Totally occupied for weeks with final illness and farewells for my wife Eve, ever an ANC loyalist, I have completely missed the wide coverage of Mark Gevisser’s book on Thabo Mbeki. Just until I have completed and sent off this article, I will stay outside the buzz of interest which the book – by a fine writer, after years of research – is stirring, for its full and sensitive treatment of the subject: I know that to understand can be to forgive – but it should not be to excuse, to validate, and to allow the subject to carry on messing up our national politics.
Of course Thabo Mbeki should not be standing for a third term as ANC President – it simply muddies the fountains of choice as to who will lead the country into the next crucial phase of transition. But sadly, it is only the latest and greatest act of irresponsibility and manipulation in a catalogue of choices which I believe have characterised and shaped the course of the presidency, and of national policy.
Like most long-standing ANC members, I was happy to see Thabo Mbeki become Deputy President, and the natural successor to Nelson Mandela.
We had come home in 1990, after 26 years in exile, to witness a country being thrown into turmoil for almost four years by the last bloody stand of apartheid forces in alliance with tribal reactionaries, in the hostels, on the trains, at Bisho and Boipathong.
We had gone to Boksburg, and wept. The murder of Chris Hani had taken out a communist, a genuine reoconciler, and a hugely popular leader. Our socialism had become shrinkwrapped in ‘strategy and tactics’, in the realpolitik of Joe Slovo’s Sunset Clauses.
But we came through. In 1994, I wept again, this time with joy as I watched President Mandela being sworn in.
In our ANC branches in the early 1990s we had been handed the draft of the RDP to debate intensively and to propose any changes. It was a heady time in our Yeoville branch. However, some of us noted with alarm that this draft – actually no more than a social democratic programme to begin with, was already being watered down further – I had in my computer a draft showing the sections to be weakened, in submissions which came from the office of Tito Mboweni among others.
Then came GEAR, to sweep aside any pretense of a socialist-oriented or even people-driven programme, and to put our economic and political futures into the hands of formerly staunch liberation fighters now ready to follow the dictates of capital and the corporates; to go along with media owned by corporates, or run by liberals who were outside of and scornful of the struggle culture and its international history.
Still, in both elections I was ready to cast my vote, in effect for the Mbeki leadership. We had to hope that this highly intelligent crown prince of our movement, the Thabo we knew from our young days in Johannesburg, could lead the Alliance back into confronting the next challenging phase of liberation.
But we had to tick off the markers, large and small, one by one. We can recall a few…
There was the big birthday party which Sol Kerzner, the man who got rich from casinos in Bantustans, threw for Thabo Mbeki. It was a herald to the whole of new South Africa being dotted with neon and marble gambling dens.
The new president publicly defended Thatcherism and began his repeated attacks on unions and communists. The ministry to coordinate the RDP was dismantled, and GEAR was strengthened.
One of his ministers ‘warned’ publicly, of a ‘plot’ against Mbeki by three of the most competent and charismatic figures in national politics: Cyril Ramaphosa, Matthews Phosa and Tokyo Sexwale. Their denials were accepted with a shrug – and that was the end of their political careers, or any danger of them becoming rivals in the near future.
South Africa as part of a liberated Southern Africa was discounted in all but name, and the alliance and support of Mozambique’s Frelimo and Angola’s MPLA, so vital to our own liberation, was almost shunted aside, while as time went on the increasingly dictatorial Mugabe – no particularly great friend of the ANC in earlier struggle years – was persistently defended.
The opportunity to recast our national image was neglected, just when all South Africans would have accepted it. There are still so very few statues, or streets named after our struggle martyrs and African heroes in any in any major city – other than, all too typically, Mandela in Sandton Square. As if history belongs to an era of white supremacy. Does Kimberley, or Graaf Reinet, have a Sobukwe Street? Ben Schoeman Highway sweeps on, while there is still no Bram Fischer Highway. Strydom, Verwoerd, Vorster, come up on every GPS – where are Joe Gqabi, Ruth First and legions of MK martyrs, or leaders of peasant uprisings? Where is there a prominent Nyerere Avenue, Kaunda Street, Nkrumah Highway? Thomas Sankara Street?
All this fudging and blurring of our new national identity, in the name of “local communities” (small caucuses mostly of DA whites or farmers?) making “democratic choices”.
Delarey is celebrated in song, fine – but are we embarrassed about our liberation heroes? Do our wonderful jazz artists, old and new, get fair play alongside kwaito, on the airwaves?
Mbeki’s idea of reconciliation was in at least one case quite shaming – to attend the funeral of arch-apartheid leader P W Botha, when even Botha’s family were uneasy with his presence. And yet the president is never above scattering accusations of white racism towards much more well-meaning, less guilty targets.
