The MK Party has rejected remarks by former president Thabo Mbeki which it says portray the party as a product of “counter-revolutionary forces” rooted in apartheid-era security structures, arguing that the claims are reckless, dangerous and unsupported by evidence. Nhlamulo Ndhlela, a spokesperson for the MK Party, stated that Mbeki's narrative was an attempt to undermine the democratic choices made by millions of voters who had abandoned the ANC.

“The MK Party rejects, as politically reckless, socially dangerous and intellectually dishonest, the narrative advanced by former President Thabo Mbeki,” Ndhlela said. At the inaugural uMkhonto weSizwe Liberation War Veterans (MKLWV) conference, Mbeki told attendees that public outrage over former president Jacob Zuma's imprisonment and the unrest in July 2021 had been misrepresented as popular solidarity. He said the idea that people rose in defence of Zuma was “a lie, a complete lie”, and dismissed that explanation as “a lot of rubbish”.

According to Mbeki, the unrest was a deliberate intervention by what he termed the “counter-revolution”, aimed at testing whether it could destabilise and paralyse South Africa. Mbeki questioned why voters in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, and Mpumalanga had abandoned the ANC in large numbers in the 2024 elections and linked this alleged counter-revolutionary machinery to the MK Party's rise. According to him, "it was the activation of that national security management system which produced that result" rather than dissatisfaction with the ANC leadership was the reason for this.

Mbeki referred to the communities of hostels, stating that "they are controlled by the same person" and "the same person who controlled them when they were IFP hostels is the same person who controls them today as MK Party hostels" when referring to hostels that had previously supported the IFP. Mbeki stated, "Comrades, that is the counterrevolution, and that is how it works." Ndhlela said that Mbeki was trying to avoid "confronting the political reality that millions of South Africans have consciously withdrawn consent from the ANC and placed it elsewhere" in response to these remarks. He stated that because they criminalized and delegitimized entire communities, the comments posed a particular threat.

“It amounts to an attempt to explain away the democratic will of the people of KwaZulu-Natal by casting suspicion on their identity, culture and political choices,” Ndhlela said. He accused Mbeki of hypocrisy, noting that long-standing Democratic Alliance victories in the Western Cape had never been labelled counter-revolutionary. “Communities' choices are delegitimized when they vote against the ANC; others' choices are respected. It is prejudice,” he said. Ndhlela said Mbeki’s remarks bordered on incitement by portraying MK Party support as illegitimate and externally engineered. He stated, "This reckless language puts lives at risk." He demanded that Mbeki unconditionally retract the statements and apologize to KwaZulu-Natal residents, hostel communities, and MK Party supporters.

In addition, he questioned Mbeki's moral authority, citing the way he dealt with HIV and AIDS while he was president. Ndhlela stated that South Africans had previously witnessed "assertion without proof, delivered with moral authority," with "catastrophic consequences," and that credible research estimated that delayed access to antiretroviral treatment contributed to the premature deaths of over 330,000 individuals. Ndhlela stated that the MK Party's expansion was a direct result of real-world issues like unemployment, inequality, land eviction, and poor service, rejecting claims of covert manipulation. “The MK Party is not a counter-revolutionary project. He stated, "It is a democratic result."

"The MK Party is not only the political organization in South Africa that is growing at the fastest rate, but it is also the only revolutionary movement that truly carries and resonates with the hopes of the poorest of the poor that has been democratically elected by the people." Meanwhile, the MK Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) said it was disturbed by what it described as Mbeki’s “unfortunate utterances” to former MK soldiers. MKMVA president Pumlani Ntsimbi Kubukeli, said the association represented all former MK veterans regardless of political affiliation because politicians had historically “pitied us against each other, and rallied us around their factionalism”.

According to Kubukeli, Mbeki was implying that members of the MK Party were former spies for the apartheid regime and that the ANC's electoral decline was caused by the reactivation of the apartheid security apparatus. He quoted Mbeki as saying “that was the machinery that was used to produce that result in KZN”. "Any analytical mind can read between the lines" of Mbeki's remarks, according to Kubukeli. “In other words, the above statement is a blatant call for the assassination of the MKP President, His Excellency Comrade Jacob Zuma,” he said. Kubukeli cited an incident that occurred on Sunday, November 23, 2025, when MK Party members who were on a recruitment drive were shot at near Dube Hostel in Gauteng. Later that same day, Comrade Nzuza was killed. This incident was linked to the remarks made by Kubukeli.

He warned that Mbeki’s statements were “not miscalculated but planned” and said the MKMVA believed he was “indirectly instigating former MK soldiers to violence against the hostel dwellers, the people of KZN and the MK Party”. Calling for restraint, Kubukeli said former commanders understood that “a Commander does not have to give a direct order when he wants something to happen”, and warned against allowing veterans to be pitted against one another again.