PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela’s original offer to Allan Boesak of the post of ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva was shrewd. The president was taking an unsuccessful politician — who had cost the ANC control of the Western Cape — from the untouchable position of an elected official and making him an employee of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Thus he was repaying his debt to Boesak, who had responded to Mandela’s personal request to lead the Western Cape election campaign, while ending Boesak’s career in politics. It was rather elegant. It had the added effect of making the mighty Boesak accountable. After all, you would expect that an ambassador caught with his fingers in the till could be fired.
But then you would have expected a serial adulterer to lose his job as a Calvinist priest. Boesak, you will remember, did — and he didn’t. He kept his priesthood and his presidency of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches the first time he was caught at it. The second time, he resigned his church posts, but was on the comeback route when Mandela brought him on to the election trail.
Boesak is the Velcro man. Everything — all the muck you can possibly throw at a priest and a politician — sticks to him, eventually.
It is sad. During the 1980s, he was a leader of great power and charisma. His oratory was unrivalled at a time when it was badly needed. His role in mobilising against apartheid was not to be underestimated. But his intelligence and skill were matched with an unCalvinist weakness for the good life, and the terrible foolishness of a man who, when caught once, does not learn and gets caught again. In the words of one senior and anonymous cleric this week: ”Allan has one of the most clear, incisive, analytical minds in the country. It is sad that he does not have any moral maturity whatsoever.” Now he is the symbol of what we hope is not a growing phenomenon: the anti-apartheid hero who fell victim to the temptations of the post-apartheid era.