Mbeki's fallacies.

I originally wrote it for commentary.co.za in response to the whole Zimbabwean thing but then it became so long I decided to post it here instead.

I’ll stray a bit from the topic at hand but it goes to set a greater and consistent contextual description of perception.

Yesterday I read in Saudi Babylon how a British diplomat succinctly described what amounts to quiet diplomacy, although that term is not explicitly used. To paraphrase, he said that if a government does not speak out publicly about an issue regarding a host country (in this case torture of British nationals by the Sauds), that it will not speak out at all. Even if it does speak out to the host country but does not follow that up by making a public statement, the host country will take it to be inconsequential, since the [British] government is unwilling to back the stance up in public, meaning that they don’t mean business.

Reading this from the horse’s mouth - a diplomat with more than twenty years experience - places Mbeki’s “Quiet Diplomacy” towards Zimbabwe in a greater context of his legacy aka The Big Denial. If one strips the ANCBC’s (aka SABC) glorification of his legacy as dignified away, one is left with dramatic failures of both his leadership and his responsibilities. If not in denial about AIDS (the legacy of his policies are an estimated 2.2 million Aids orphans in SA), it is denialism (or dismissal of) crime, his responsibilities as an executive to dump incompetent executives from his Cabinet and the civil service or “quiet diplomacy” towards Zimbabwe.

On Friday Mbeki debated perceptions of crime in South Africa as influenced from a racist point of view. (Trust the ANCBC aka SABC to bring that to my attention). I agree with a lot of what he has said. However I think it mistaken of him to cast the issue of crime in a racist context of “the kaffirs are coming” at the expense of the greater picture in which he is responsible for preventing crime and his government is not doing enough to do so in an environment in which he admits crime in SA is higher than it should be. At the end of the day that debate served to explain why the Government has nopt done enough to curb crime sooner – it clearly demonstrates the belief in the upper-most echelons of our government that crime is (or was rather) an issue blown out of proportion, driven by racist intention to derail the majority government from its objectives and most importantly, that it just was not as important as it was made out to be because the loudest protesters were whites – a minority. I do not dispute for one minute that there are those “whites” (god I hate that word but I still won’t drink SAB’s pilsners) who do indeed think like that. But having chosen an issue that was forced on to Mbeki’s government administration from “down below” (or even midway up through the media) as a topic for Human Right’s Day in the present light of what’s going on in Zimbabwe, right on our doorstep, makes for yet again another affirmation of his inclination to avoid having to deal with unpleasantries.

Mbeki’s style and the imbalance in leadership within the ruling ANC-party

I have always perceived Mbeki to be a “top down” leader. The whole strife within the ANC demonstrates this very clearly. When Mbeki was elected for ANC presidency, media articles were rife about “Who is this pipe smoking man?” and the “African philosopher” had to be introduced to the public. Not only that, but he had to step down from his podium and engage with people at the grassroots level through a series of public imbizos , only to step back up on to his podium. Recall Mandela’s inauguration, where children took the place of soldiers in the procession through the streets. When Mbeki was inaugurated, the children were nowhere to be seen, the soldiers were back. During the dark days of Apartheid, the amphitheatre of the Union Buildings were open – I roamed there freely. Since the advent of democracy, it is closed. Mbeki needs to isolate himself from the common crowds so that he can dignify his pseudo-intellectual aloofness as a leader. In his article he consistently talks about fear but it seems he is the one who is scared of the public’s opinion when it does not compare favourably to his, or at any rate dismissive of it when it doesn’t fit into one of his grand African philosophies.

Zuma on the other hand is an out and out populist – so much so that one can argue he is a coward who has no stance to take or to offer other than what he is told to by “his” ANC, i.e. he has no leadership traits. The two represent opposite sides of the same pole and neither of them offers a balanced choice between leading and listening. It is natural for Mbeki to choose crime – an issue that was unpopularly shoved onto him through massive public response because of his willful ignorance to not only address public concern but to be seen to do it. Mbeki seemed humiliated by the whole issue in his State of the Nation 2007 address. I am sure he resented it and the publication of his article on Friday goes a long way to justify his disapproval for me. What better can you expect from someone who isolates himself from the public in a grand and self righteous pompously self dignifying ivory tower called “The Presidency” – his creation in a country where the President is not directly elected by the people as in the USA, but elected through the Westminster system?