There has been the long and sordid phase, which continues up to now, with all the coruscating power that the middle class media and the confused gender activists and the disgusting Zuma cartoons of Zapiro can convey, of vilifying at least two of the staunchest, most able and effective leading figures of the liberation era, Jacob Zuma and Mac Maharaj. Is this the revolution beginning to eat its own – as Padraig O’Malley puts in his recently published account of these years? And so many, usually middle class ANC loyalists say nothing; partly because they have bought into the scare stories, and partly because they think it is not their place as whites, or good soldiers, to speak out.
We don’t have to be Zuma supporters to see that he has obviously been castigated and vilified beyond reason. We all know that he is no more guilty of transgressions, actually perhaps less so, than many others as prominent as him, in the public and private sectors. His dominant image – the rough diamond in struggle, the loyal soldier, the cultural conservative, the unpolished demeanour – is often used to make out that he is some kind of backward behemoth. Yet it is not he who has opted to strengthen the role of tribal chiefs and kings.
He is of course, not a bogeyman, just popular, ready to give space, we hope, to the left and not come to prominence through the support of big capital. That may be his ultimate threat, that he had not yet been bought. How rich that the latest attacks on him, by analysts in corporate media, and echoed by some left-liberals, is that he is ready to accommodate the corporates!
An (unindicted) bribe-taker, an (acquitted) rapist, and now a (two friendly lunches) ally of capital. How could such a creature presume to lead us!
Meanwhile the president, or his camp, has sent us spiralling further downwards, through a series of dubious accusations – each to be glibly palmed off to a “commission of inquiry”, against a National Intelligence leader, a Deputy Health Minister, a Scorpion boss, into a dangerous vortex. There are timely revelations of communist leaders not accounting for plastic bags of money, of Cosatu leadership divided, and so on, and on.
And Thabo Mbeki, wanting irresponsibly to hold power to the last, has left us with no clear candidate to succeed him. If he were to win the ANC Presidency, would the “Party” suddenly be restored to its leftist style prominence by media analysts? Watch this space.
A great many, perhaps the majority of “ordinary,” mostly black South Africans, are fed up. They want to see Jacob Zuma take the job because they have, tragically, lost faith in the leadership of Thabo Mbeki, his team, and all his works. A huge majority is champing for clear policy and resolute action on poverty and unemployment.
It will do no South African any good if this widens into a loss of faith in the ANC. The Alliance must survive, and go from strength to strength, in pursuing at the very least, an active social democratic policy, and solidarity with our region, and the third world.
Tony Hall, Mpumalanga
November 2007
Of course Thabo Mbeki should not be standing for a third term as ANC President – it simply muddies the fountains of choice as to who will lead the country into the next crucial phase of transition. But sadly, it is only the latest and greatest act of irresponsibility and manipulation in a catalogue of choices which I believe have characterised and shaped the course of the presidency, and of national policy.
Like most long-standing ANC members, I was happy to see Thabo Mbeki become Deputy President, and the natural successor to Nelson Mandela.
We had come home in 1990, after 26 years in exile, to witness a country being thrown into turmoil for almost four years by the last bloody stand of apartheid forces in alliance with tribal reactionaries, in the hostels, on the trains, at Bisho and Boipathong.
We had gone to Boksburg, and wept. The murder of Chris Hani had taken out a communist, a genuine reoconciler, and a hugely popular leader. Our socialism had become shrinkwrapped in ‘strategy and tactics’, in the realpolitik of Joe Slovo’s Sunset Clauses.
But we came through. In 1994, I wept again, this time with joy as I watched President Mandela being sworn in.
In our ANC branches in the early 1990s we had been handed the draft of the RDP to debate intensively and to propose any changes. It was a heady time in our Yeoville branch. However, some of us noted with alarm that this draft – actually no more than a social democratic programme to begin with, was already being watered down further – I had in my computer a draft showing the sections to be weakened, in submissions which came from the office of Tito Mboweni among others.
Then came GEAR, to sweep aside any pretense of a socialist-oriented or even people-driven programme, and to put our economic and political futures into the hands of formerly staunch liberation fighters now ready to follow the dictates of capital and the corporates; to go along with media owned by corporates, or run by liberals who were outside of and scornful of the struggle culture and its international history.
Still, in both elections I was ready to cast my vote, in effect for the Mbeki leadership. We had to hope that this highly intelligent crown prince of our movement, the Thabo we knew from our young days in Johannesburg, could lead the Alliance back into confronting the next challenging phase of liberation.
But we had to tick off the markers, large and small, one by one. We can recall a few…
There was the big birthday party which Sol Kerzner, the man who got rich from casinos in Bantustans, threw for Thabo Mbeki. It was a herald to the whole of new South Africa being dotted with neon and marble gambling dens.
The new president publicly defended Thatcherism and began his repeated attacks on unions and communists. The ministry to coordinate the RDP was dismantled, and GEAR was strengthened.
