It’s that time of the year again. I haven’t even done Christmas shopping yet. For some reason I am just so far removed from the idea of Christmas. It is something that is not even remotely a fixture in my life this year. It will come and go and have little bearing.
I am looking forward to the promises that New Year holds. 2008 will be the year of the rat in Chinese astrology. I am not a believer in that, but I was born in the year of the water rat. Maybe I can have a fuzzy idea of some sort of universal good luck coming my way.
Enjoy your Festive Season and may your new year be a prosperous one.
Over n Out for this year.
PS: I've since just completed my Christmas shopping. Yes, on the very last day before Christmas. So here follows my first New Year's resolution: From 2008 I shall buy gifts whenever I see them throughout the year & store them for Christmas rather than trying desperately to find something worthwhile from the hordes of cheap Chinese imports & junk available during this time of year. Even that most predicatble of gifts, bath cosmetics, are wrapped in giftpacks with a "Made in China" label on it. It did make me think twice before buying it as "filler" presents.
Anyway, may the Spirit of Goodwill grow in all our hearts and find expression in our actions.
24.12.07
Zuma and the Economy
So Zuma has made promises far and wide to all and sundry. He has also announced no major changes in economic policies. Personally I do not know whether that is a good or a bad thing. What commentators have duly pointed out is that Zuma will inherit the same constraints to provide jobs to people that Mbeki faced. It is unlikely that he will come up with a magic formula to create more jobs. This is both a good and a bad thing in my opinion.
It is good because the arm-chair critics - COSATU/SACP alliance partners - will have to eat humble pie. Voters who support them will quickly find COSATU/SACP’s promises vaporised and the latter will have a hard time at it making the sort of sideway criticism we hear coming from them every time there is a rise in the interest rates. I keep on asking myself when the Reserve Bank is going to tell them to shut up or challenge them to justify their remarks, which seem to me to be just opportunism. Surely higher inflation means fewer poor people can afford essential goods as opposed to more indebted and thus employed people being less able to service their debts?
It is a bad thing, because ordinary folk in the streets are increasingly making shocking comments. Just two days ago I spoke to some builders who all expressed their support for Zuma because they hope he will bring more jobs. They pointed out that if Zuma fails to do so, which he is likely to do because he & his SACP buddies have overpromised (and will underdeliver due to the same constraints Mbeki faced and that in a tougher global economic environment), they would have to then look at “letting white people run the country again because then at least there were a lot more jobs”. I was flabbergasted at hearing remarks such as those. They are not new, but to hear it from the horses mouth shocked me.
It is clear that a sizeable number of people vote on the promise of jobs. It is even clearer that when those promises don’t transpire, our democracy may come to be threatened by the type of rhetoric that has kept desperate leaders like Robert Mugabe in power. Zuma’s overpromises will come to haunt him if his graft trial doesn’t do so first. But far from being concerned about what he may or may not do to the country’s economy, I am really more concerned about what his failure to deliver on his promises might do to our democracy. Ironically, for the leftists to be in power may be good for a free market economy, especially if they are seen to fail in an expected tougher global economic environment, which is why I suspect they want Mbeki to stay on as President for now, so that he can take the blame. Mbeki’s good macro-economic policies would also have been over associated with authoritarianism had he won. He was on his way to becoming another Houphouët Boigny and General Pinochet and in doing so, would have associated free market economics with authoritarianism. It has taken us long enough to associate free market economics with a new emerging middle class (one success of Mbeki’s government and the traditional domain of nationalist politics and mixed-market economies in this country) and the last thing we needed was to let it go back to the days of apartheid where communism was associated with freedom and free market economics with political oppression. It is to everyone’s loss that Mbeki wouldn’t open the way for other potential leaders to assume responsibility for that.
On the other hand, letting the bench politicians (COSATU/SACP) fail does come with a built-in price that threatens to bring a lot of destabilisation and disappointment in the democratic process, which in turn threatens to be a beast of a different sort. In the meantime I will not pre-empt myself further in that respect and sit tight and observe what comes next, though I am sure it promises to be exciting if not anxiety spurning.
