Anton Harber ponders the political future of arch-populist Winnie Mandela, now free to speak her mind
Watch Tokyo Sexwale. He’s our one true television politician, the master of the sound bite.
“We love you,” he said this week, clearly referring to Winnie Mandela, though not by name. “We love you. Don’t abuse our love.”
It was the most elegant expression of what the ANC was feeling. While Deputy President Thabo Mbeki was playing political games, and ANC General Secretary Cyril Ramaphosa was making sure he was otherwise occupied, Sexwale was finding the right phrase to capture the
He used only seven words, but they were laden with meaning. He was saying: I am backing President Mandela in his decision to dismiss Mrs Mandela as deputy minister of arts, culture, science and technology. Mrs Mandela has crossed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. But I still have to admire and respect her.
And fear her — for Sexwale could not bring himself to name her.
There was another, earlier sound bite: less eloquent, and therefore with less impact, but probably more important. Mrs Mandela, knowing that she was facing early retirement as a deputy minister, told a weekend rally: “I will never leave the ANC.”
Only six words, but containing a book’s-worth of significance. What she was saying was this: I may be out of the government for now, but I am going to fight back, and I am going to do it from within the organisation, rather than walk out as some would have me do, because this is the best way for me to get back into power.
“We’ll make our voices heard to get it back on track,” she said.
In this fighting attitude, you can feel the power of the woman which made her so formidable during the apartheid years. She has the strength and dignity to turn a defeat and a humiliation to her advantage.
Of one thing you can be certain: Mrs Mandela is not going to disappear from the political scene. She will hit the campaign trail, doing what she has always done best: getting out there among her constituency, working with them, coaxing them along, bullying anyone who gets in her way, dealing ruthlessly with her political foes, and rebuilding her political base.
She will pound the local government election trail like no-one else, using whatever platform she can get to gather her constituency and prepare for a return to
It will probably be easy for her. Her message is the crudest form of populism: raising anger about the non- delivery of government promises without having to concern herself about the practical difficulties, or the fact that most of the people she will address herself to are the most dissaffected, and therefore the most volatile, of all. Few among them are likely to ask what she managed to deliver in her 11 months as a deputy minister.
The president’s action has freed Mrs Mandela to speak her mind. No longer is she constrained by the protocols of the Government of National Unity. She may have appeared to be less constrained than most, but she was still limited in what she could say about government performance. Now, as an ANC office-bearer, subject to party discipline, there are boundaries, but they are a lot wider.
And the government is making things easier for her in another way. For whatever reason, and with whatever justification, the truth is that delivery of better living conditions has not even started, a year into the life of this government. The ANC has been unable to keep its promises about quick delivery.
Asked in February how many houses had been built since the ANC came into power, the new Minister of Housing, Sankie Nkondo, had to say it was only about 800. (It would take 550 new houses a day — including weekends, public holidays and builders’ holidays — for the ANC to meet its promises of 1-million houses within five
So Mrs Mandela has fertile soil in which to plant her seeds. The question facing the ANC is whether it will allow her to do so within the ANC, or whether it will move to try and isolate her.
Leaving her alone will give her the platform to spread her message and to make her new bid for office when her main impediment, Nelson Mandela, is no longer there to block her.
If Mbeki has anything to do with it, this is the path he will encourage. His instinct, honed during the years of exile when nothing was more important than holding the organisation together, will be to maintain unity.
But that means being prepared to deal with her next bid for power. And it means having to deal constantly with her divisiveness, as shown in her recent role in the ANC Women’s League and the Congress of Traditional
And disciplining her within the party would be difficult, because there is a significant group that would oppose that kind of action — which, unlike cabinet membership, does not depend solely on a decision by President Mandela.
But isolation would truly test her political strength. Without the name, prestige, resources and platforms of the ANC, she would struggle to maintain a political
If Mrs Mandela were to start her own party, it would create a more normal, a healthier political divide between ruling party and opposition.
At the moment, South Africa’s main political battle is either within the ANC, or between the ANC and the NP — between the new and the old guard. But an opposition party of the left would take our political debate to where it should be — between the social democratic pragmatists and the populists of the far-left. That’s where the real battles of the late 1990s will be found.
And that would keep up the pressure on the government to deliver on its promises.