Financial Gazette (Harare)
Mavis Makuni
27 September 2008
opinion
EVEN the worst enemies of Thabo Mbeki, whose volcanic ouster as South African president this week sent shockwaves across the continent, must find the development deeply saddening, representing as it does, the death of an African dream.
When Mbeki succeeded the venerated Nelson Mandela in 2000, everyone's expectation was that he would inherit the "Madiba magic" and continue to propel South Africa from its discredited apartheid past into a shining beacon for the rest of the continent. After all, Mbeki was in the right place at the right time to ride on the cot-tails of Mandela's universal popularity.
Mandela's hand-picked successor had impeccable credentials as a liberation struggle stalwart and was recognised as Africa's Renaissance Man. He was the brains behind the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), whose goals are to promote economic development and good governance continent-wide.
It was difficult to imagine Mbeki setting a foot wrong while following in the footsteps of the great Mandela. However, it soon became clear that Mbeki had a propensity for self-sabotage not unlike that which blighted Bill Clinton's presidency. The controversies that have swirled around Mbeki's head have the same clumsy and frivolous quality as the foolhardy misdeeds that tainted Clinton's otherwise admirable presidency.
When asked soon after receiving the leadership baton from Mandela how he felt about stepping into the shoes of the great man, Mbeki replied: "Madiba wears ugly shoes".
Looking at how Mbeki's presidency has unfolded, it seems certain that by making that curt statement, he wished it to be known from the outset that he was his own man and was determined to do things his way.
The trouble is that he took the idea of moving away from Madiba's shadow too far and tried to be different for its own sake even when this portrayed him as an aloof, equivocating and arrogant leader.
Mbeki's confounding conduct and utterances over the years often reminded me of a description by a woman of her son's aimless perversity that I read about in a manual on abnormal psychology. "Tommy never tells the truth, even when it is easier", said the exasperated mother of her psychopathic son.
My aim in citing this example is not in any way to cast similar aspersions on Mbeki but merely to draw an analogy between the boy's inability to tell the truth and Mbeki's predilection for doing exactly the opposite of what would normally be expected of him.
Mbeki never seemed to act like a statesman even when there was nothing to lose and everything to gain. One example is the deposed South African president's "dissident" stance on AIDS and HIV .
In the face of overwhelming evidence that the pandemic was decimating the population, Mbeki persisted in his questioning of the scientific causes of the disease and infamously declared that he did not know anyone who had died of AIDS. It was only after his government was taken to court by the Treatment Action Campaign that a chastened Mbeki climbed down from his ivory tower.
This is one of many examples of the former president trying to impose his intellectualism and personal sentiments as national policies.
The same streak of awkwardness runs like a thread through Mbeki's handling of scandals involving public officials, his unfounded accusations against perceived political rivals such as Tokyo Sexwale, Cyril Ramaphosa and Matthews Phosa, whom he unnecessarily ordered investigated on allegations of plotting to illegally unseat him from the presidency.
Accusations that Mbeki was galvanised by similar self-preserving, pre-emptive motivations when he fired Jacob Zuma as his deputy, finally caught up with him this month, leading to his dramatic ouster by his own party.
The aimless quality of Mbeki's conduct was also keenly felt across the Limpopo in Zimbabwe where for almost a decade he posed as the troubleshooter, while the national crisis escalated. Once again, for a statesman tackling a crisis needing urgent resolution, Mbeki chose a cloak-and-dagger approach in which no one knew what he was doing and saying. He stuck to "quiet diplomacy" despite its evident inefficacy and inappropriateness in tackling a situation calling for open and frank talk.
He opposed every attempt to have the Zimbabwean crisis put on the agenda for discussion at regional, continental and international levels even though he did not have a solution to offer.
Mbeki's actions confirmed the widespread perception that he was in collusion with the Zimbabwean government and was doing everything in his power to help it buy time. That perception persists to this day even after the controversial "power-sharing" deal between ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change, which he pushed through just in the nick of time before he was deposed.
The enduring question is, what values, principles and beliefs can Mbeki have been defending through his incomprehensible actions in South Africa and in countries like Zimbabwe, where he acted as the Southern Africa Development Community's mediator?
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