Cynics might smirk that Essop Pahad’s malfunctioning hearing aid at a seminar on Thabo Mbeki’s legacy was an apt metaphor for his 10 years as minister in the former president’s office.
Pahad’s hearing difficulties emerged this week at the Centre for Civil Society seminar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, “Thinking About the Legacy of Thabo Mbeki’s Politics”.
The Mbeki administration is accused of being deaf to the cries of ordinary citizens — so much so that last week another ANC luminary, Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale, blamed it for the  current wave of anti-government protests.
Pahad’s presentation displayed all the symptoms of the Mbeki malaise: deafness, myopia and denialist phonic tics akin to Tourette’s syndrome.
Stating early on that he would “not deal with Zimbabwe and HIV/Aids because that will come from the panel” — which included political economist Patrick Bond and Chatsworth housing activist Orlean Naidoo — Pahad embarked on a sanitised history lesson.
Mbeki’s legacy included New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) and “reviving the concept and notion of an African renaissance”, the 50-50 gender policy in government and shaping macroeconomic policy to place South Africa on the global map.
“Internally, I don’t think he was given enough credit for Project Consolidate,” Pahad said, alluding to the interventionist strategy designed to address service bottlenecks.
Bond broached the issues of “crony capitalism” and the “genocide” in relation to the 350 000 HIV/Aids-related deaths attributed to Mbeki’s denialism and slowness in rolling out antiretrovirals.
He also echoed Moeletsi Mbeki’s claim that his brother “nurtured a dictatorship in Zimbabwe” because he was concerned about a “similar working-class opposition coming about in South Africa”.
Well, Pahad, really did feel “genocide” was an awfully strong word and is “still waiting for a proper assessment to ask what is wrong with the policy of ABC: abstain, be faithful and condomise? What is wrong with a policy that says our basic response is prevention?”
On Zimbabwe, there was “honestly, honestly, honestly” nothing else the government could do without playing into the hands of the “imperialist powers”, the United Kingdom and the United States, which were calling for regime change.
Naidoo gave a personal account of post-Gear (growth, employment and redistribution policy) job losses and rising rentals and rates, followed by accusations that government had lost touch with the people. “It’s ridiculous for you to think that, as a minister sitting in Pretoria, you would know what is happening in Chatsworth,” said Pahad.
“The ructions prior to [the Polokwane conference] is a conversation for another time, to understand it better — for me too. Perhaps it wouldn’t have happened if I had understood it at that time,” he said.
Equally telling was Pahad’s account of what appears to be his sole foray into the real world in the past decade: being deployed by the ANC leadership to address protests in the Free State. He said he was “astonished” that the protests had “everything to do with an internal ANC power struggle organised by people wanting to be councillors”.