Mbeki’s debate on crime and race
Mbeki’s government has on numerous occasions maintained that the high rate of crime is a perception created and oversensationalised by the media – and again I agree but it has its basis in reality. If public perception is the enemy and if he wants to change that perception, he goes about it in all the wrong ways by trying to downplay it instead of offering people a visible antidote in a world in which perceptions are reinforced by concretely visible ideas. As the highest paid and highest executive civil servant in the country, he has more power than anyone to give visible evidence to those who shout “the kaffirs are coming” that they are wrong and he HAS WHOLEHEARTEDLY FAILED TO NOT GIVE THEM THIS REASON until his recent climbdown during the State of the Nation Address 2007. As could be expected, on Friday he defered responsibility for the issue into another context, one not entirely invalid but potentially misleading in the typical media sensationalist manner that he criticizes, rather than just making himself be seen to be accountable AND RESPONSIVE. That however would be too damaging for his haughty pride – the Statesman, the President, the man who lives in la-la land on his podium in an Ivory Towercalled the Presidency far removed from the people in an imaginary city of Tshwane, being told by his countrymen how to lead.

[irrelevant to discussion] Enter weak and populist Zuma. Never in the history of this country has a public figure so embodied Humpty Dumpty and none of the SACP’s horses and the ANC Youth League’s men will ever be able to put that broken egg back together again. It has failed to hatch into anything promising in public life for good other than good riddance. [/irrelevant].

If Mbeki wants to raise racism (and I endorse that move) as an influencing factor in public perceptions about crime, then he must recognize that racism works both ways and the one point that he does not highlight, is that just as there are those elements amongst the country’s white population who shout “here come the kaffirs”, so too are there those elements amongst criminals who shout “one settler one bullet” and who then kill white farmers and motorists and civilians to advance theft, thuggery, rape and criminality. The ANC and Mbeki himself inadvertantly supports this IMHO tacitly, since when you measure their public condemnation of crime vis-à-vis their explanation that crime is the result of poverty and that poverty must be reduced to reduce crime, they are inadvertently sending a message that poverty is an excuse to kill, murder, rape and violate, instead of sending a loud and clear message that POVERTY IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO ROB, MURDER AND RAPE. Instead of verbosely speaking out against that and distinguishing between situational crimes (crimes of poverty) and crimes of conscious intent, the ANC and Mbeki sends subliminal messages to people who have a morality that is far different to theirs (the ANC’s) and who only need a little push to do a lot of harm. There are millions of poor people in the world who are poor and if poverty were an excuse to commit violent crime, the world would look like a place ripe for Armageddon (it does not). Race cannot be used as an excuse to divert attention away from poor leadership and irresponsiveness by the Cabinet to practically enforce the rule of law - a root principle of a democracy based on human rights – and that has been what the public outcry against crime has been about.


Mbeki’s Inconsistent Foreign Policies
Regarding Foreign Policy, this blog has commented a plenty on Mbeki’s government’s apparent siding with brutal regimes, terrorist regimes etc. Here Mbeki’s inconsistencies and flaws show clearly for those who care to look. South Africa’s so called historic first vote on the UN Security Council was one that will forever serve as a reminder to future governments of the shameful letdown of other struggling people our leaders can be responsible for, when SA voted against the resolution re: Human Right’s abuses in Myanmar. Mbeki went on TV in his post State of the Nation Address 2007 on the ANCBC (aka the SABC) to call it “the correct decision” [paraphrasing] “…that you can’t expect the UN to represent international law when it is the very first institution to break it…” Forgetting for a moment that the best decision is not necessarily the technically correct one, but the right one that will reduce suffering for the greatest number of people, the Apartheid Regime consistently regarded UN sanctions against SA as a violation of international law, considering it an issue of domestic policy. Is Mbeki then suggesting that the wave of international actions that brought the Apartheid Regime to its knees and him to power was unlawful? It would appear to be so. He said in that same interview that [paraphrasing] “we have always maintained that the people of Zimbabwe must find their own solutions to problems as we in SA have done”. The thing is that the SA solution was forced onto the Apartheid Oligarchy through international sanctions from its most important trading partners through inter alia the UN Security Council arms embargo etc. How does Mbeki in all his self-glorified and righteous wisdom think the people of Zimbabwe are able to bring about their own internal solution when the SA government is tacitly supporting an authoritarian ruler who uses the organs of state against the Zimbabwean people to demolish their homes Apartheid government style and who has the police torture the government’s critics?