Already we have seen COSATU saying they will change the country’s macro-economic policies (this despite the fact that they themselves are not the government but only in alliance with it and thus have no mandate to do so). Already we have seen Zuma saying that it is not he who sets the country’s economic policies, but the ANC and already we have seen the ANC saying repeatedly that the macro-economic policies will not change.
Who to believe? There will just be more insider manoeuvring and closed-door decision making, excluding the public from the debate as would occur in an alliance split up into multiple parties, each vying for support. There is no reason to believe a swing to the left will necessarily be bad. It has happened many times in Europe and most recently in Australia and was not accompanied by instability. Sure a number of plutocrats will have a harder time at getting their way, but that is a good thing for democracy and against organised crime and corruption. On the other hand, the capacity constraints, the pressure to deliver and the expected global economic slowdown may just push some bench politicians into the fold of extremism. We’d better ensure it does not come to that and that reason will prevail. At least with Mbeki out of the way reason will have an opportunity to be tested more vigorously in public debates in which the National Executive participates, rather than ignore it as if it does not exist whenever it threatens to embarrass them.
It is good because the arm-chair critics - COSATU/SACP alliance partners - will have to eat humble pie. Voters who support them will quickly find COSATU/SACP’s promises vaporised and the latter will have a hard time at it making the sort of sideway criticism we hear coming from them every time there is a rise in the interest rates. I keep on asking myself when the Reserve Bank is going to tell them to shut up or challenge them to justify their remarks, which seem to me to be just opportunism. Surely higher inflation means fewer poor people can afford essential goods as opposed to more indebted and thus employed people being less able to service their debts?
It is a bad thing, because ordinary folk in the streets are increasingly making shocking comments. Just two days ago I spoke to some builders who all expressed their support for Zuma because they hope he will bring more jobs. They pointed out that if Zuma fails to do so, which he is likely to do because he & his SACP buddies have overpromised (and will underdeliver due to the same constraints Mbeki faced and that in a tougher global economic environment), they would have to then look at “letting white people run the country again because then at least there were a lot more jobs”. I was flabbergasted at hearing remarks such as those. They are not new, but to hear it from the horses mouth shocked me.
It is clear that a sizeable number of people vote on the promise of jobs. It is even clearer that when those promises don’t transpire, our democracy may come to be threatened by the type of rhetoric that has kept desperate leaders like Robert Mugabe in power. Zuma’s overpromises will come to haunt him if his graft trial doesn’t do so first. But far from being concerned about what he may or may not do to the country’s economy, I am really more concerned about what his failure to deliver on his promises might do to our democracy. Ironically, for the leftists to be in power may be good for a free market economy, especially if they are seen to fail in an expected tougher global economic environment, which is why I suspect they want Mbeki to stay on as President for now, so that he can take the blame. Mbeki’s good macro-economic policies would also have been over associated with authoritarianism had he won. He was on his way to becoming another Houphouët Boigny and General Pinochet and in doing so, would have associated free market economics with authoritarianism. It has taken us long enough to associate free market economics with a new emerging middle class (one success of Mbeki’s government and the traditional domain of nationalist politics and mixed-market economies in this country) and the last thing we needed was to let it go back to the days of apartheid where communism was associated with freedom and free market economics with political oppression. It is to everyone’s loss that Mbeki wouldn’t open the way for other potential leaders to assume responsibility for that.
On the other hand, letting the bench politicians (COSATU/SACP) fail does come with a built-in price that threatens to bring a lot of destabilisation and disappointment in the democratic process, which in turn threatens to be a beast of a different sort. In the meantime I will not pre-empt myself further in that respect and sit tight and observe what comes next, though I am sure it promises to be exciting if not anxiety spurning.
Already we have seen COSATU saying they will change the country’s macro-economic policies (this despite the fact that they themselves are not the government but only in alliance with it and thus have no mandate to do so). Already we have seen Zuma saying that it is not he who sets the country’s economic policies, but the ANC and already we have seen the ANC saying repeatedly that the macro-economic policies will not change.
