Johannesburg — The Minister of Safety and Security is the man at the heart of the current political row in South Africa. He made the controversial announcement on Tuesday 24 April that three leading members of the governing African National Congress were being investigated for involvement in a plot to oust President Thabo Mbeki. But who is Steve Tshwete? AllAfricas Ofeibea Quist-Arcton has been finding out.
If you look up the biographies of South Africas Minister of Safety and Security, Steve Tshwete, they tell the story of a man at the heart of the action. Steve Vukile Tshwete, born in 1938, political activist, arrested in 1964 on charges of furthering the aims of the African National Congress, the ANC. Sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, which he served on Robben Island.
Tshwete has impeccable 'struggle credentials. During his prison days, Steve Tshwete - a rugby enthusiast and one-time provincial rugby trial player - acted as the president of the 'Robben Island Rugby Board'. He has said in the past that, but for apartheid, he would have hoped to represent South Africa in either cricket or rugby at international level
Tall and sometimes gruff, with a gravelly voice, his dark glasses sometimes have the effect of making Tshwete look like a well-connected underworld boss. But when the glasses come off, his deep-throated laugh and wide smile are disarming. You could not miss Steve Tshwete in a crowd.
Yet one journalist has described him as 'unnerving, and speaks of never quite feeling at ease in Tshwetes presence, although the minister is a godsend for the media, because he likes talking and rarely refuses an interview.
Steve Tshwete was instrumental in the formation of the United Democratic Front, the extra-parliamentary opposition movement, during the apartheid years, becoming one of the most visible spokesmen for the Eastern Cape, his home region. In 1985, he went into exile in Zambia, after another spell in detention in the homeland of Ciskei. Tshwete was based in Lusaka and served in the ANCs military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
So it was no great surprise, with his sporting history and anti-apartheid pedigree, that Steve Tshwete was appointed sports minister under the then President, Nelson Mandela, with the brief of unifying South Africas racially divided sports bodies, in the post-apartheid era.
His record there is contested.
Some commend Tshwete for a job well done, for taking on the challenge of transforming sport in South Africa and paving the way for its re-entry into the international sports arena. He is quoted as saying that sport was a catalyst with the magnetic power to bring people together, and it was a task he attacked with relish.
Others are scathing about the Tshwete legacy at the sports ministry and criticize his stewardship.
They accuse Tshwete of 'meddling', as he attempted to integrate sport through regulation. His defence was that, continuing to field white teams to represent a multiracial South Africa, at international competitive level, was simply not acceptable.
'Steve Tshwete cried when South Africa was beaten,' said a local commentator, who is also a soccer aficionado, 'but he spent too much time going overseas to watch matches, while there was very little transformation in sport back home in South Africa'.
But Steve Tshwete has a reputation for being a Mr 'Fix-It. His most famous public battles, when he wore the Sports Ministers cap, were with soccer and rugby officials and these made him a high-profile, highly-visible politician.
If anything, that image has been enhanced in his not-so-new job as Minister of Safety and Security, a portfolio he was handed when Thabo Mbeki took over from Nelson Mandela after the national elections in 1999, which the ANC won handsomely.
But before that, Tshwete was well-known as an ANC 'firefighter, to be parachuted in whenever internal party crises required it.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the ex-wife of the former president, was on the receiving end of the'Tshwete treatment. She accused the ANC of reneging on its election promises and, says the Mail and Guardian's A-Z of South African politics, 'he did a demolition job on her in a lengthy newspaper article. Mrs Madikizela-Mandela threatened to sue Tshwete, but was warned by the (ANC) party to drop the case or face disciplinary action herself.'
Steve Tshwete was despatched to the provinces several times by the party leadership under President Nelson Mandela. When there was perceived trouble in the Free State under the then ANC premier, Patrick 'Terror Mosioua Lekota, Lekota was dropped and replaced. (Lekota has since been 'rehabilitated' and is now South Africas Defence Minister).
The same happened to Mathews Phosa in Mpumalanga. Tshwete was sent to sort out that provincial headache for the ANC and Phosa lost his job as premier after the 1999 elections.
Phosa is one of the three senior ANC officials that Steve Tshwete has fingered as being part of a plot to undermine President Thabo Mbeki. The others are the respected former ANC secretary-general, Cyril Ramaphosa and the former Gauteng premier, Tokyo Sexwale, all anti-apartheid stalwarts.
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All three have denied the charge, though Tshwete, in his capacity as Safety and Security Minister, says he has launched an investigation.
So is Steve Tshwete an effective trouble-shooter or a ministerial 'hatchet man working on behalf of his president, Thabo Mbeki? That is the question many South Africans are asking after the conspiracy theory bombshell Tshwete dropped last week.
Some have described him as a bull in a china shop, someone who has an acute case of 'foot and mouth disease. "He opens his mouth and puts his foot in it all the time", one critic told me. "But Thabo Mbeki needs him," say others.
South Africans are waiting to see whether the fallout from the political row affects Mbeki or Tshwete positively or negatively?
So far the omens are not good.
Steve Tshwete has been roundly denounced and accused of being 'totally irresponsible for his announcement about the 'plot against Mbeki. He has been criticised within his own party, by ANC allies and especially by the South African public, among others. But Steve Tshwete is a survivor. He may well outlive this political crisis, to fight another day.