The issue re: Foreign policy at hand here is greater than a mere condemnation against Harare. At stake is a perception that the West uses the UN to further imperialist ambitions – which it does. Nowadays this comes not in the form of overt political oppression but in the form of covert economic policies and so forth, backed up by political intervention when multi-national corporate profits or those of the military industrial complex are at stake. Just like it is expecting too much of the ANC to speak out against human rights abuses by those regimes that supported it in the struggle against Apartheid, which was the legacy of Western Imperialism, so too is it asking too much of the ANC to behave in the only effective manner that can bring about the right type of change in foreign countries, i.e. “foreign intervention in another country” – or put another way, it is too much to ask the ANC to support actions that will make them guilty of the perception of imperialist interventionist and prescriptive behaviour. Mugabe knows this and uses it in a potent manner against his adversaries and critics in a way that silences the ANC. Mugabe successfully paints it such that a decision by the ANC opposing him would potentially ruin the ANC’s reputation in Africa as an organization in support of African Unity, instead making them one in support of imperialist and prescriptive behaviour. The ANC government has always taken great care to be seen to respect the equality of SA’s neighbours and to work with them in partnership – yet that did not stop them from invading Lesotho. With the ANC led government already having their fingers in the pies of several African countries (Comores, Burundi, DRC), Western-like intervention could be very harmful for Mbeki’s pet project, NEPAD. South Africa is the best hope for foreign intervention in Zimbabwe’s de-escalation into authoritarian / dictatorial rule, but as long as SA is silenced, Mugabe can continue to do whatever pleases his pocket. The other factor of course is that the reputation of the sub-continent will suffer and investors will run away if things go potty in Zimbabwe, leaving SA with literally millions of refugees, whilst being detrimental for the Government’s job creation and growth and investment plans. The whole fiasco re: the South African mercenaries who were arrested for attempted coup-d’etats plots in Equatorial Guinea is another example of how this holy cow (of foreign policy vs. or supports imperialist like intervention) is making Mbeki make the correct decisions, but not the right ones. It is also in my opinion why the ANC gives such support to dictatorial regimes like Castro’s Cuba, Ghaddafi’s Libya (Mandela: We won’t be told who are our friends), Iran’s Ahmadinjad etc. as they are all examples of those who have withstood US imperialism. The West on the other hand uses Human Right’s issues as well as Mugabe uses imperialism to advance their own interests, yet, it is the better of the two evils, since the first ultimately protects the greatest number of people where there are human right’s abuses. Instead however of the ANC ceasing the opportunity to claim human rights for Africa and to take it out from the shadow of Western interference, thereby meaningfully setting an example for other needy African countries to follow without being made to feel that they are pussyfooting around the will of the West, Mbeki let’s down the people of the continent in the most powerful way whilst he tries to “save” them from their own tyranny through NEPAD.

The cost of this foreign policy for people who are victims of the abuse of organs of state against civilians throughout Africa and other parts of the world is bigger than it can be because if Mbeki’s weak leadership. The ANC is an organization whose intent is very much one of Human Rights. Human Rights against imperialism as much as Human Rights against the abuse of organs of state against civilians, yet it is ignoring the latter within Mbeki’s inconsistencies. Mbeki it seems is finally beginning to realize that his hope that Africans will rise and improve their living conditions and dignity all by themselves is naive. There have always been those Africans who rise but they do not do it for the greater good, they do it for their own good. If Mbeki can recognize that the Sudanese government is using national sovereignity to endorse continued human right’s abuses in Darfur and if it is willing to send the SANDF into Lesotho to restore democracy and if it recognizes that China is using the holy cow of imperialism to gain a foothold in Africa and publicly (note: publicly, no quiet diplomacy in something of far greater importance to the ANC, i.e. economic trade relations), it must be willing to take a far stronger stand against Mugabe than Dep. Min. of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahads’ expression of concern. There will be no inconsistencies, as the ANC formerly used foreign intervention (through sanctions) to achieve the objectives of democracy and human rights in SA – again, the objectives of democracy and Human Rights are its very own objectives. If the Mbeki government was previously reluctant to speak out against the killing of white farmers in Zimbabwe because those farmers were the legacy of the imperialism which disowned Africans from their land and because it was “justifiable” that the land be repossessed for its “rightful” owners (nevermind that the land was given to Mugabe’s cronies and military commanders who keep him in power and not the rightful communities and nevermind that in a drought probable region productivity should be the yardstick of land ownership not legitimacy), then the ANC must now recognize that Mugabe’s fight against imperialism and Mbeki’s support thereof is flawed in as far as it is only being used as a legitimate issue to advance illegitimate dictatorships and human right’s abuses – the same way that Mbeki is now using the legitimate issue of racist perceptions as a motive for criminal activity in an inappropriate reply to criticism of his government’s responsiveness to public perceptions regarding crime – one that ultimately makes him an inconsistent loser in advancing the cause of Human Rights as argued above. Mbeki is a weak leader. Good as he has been for the country, it is time for him to pack his briefcase. We need better than what he is willing and able to give us.

Just an aside. This gloryfying of Mbeki as a demi-god of stature, Presdient Mbeki this and President Mbeki that is no good. It is time to take him on. In as far as the pre-State of the Nation 2007 Address public outcry called on and caaled on and caaled on President Mbeki this and President Mbeki that to do something about crime, it was pathetic. This is a democracy. Stop glorifying a man that does not deliver. Replace him with someone who does.