One of his ministers ‘warned’ publicly, of a ‘plot’ against Mbeki by three of the most competent and charismatic figures in national politics: Cyril Ramaphosa, Matthews Phosa and Tokyo Sexwale. Their denials were accepted with a shrug – and that was the end of their political careers, or any danger of them becoming rivals in the near future.
South Africa as part of a liberated Southern Africa was discounted in all but name, and the alliance and support of Mozambique’s Frelimo and Angola’s MPLA, so vital to our own liberation, was almost shunted aside, while as time went on the increasingly dictatorial Mugabe – no particularly great friend of the ANC in earlier struggle years – was persistently defended.
The opportunity to recast our national image was neglected, just when all South Africans would have accepted it. There are still so very few statues, or streets named after our struggle martyrs and African heroes in any in any major city – other than, all too typically, Mandela in Sandton Square. As if history belongs to an era of white supremacy. Does Kimberley, or Graaf Reinet, have a Sobukwe Street? Ben Schoeman Highway sweeps on, while there is still no Bram Fischer Highway. Strydom, Verwoerd, Vorster, come up on every GPS – where are Joe Gqabi, Ruth First and legions of MK martyrs, or leaders of peasant uprisings? Where is there a prominent Nyerere Avenue, Kaunda Street, Nkrumah Highway? Thomas Sankara Street?
All this fudging and blurring of our new national identity, in the name of “local communities” (small caucuses mostly of DA whites or farmers?) making “democratic choices”.
Delarey is celebrated in song, fine – but are we embarrassed about our liberation heroes? Do our wonderful jazz artists, old and new, get fair play alongside kwaito, on the airwaves?
Mbeki’s idea of reconciliation was in at least one case quite shaming – to attend the funeral of arch-apartheid leader P W Botha, when even Botha’s family were uneasy with his presence. And yet the president is never above scattering accusations of white racism towards much more well-meaning, less guilty targets.
There has been the long and sordid phase, which continues up to now, with all the coruscating power that the middle class media and the confused gender activists and the disgusting Zuma cartoons of Zapiro can convey, of vilifying at least two of the staunchest, most able and effective leading figures of the liberation era, Jacob Zuma and Mac Maharaj. Is this the revolution beginning to eat its own – as Padraig O’Malley puts in his recently published account of these years? And so many, usually middle class ANC loyalists say nothing; partly because they have bought into the scare stories, and partly because they think it is not their place as whites, or good soldiers, to speak out.
We don’t have to be Zuma supporters to see that he has obviously been castigated and vilified beyond reason. We all know that he is no more guilty of transgressions, actually perhaps less so, than many others as prominent as him, in the public and private sectors. His dominant image – the rough diamond in struggle, the loyal soldier, the cultural conservative, the unpolished demeanour – is often used to make out that he is some kind of backward behemoth. Yet it is not he who has opted to strengthen the role of tribal chiefs and kings.
He is of course, not a bogeyman, just popular, ready to give space, we hope, to the left and not come to prominence through the support of big capital. That may be his ultimate threat, that he had not yet been bought. How rich that the latest attacks on him, by analysts in corporate media, and echoed by some left-liberals, is that he is ready to accommodate the corporates!
An (unindicted) bribe-taker, an (acquitted) rapist, and now a (two friendly lunches) ally of capital. How could such a creature presume to lead us!
Meanwhile the president, or his camp, has sent us spiralling further downwards, through a series of dubious accusations – each to be glibly palmed off to a “commission of inquiry”, against a National Intelligence leader, a Deputy Health Minister, a Scorpion boss, into a dangerous vortex. There are timely revelations of communist leaders not accounting for plastic bags of money, of Cosatu leadership divided, and so on, and on.
And Thabo Mbeki, wanting irresponsibly to hold power to the last, has left us with no clear candidate to succeed him. If he were to win the ANC Presidency, would the “Party” suddenly be restored to its leftist style prominence by media analysts? Watch this space.
A great many, perhaps the majority of “ordinary,” mostly black South Africans, are fed up. They want to see Jacob Zuma take the job because they have, tragically, lost faith in the leadership of Thabo Mbeki, his team, and all his works. A huge majority is champing for clear policy and resolute action on poverty and unemployment.
It will do no South African any good if this widens into a loss of faith in the ANC. The Alliance must survive, and go from strength to strength, in pursuing at the very least, an active social democratic policy, and solidarity with our region, and the third world.
Tony Hall, Mpumalanga
November 2007
Are you figliomedio? My name is on CIF is usini, but my real name is peter norton. I worked for VSO in Bangladesh many years ago and then did Education in developing countries at the Institute of Education In London. I think I once had the good fortune to hear you speak.
ReplyDeleteDear Peter, it is very possible that you came across dad. He was in India as information officer for Oxfam from in '75 and '76.
ReplyDelete