Who to believe? There will just be more insider manoeuvring and closed-door decision making, excluding the public from the debate as would occur in an alliance split up into multiple parties, each vying for support. There is no reason to believe a swing to the left will necessarily be bad. It has happened many times in Europe and most recently in Australia and was not accompanied by instability. Sure a number of plutocrats will have a harder time at getting their way, but that is a good thing for democracy and against organised crime and corruption. On the other hand, the capacity constraints, the pressure to deliver and the expected global economic slowdown may just push some bench politicians into the fold of extremism. We’d better ensure it does not come to that and that reason will prevail. At least with Mbeki out of the way reason will have an opportunity to be tested more vigorously in public debates in which the National Executive participates, rather than ignore it as if it does not exist whenever it threatens to embarrass them.
State of South African Politics
SA’s opposition political parties must be some of the lousiest ones in amy democracy on the planet. Even the opposition parties got involved in the ANC leadership race debate in a way in which they virtually pleaded for Mbeki to be elected without explicitly saying so. How pathetic. Instead of exploiting the situation to increase support for their parties, they just took a fatalistic view conceding that there is nothing they can do other than to just try to hold on to their little power bases. Or was it strategy perhaps? If ANC supporters saw them virtually supporting Mbeki, would they then vote Mbeki and “save the day” or revolt and vote for Zuma, leaving the ANC in disarray. Hard to tell, but I was not convinced it was strategy on their behalf as much as it was unfounded apocalyptic fear. Instead of exploiting the divisions in the ANC to increase their support, the opposition parties were all just content to speak to a certain market – retaining their constituency – rather than expanding upon it. What losers?! These people have no ambition other than to be minority parties. None of them have the vision nor the wit to want to rule.
The opposition parties of course are as much victims as the result of SA’s past. The ANC is mainly black, the DA mainly white, the ID mainly coloured and the IFP their own brand of Zulu nationalism. SA’s politics is regrettably still driven primarily by the axiom of identity rather than an axiom of the movement of ideas (identity is an idea, yes, but one that has consistently lead to division and war).
South Africa has rather unfortunately always been beset by nationalist politics. As if it weren’t enough for the old Nationalist Party to rule for close to half a century, we now have the dubious honour of having a ruling party that is also likely to rule for just as long. God forbid it will be longer. The ANC as I see it is a different side of the same coin as the old Nats.
I have maintained for some time now that the only way SA’s democracy will begin to be an innovative one that can adequately rise to meet the challenges the country faces, specifically with regards to civil society building, rather than nation building, is when we move away from this identity driven politics to an idea driven one in which ideas compete vigorously in public debate for majority approval. That is also the surest way to keep corruption in check provided there are constant changes or the possibility of regular changes in government.
The ANC is an umbrella organisation housing many diverging policy schools of thought. They all aim for roughly the same outcome, but there are differences in their philosophies and approaches to implementation. In the past the ANC has had to be an umbrella organisation for a good reason. In a way, that has been a blessing which has enabled SA to grow economically for the longest uninterrupted period in its history where there was no real conflict between labour and business. It also had political spin-offs which prevented a predictable African decline into ethnic rivalry and warfare (the unspoken of hot potato in the recent ANC leadership race). The time is overdue though for those diverging movements within the ANC to forge new identities and to put it to the test amongst the population.
The Zuma / Mbeki saga showed clearly how the COSATU & SACP alliance members manipulated politics. They can be seen to be “bench politicians” a corruption of arm-chair politicians. They sit on the benches in parliament which they occupy purely as a result of piggy-back riding on the ANC and from there they influence national policies.
However much I was opposed to Mbeki, there was a faint strand of hope in me that if he were to be re-elected as ANC president, he would be loathed enough to cause the alliance to split. Following the last general election in 2004 it became clear that opposition in the country was more likely to come from within the ANC than from opposition parties, who lack vision, ambition and a will and capacity to rule, sticking to their own little pigeon holes rather than reaching for the sky. We have now seen that opposition within the ruling party and it is little surprise that it was divided along the lines of SACP/COSATU vs. the centrist “Mbeki-ites” (in quotes because of Mbeki’s disastrous strategy to not allow anybody else to lead them, now to his and their and perhaps the country’s loss).
Zuma’s victory means that such a split is now less likely. It is regrettable, because our politics desperately need to mature. It is unlikely to do so for as long as the ANC remains an umbrella organisation in a climate in which there is no longer any collective storm of political oppression to weather. Politicians are more likely to keep the alliance alive from all sides because it is more likely to guarantee them a seat in Parliament and an annual income in excess of R600,000 - a sizable portion of which no doubt goes to the various parties’ coffers.
