On Mbeki's loss

Much has been made about the race in the ANC between Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki for the post of party President. Being no fan of Mbeki, I hoped Zuma would win purely for the purpose of getting Mbeki out. Zuma is by no means a suitable candidate, but I always saw him as the lesser threat. Zuma is an emperor without clothes who will have a hard time at being taken seriously. Mbeki on the other hand is a fox of the type that will make himself self sound ever more dignacious and righteous whilst doing the very things he blames others for doing. Like Margaret Thatcher whose economic views he claims to follow, he cannot see mistakes in himself whilst he leaps further and further into extremist authoritarianism.

Mbeki’s desire to cling to (party) power after his constitutional term as president of SA expires in 2009 was worrying. Why was he so adamant to hold on to power? Mbeki was the de-facto prime minister under Nelson Mandela’s government who was more of a figurehead than an executive, which gives Mbeki an effective three terms in power…and still that was not enough for him. The presidential two-term limit built into the South African constitution, copied from the USA, is there for many an important purpose.

For one, a change in leadership, even in the absence of a change in the ruling party, injects new life and direction into what may otherwise become dust settling on itself. There can be no doubt that Mbeki’s attempt to cling to power as the president of the ANC was an attempt to influence, if not direct, the next president of the country. That would have made the next President little more than a puppet of Mbeki and it was likely that, with two centres of power, there eventually would have been a mutiny. No ship can have two captains. It remains to be seen how the present situation will unfold, but as The Beeld newspaper rightly point out, he was the father of this “two centres of power” approach in SA and it has backfired on him, at his own expense, his party’s expense and that of the country.

Africa regrettably has a longer tradition of “Big African Statesmen” who entrench themselves into positions of perpetual power which have seen many a fledging democracy go down the proverbial drain. Mbeki was no doubt one of those big African statesmen in the making and he has been stopped dead in his tracks and that is a good thing.

His refusal to step down at his use-by date furthermore suggested rather bluntly that he trusted no-one else to run the party, let alone that he thinks no-one has any vision to lead. That is intellectually insulting in the extreme and smacks of the arrogance that characterises so many kleptocratic African leaders (erstwhile Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Mobutu Sese Seko, and the long running Muammar Gaddafi and of course the infamous Robert Mugabe, to name but a few).

When Mbeki however began to blur the lines between party and state and began using organs of state to fight his personal battles, he crossed the line in the most severe way which had every alarm bell ringing that this autocrat was about to accept no differences of opinion to his version of reality. Key principles of democracy – the separation of powers and the competition for public attention of divergent ideas - was under threat by the man who had the biggest responsibility to protect it. We have predictably shown ourselves that we are not immune to the same syndromes that have pestered other democracies throughout time, hence the need for cross-checks and balances. Mbeki’s track record shows that he consistently tried to quash those cross-checks and balances whenever it threatened to embarrass His Diganciousness’s esteem. What he never understood was how he himself brought embarrassment upon his government by his stubborn insistence on blacking-out any and all voices of dissent within his party and from without.

It is a fitting symbol that South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s “Rainbow Nation”, is suffering from rolling power cuts as demand for electricity from newly built homes outstrip supply. The good fortunes and growing pains of an expanding economy aside - on a national level, it reflects the national psyche. Rays of light making up the rainbow were selectively being blacked out by Mbeki. Voices of dissent, disagreement and differing opinions were not allowed to compete fairly through public debate, they were being quashed both inside and outside of Parliament. I am referring of course to the debate surrounding Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and the dismissal of National Prosecuting Authority boss Vusi Pikoli, Mbeki’s adamant defence of Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, the Intelligence email scandal, not to even begin with AIDS and crime.

IMHO, Mbeki is a bastard and his demise is a blessing for our democracy. Those who supported him recently, did so not necessarily out of any love for him but out of fear for Zuma. The stupid thing about this whole issue is that is was a false dilemma that forced a choice between either Mbeki or Zuma. In this regard, it is another reason to celebrate Mbeki’s demise. Instead of nurturing or promoting new talent, Mbeki only wanted to control it in accordance with his will. The split in the ANC can be placed fairly and squarely on his shoulders and his decision to make himself available for the post of party president instead of opening the floor for other candidates. Back to the false dilemma, South Africans who like neither the idea of Zuma nor Mbeki have the option to vote for a party other than the ANC.

To be honest, The Economist has it right when it practically compares the recent race to a curate’s egg. In theory it was good for democracy as no other post-victory liberation movement in Africa has ever democratically deposed (if at all), let alone contest the position of party leader (the ANC’s previous contests do not count as it occurred prior to their liberation victory). On the other hand though, the competition was between two lousy candidates.

It is regrettable that SA is still racially divided. We are still, as a nation, separate and identify according to race. Ours is an identity driven democracy rather than an idea driven one. Black people principally support the ANC, white people the DA, coloured people the ID and so on. We will not make progress and innovate ourselves to rise above our challenges until we move from identity politics to idea politics. Mbeki, instead of moving away from this, exploited it (“I am an African” at his very first State of the Nation Address at the Opening of Parliament in 1999). Personally, I always thought “well thanks for that enlightening piece of information, now we all know you are not Japanese”.

He was obsessed with distinguishing himself from Mandela and the only way he apparently saw fit to do so was by attributing his vision and intellect to his race (“native intelligence” as he put it). It was a path that thought only of his own “dignacious” esteem, reputation and glory and not of the nation as a whole, so as to be held aloft along the likes of Julius Nyerere. In retrospect, there was no need for him to have to distinguish himself other than through his deeds, which have come to be the yardstick he was now measured against and found wanting, to say the least. In having chosen to stereotype himself, it was a sweet and self-inflicted revenge that Mbeki displayed those traits of other African autocrats and despots which ultimately led to his widespread disapproval. All he had to do was to get on with the job and that alone would have given him credit, but he wanted to turn himself into a cult personality of the African statesman – the Saviour of Africans. The way in which he and his cronies in the ANCBC (a.k.a. SABC) think they speak for the whole of Africa is a joke. Hopefully that will now come to an end but I wouldn’t keep my fingers crossed.

What we need as a society is a leader (and a party) that will look above these divisions of yonder and promote a national identity in which all South Africans can feel at home in to participate freely in public debates. Though public debate itself wasn’t really quietened (yet), what is important is that people are heard and that everyone’s opinion is considered and valued. The constitution does not place a void responsibility upon the government to be responsive to public concerns. Mbeki didn’t fail in that respect to live up to Mandela, he never even tried, in fact, he went in the opposite direction and was responsive only to maintaining his own dignity, which translated to him as not being criticised and being respected by being obeyed without question as the leader and by dousing any attempts to the contrary – a very African way of leading, the evidence of which is visible throughout Africa over more than the past half a century.

Jacob Zuma may be an undesirable candidate but a fortiori it was more important to get rid of Mbeki’s authoritarian paranoia and ways of humiliating and blacking-out disagreeing voices. Everybody knows that we will have to deal with Zuma and that will no doubt come to pass and I have some anxiety in that regard, specifically as a gay person, that we will go backwards rather than forward, but it remains to be seen.

In the meantime, go to sleep Mbeki and take your “native intelligence” (or stupidity, whichever way you look at it) along with you. Know that you, as a leader (an “African” one) who expect to be listened to (no doubt due to your “native African intelligence”) rather than listening to all South Africans is unlikely to be missed. And for goodnes sake, cut your eyebrows.