| October 01, 2008 | Wednesday | Shawwal 1, 1429 |
|
ANC devours its own
LATE last month, by the end of the most eventful week in South African politics since the demise of apartheid, Nelson Mandela’s successor as president had humiliatingly been booted out by his own party.
Thabo Mbeki must have wondered at the irony that about the only prominent note of regret at his ouster was sounded by Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who described the African National Congress’s decision as “devastating”.
Of course, Mugabe has plenty of cause for gratitude towards Mbeki, who stood by him in the face of international disgust and even broad African disdain, refusing to condemn him after Mugabe decided that an electoral loss was insufficient cause for relinquishing power. Mbeki’s diplomacy paid off in the end, and a compromise was eventually reached in mid-September whereby Mugabe retains the presidency but now shares power with his main rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, the new prime minister.
Until quite recently, such an agreement was all but impossible to envisage, and even now it is hard to say to what extent the new arrangement can rescue Zimbabwe from the pits of economic dysfunction, or how long it will endure. But Mbeki must have employed all the powers of persuasion at his disposal to conciliate the two bitter adversaries, and had some cause to be proud of his achievement.
To his misfortune, the charms that worked abroad didn’t do much for him on the domestic front. His political fate was effectively sealed last December, when he was replaced as African National Congress (ANC) leader by Jacob Zuma at a party congress. It would have been wise of Mbeki, at that juncture, to step down from the presidency and stage an exit with some of his dignity intact. He chose a different course of action, seeking to outmanoeuvre Zuma through corruption charges.
That strategy came a cropper last month, when a judge not only threw out the charges but declared that “baleful political influence” lay behind the prosecution. He saw it as part of the “titanic political struggle” for control of the ruling ANC. “In terms of the law, more especially emanating from the constitution, there is responsibility attributable to the president,” he declared, comparing Mbeki’s actions with those of apartheid-era governments. This verdict effectively sealed Mbeki’s fate, prompting the ANC to “recall” him. Shortly thereafter the president resigned, and he has since been replaced, in an interim capacity, by Kgalema Motlanthe.
It is widely expected that Zuma, who was exonerated not long ago in a sordid rape case, will become the next president, after elections scheduled for April 2009. This time he hasn’t exactly been cleared of corruption: the judge made it clear he wasn’t declaring Zuma innocent. But in the present circumstances, fresh charges are unlikely to be filed. The irony is that the case stems from a huge arms deal in the 1990s in which Mbeki played a crucial role.
Eyebrows were raised at the time over the billions of dollars being spent on buying aircraft, submarines and ships from a range of western arms manufacturers, even though South Africa faced no external threat at the time and the resources could obviously have been put to much better use. Mbeki, deputy president at the time, was the head of the subcommittee that approved the deal. Shortly thereafter, reports began to emerge of huge kickbacks. A parliamentary investigation committee was set up, but it was coerced by the ANC leadership into moderating its findings.
The arms contracts are generally viewed as the ANC’s first serious sin: the point at which the post-apartheid administration began slithering down the path of graft and sleaze taken by so many other African governments. It may make more sense, however, to go back a bit further, to the early 1990s, when representatives of the ANC — led by Mbeki — conducted secret negotiations with western governments and financial institutions, and signed up to the neoliberal Washington Consensus as the quid pro quo for the end of political apartheid. Largely as a result, despite steady economic growth, levels of poverty among blacks remain unchanged since apartheid; in some cases, conditions have actually deteriorated. The difference is that a coterie of black capitalists, many of them associated with the ANC, has acquired phenomenal riches.
These riches haven’t been trickling down. That is why Mandela, at his 90th birthday celebrations last July, felt obliged to call for concerted efforts to combat poverty. No one paid too much attention.
Not surprisingly, Mbeki’s neoliberal inclinations have copped little criticism outside South Africa. The same cannot be said about his bizarre attitude towards Aids: he has consistently held that the connection between the deadly disease and the HIV virus is a convenient figment of Big Pharma’s imagination, and that those who insist otherwise are casting aspersions on African culture. The rapaciousness of leading pharmaceutical multinationals is not in doubt, but the broad consensus among medical scientists on the HIV-Aids link can hardly be ignored.
As a cavalier intellectual position, it may have had no more than curiosity value, but Mbeki actually denied South Africans free access to anti-retroviral medicines — a decision that is believed to have cost thousands of lives, including those of infants born with HIV. Cape Town’s Anglican archbishop Njogonkulu Ndungane said the official approach was “as serious a crime against humanity as apartheid”. Aids researcher and former Mbeki confidant Malegaparu Makgoba said the government’s denialist tendency amounted to genocide. Schoolchildren reportedly dubbed Mbeki ‘Comrade Undertaker’. And since he retired as president nine years ago, Mandela has been devoting a substantial proportion of his energies to raising awareness of Aids and funds for research.
Mbeki’s exit last week was followed by that of his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who held that garlic and lemon juice was a suitable remedy for the affliction. Her successor, fortunately, does not share those views. On this front, at least, some improvement can be expected in South Africa. More broadly, it would be futile to count on fundamental changes. Although Zuma has enjoyed the backing of forces that opposed Mbeki’s economic priorities, including the Communist Party and the powerful trade union federation Cosatu, their ability to influence the ANC’s direction amid its ongoing factional squabbles remains questionable.
When it comes, history’s verdict on the man who said he wanted not only to transform his own country but to usher in a golden era throughout Africa is unlikely to be complimentary, and may even be considerably harsh. At best he could be perceived as a fatally flawed tragic hero. For the moment, two words will suffice as a political epitaph that could double as an interim verdict on the ANC: wasted opportunities.
mahir.worldview@gmail.com