“Mbeki’s strategy” thus far to keep the SACP/COSATU alliance within the ANC and thereby to ensure cooperation rather than confrontation in economic politics was a good one that has now died a brutal death. If the alliance partners have not hi-jacked the ANC it has certainly overrun it. A split can now only come from those centrists who would have found a natural home in an alliance with the Democratic Alliance and I do not see that happening. Such an alliance would also have given the official opposition DA the opportunity to expand beyond its narrow vision of catering to a select constituency and afforded it the opportunity to become a more representative party.
The politics of inclusion has its benefits, especially in SA’s case as it comes from a deeply divided past. It also has it drawbacks and it is on account of those drawbacks, such as nepotism, corruption, complacency and acquiesment of opposition and effectively, of cross-checks and balances, that the umbrella needs to be closed.
Mbeki and the ANC knows that COSATU is the only movement that could conceivably have formed an alternative governing party – the “Labour Party”, using contributions from trade union members to fund such a party. The SACP is a dead duck that turtle-back rides on the alliance as a whole and they will die a sudden death if they don’t piggyback ride – what plutocrat would possibly want to fund them except those trying to buy influence, which they would be far better off buying elsewhere – I see support for the SACP to be nominal, no more than 12 percent or so of voters if that many (which is of course a lot more than the current opposition parties have). However, if COSATU might appeal to those who already have work (or else they would not be part of a labour union), the SACP might appeal to the real poor people, those with no chance of a job.
Such a division might appal many within the alliance who still identify with the common identity forged in “the struggle”, but it makes sense on every other account. The ANC stands to loose its ground amongst the rising middle-classes in a matter of a decade, unless it differentiates itself from the party of lower earning and poor people. Perhaps the lousy opposition parties are just sitting and biding their time for that to happen, but it would be foolish to take for granted that it will.
Such a division is the only way in which I foresee SA ever moving beyond the racially defined identity politics which has been the country’s making, nearly resulted in its unmaking and still has the potential to do so.
I guess it will be business as usual now. The net effect thereof is that SA is only somewhat as innovative and leading as it could be.
The opposition parties of course are as much victims as the result of SA’s past. The ANC is mainly black, the DA mainly white, the ID mainly coloured and the IFP their own brand of Zulu nationalism. SA’s politics is regrettably still driven primarily by the axiom of identity rather than an axiom of the movement of ideas (identity is an idea, yes, but one that has consistently lead to division and war).
South Africa has rather unfortunately always been beset by nationalist politics. As if it weren’t enough for the old Nationalist Party to rule for close to half a century, we now have the dubious honour of having a ruling party that is also likely to rule for just as long. God forbid it will be longer. The ANC as I see it is a different side of the same coin as the old Nats.
I have maintained for some time now that the only way SA’s democracy will begin to be an innovative one that can adequately rise to meet the challenges the country faces, specifically with regards to civil society building, rather than nation building, is when we move away from this identity driven politics to an idea driven one in which ideas compete vigorously in public debate for majority approval. That is also the surest way to keep corruption in check provided there are constant changes or the possibility of regular changes in government.
The ANC is an umbrella organisation housing many diverging policy schools of thought. They all aim for roughly the same outcome, but there are differences in their philosophies and approaches to implementation. In the past the ANC has had to be an umbrella organisation for a good reason. In a way, that has been a blessing which has enabled SA to grow economically for the longest uninterrupted period in its history where there was no real conflict between labour and business. It also had political spin-offs which prevented a predictable African decline into ethnic rivalry and warfare (the unspoken of hot potato in the recent ANC leadership race). The time is overdue though for those diverging movements within the ANC to forge new identities and to put it to the test amongst the population.
The Zuma / Mbeki saga showed clearly how the COSATU & SACP alliance members manipulated politics. They can be seen to be “bench politicians” a corruption of arm-chair politicians. They sit on the benches in parliament which they occupy purely as a result of piggy-back riding on the ANC and from there they influence national policies.
