of the People]-ites, there is hardly a single journalist, opposition party member, academic, business leader, or political commentator who speaks with any nostalgia for the Mbeki Presidential era," said Nzimande in presenting the SACP's discussion paper - ahead of its December conference - to the media in Johannesburg.

Nzimande said that when Mbeki was recalled last September there were "dire warnings of chaos and meltdown" from the "reformist centre".

"The most hysterical of which was archbishop [Desmond] Tutu's prediction of imminent 'civil war'."

Now, he said "there is an almost complete national consensus that Mbeki's aloof and intolerant personality was a disaster... Thankfully we are now once more in a situation in which national dialogue and debate are possible."