Do not let the ANC render itself into "nothingness", Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe (93) told President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday.
Mugabe used his official visit to South Africa to advise Zuma ahead of the ANC's elective conference in December. On Tuesday, Mugabe spoke at the second session of the Bi-National Commission in Pretoria.
Mugabe was aware of tensions arising in the ANC ahead of the conference, which resulted in violent conflicts among members.
"I don't know what we would be if all that future is rendered into nothingness, torn apart." Mugabe said during his address. "We wish [the] ANC every success at the congress. So that it can continue into the future renewed and strengthened."
"We are one -- one people, one revolution, one struggle, one future," he added.
Earlier this year, speaking at the national shrine during the burial of the southern African country's two heroes, Moudy Muzenda and George Rutanhire, Mugabe said he had asked an ANC minister why the whites still held so much power in South Africa.
"I asked one ANC minister how come the whites have been left with so much power, and he said it was because of your friend Mandela. That was an ANC minister who was saying that..." Mugabe said.
Mugabe also accused ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe of reacting "stupidly" when Mantashe, the aforementioned "minister", called on Mugabe to stop attacking former president Nelson Mandela's legacy.
"What was the most important thing for [Mandela] was his release from prison and nothing else. He cherished that freedom more than anything else and forgot why he was put in jail," Mugabe responded, in comments translated by NewZimbabwe.com.