Sipho Seepe
no blows barred
It would be tempting to dismiss outright the allegations against the three leading businessmen, Cyril Ramaphosa, Matthews Phosa and Tokyo Sexwale to oust President Thabo Mbeki from office as preposterous.
Indeed, many organisations including the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Communist Party and some members of the ruling elite have dismissed the allegations as mischievous, reckless and insulting.
No less an important figure has come to the defence of the three than Nelson Mandela. Mandela said “that until there is evidence to substantiate the allegations, I will always regard them in high esteem”. Commenting in Britain, where the allegations were met with bewilderment, Mandela reminded his listeners that “Cyril Ramaphosa has been an architect of the modern South Africa. He led the negotiating team. He made such an impact on friend and foe that he is still regarded as the man who helped bring about peaceful transition. If he wants to come back [to politics] he has the right abilities and he would be one of the right people to lead South Africa.”
In an attempt to minimise the political damage, he pledged his continued support for Mbeki. Not surprisingly, Mbeki was one of the few to give credence to the plot.
A hasty dismissal of the allegations risks diverting our attention from not only their gravity and motive, but also their timing and context. The allegations must be seen in the context of the general leadership crisis that has engulfed the Mbeki presidency. Polls indicate that the government under Mbeki is faced with a crisis of confidence. For instance a report by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa indicates that as of July-August last year, only a small portion of citizens felt that their elected representatives were interested in what they think or want. For blacks the figure is 48% (down from 73% two years ago), whites 17% and Indians 6%.
The macroeconomic growth, employment and redistribution policy (Gear), which was rammed down the throat of the African National Congress alliance, has failed to realise most of its targets. The severe cutbacks in social services, the continued loss of jobs, increasing poverty and spiralling crime are perceived as flowing from the dictates of market forces encapsulated in Gear. Almost two years after the 1999 election promises the majority remains in paralysing suspense while it witnesses an increase in poverty, growing unemployment and incessant corruption in the government matched only by ineptitude the most glaring example being the unspent R200-million earmarked for poverty relief.
Mbeki’s relentless pursuit of discredited ideas on HIV/Aids, notwithstanding the advice from the ANC and its alliance partners, has raised questions regarding his moral and intellectual standing. The international community is still reeling with shock after he declared himself a modern-day Galileo by challenging the world’s best medical and scientific opinion regarding the cause of Aids.
While Mbeki remains impervious to reason, the epidemic is taking its toll, ravaging villages, undermining economic productivity and destroying the social fabric of our society.
The decision of the ANC to delink the position of the premier from that of the provincial chair has effectively led to a situation where Mbeki has complete control over all levers of government. Mbeki’s control is similar to that of Africa’s leading despot, Mobutu Sese Seko.
In his book, African Politics and Society, political scientist Peter J Schraeder could well have been referring to South Africa’s current political arrangement in which “the leader at the centre of the system personally selects government appointees, who in turn select their appointees, and so on. The leader is exalted in this system and seeks loyalty through a delicate combination of charisma and the provision of economic and political patronage … Administrators and Cabinet members [are kept] on the move from post to post so that none of them could establish a firm power base … there was literally no one in the state domain who held a position other than through presi-dential grace.”
In such an environment the leader becomes an embodiment of the party and of the state. Any challenge to the leader is seen as a challenge to the party and a threat to the state. The ruling elite has said as much. All of
the above means that fatal blows political, economic, moral and
intellectual have been struck at the heart of Mbeki’s presidency. In other words, the notion of Mbeki, the visionary, the thinker, the philosopher king, the reconciler, the strategist, has been exposed for what it has always been a myth. Emerging is a portrait of an individual who will stop at nothing to cling to power and whose insecurity far outweighs his abilities.
Understood in this context, the allegation against Phosa, Ramaphosa and Sexwale must be seen as expressions of paranoia and an elaboration of a strategy that ensures that Mbeki’s presidency of the ANC and thereby that of the country is not challenged. The allegation against these business leaders is a culmination of a series of attacks that has been the lot of those who dared to expose the bankruptcy of the ruling elite.
It is not an accident that these individuals are, in the parlance of struggle, “tried and tested leaders of the revolutionary movement”. While the three have proclaimed satisfaction with their “deployment” in business, they remain popular leaders with a national profile. This makes them serious contenders for the throne. Thus a strategy had to be developed to enlist their loyalty to the incumbent. For now it would appear that the strategy has worked.
Since Mbeki holds the key to the appointments of individuals at all levels of government, it is unlikely that he will face a challenge by those who have been handsomely rewarded. Thus he can be assured of the support of the Cabinet, premiers, director generals and MECs, some of whom are influential members of the national executive committee of the ANC.
Any change in the presidency can only be effected from below. It is fervently hoped that the branches and provincial structures will remember and not betray the sacrifice that so many made to make a democratic South Africa possible.
The country needs a president who is truly committed to democratic processes and the entrenchment of demo- cratic practices.