However much I was opposed to Mbeki, there was a faint strand of hope in me that if he were to be re-elected as ANC president, he would be loathed enough to cause the alliance to split. Following the last general election in 2004 it became clear that opposition in the country was more likely to come from within the ANC than from opposition parties, who lack vision, ambition and a will and capacity to rule, sticking to their own little pigeon holes rather than reaching for the sky. We have now seen that opposition within the ruling party and it is little surprise that it was divided along the lines of SACP/COSATU vs. the centrist “Mbeki-ites” (in quotes because of Mbeki’s disastrous strategy to not allow anybody else to lead them, now to his and their and perhaps the country’s loss).
Zuma’s victory means that such a split is now less likely. It is regrettable, because our politics desperately need to mature. It is unlikely to do so for as long as the ANC remains an umbrella organisation in a climate in which there is no longer any collective storm of political oppression to weather. Politicians are more likely to keep the alliance alive from all sides because it is more likely to guarantee them a seat in Parliament and an annual income in excess of R600,000 - a sizable portion of which no doubt goes to the various parties’ coffers.
“Mbeki’s strategy” thus far to keep the SACP/COSATU alliance within the ANC and thereby to ensure cooperation rather than confrontation in economic politics was a good one that has now died a brutal death. If the alliance partners have not hi-jacked the ANC it has certainly overrun it. A split can now only come from those centrists who would have found a natural home in an alliance with the Democratic Alliance and I do not see that happening. Such an alliance would also have given the official opposition DA the opportunity to expand beyond its narrow vision of catering to a select constituency and afforded it the opportunity to become a more representative party.
The politics of inclusion has its benefits, especially in SA’s case as it comes from a deeply divided past. It also has it drawbacks and it is on account of those drawbacks, such as nepotism, corruption, complacency and acquiesment of opposition and effectively, of cross-checks and balances, that the umbrella needs to be closed.
Mbeki and the ANC knows that COSATU is the only movement that could conceivably have formed an alternative governing party – the “Labour Party”, using contributions from trade union members to fund such a party. The SACP is a dead duck that turtle-back rides on the alliance as a whole and they will die a sudden death if they don’t piggyback ride – what plutocrat would possibly want to fund them except those trying to buy influence, which they would be far better off buying elsewhere – I see support for the SACP to be nominal, no more than 12 percent or so of voters if that many (which is of course a lot more than the current opposition parties have). However, if COSATU might appeal to those who already have work (or else they would not be part of a labour union), the SACP might appeal to the real poor people, those with no chance of a job.
Such a division might appal many within the alliance who still identify with the common identity forged in “the struggle”, but it makes sense on every other account. The ANC stands to loose its ground amongst the rising middle-classes in a matter of a decade, unless it differentiates itself from the party of lower earning and poor people. Perhaps the lousy opposition parties are just sitting and biding their time for that to happen, but it would be foolish to take for granted that it will.
Such a division is the only way in which I foresee SA ever moving beyond the racially defined identity politics which has been the country’s making, nearly resulted in its unmaking and still has the potential to do so.
I guess it will be business as usual now. The net effect thereof is that SA is only somewhat as innovative and leading as it could be.
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.
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
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”
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.
Mbeki - some perspectives
The recent ANC leadership race made news worldwide. I am sure that those pieces of serialised newsclips hardly cared to describe a feeling that is prevalent amongst South Africans. Mbeki is such a spindoctor that Zuma is seen as some demon that will destroy South Africa. Zuma is by no means a demon, but he is certainly a poor candidate. Despite that, the Polokwane vote was a vote against Mbeki rather than necessarily being one for Zuma per se. It just so happens that Zuma is the pivotal figure to lead the mutiny aginst the demon Mbeki (Yes! In answer to your question Mbeki, you do have horns.
Some very interesting blog pieces shed a little bit of light of the same shade I am standing in.
http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/media-flaws/2007/12/19/irresistable-satire
and perhaps a favourite one:
http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/?p=429 to which i also added a comment before I wrote for this long neglected blog again.
Some very interesting blog pieces shed a little bit of light of the same shade I am standing in.
http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/media-flaws/2007/12/19/irresistable-satire
and perhaps a favourite one:
http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/?p=429 to which i also added a comment before I wrote for this long neglected blog again.
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