IN the intellectual sense there is something about our Deputy President, Thabo Mbeki, which reminds us of Baroness Orczy’s hero: “We seek him here, we seek him there … that damned elusive Pimpernel.”
Once again this week we had a fleeting glimpse of the man who, for all intents and purposes, is running South Africa. But his Budget speech left us familiarly impressed by his eloquence, confused by his argument and in the final analysis grasping for the substance of the man.
There was much in his speech with which we agree. The question he poses, as to whether we are truly a rainbow nation, or “merely a collection of communities, which happen to inhabit our geopolitical position”, is one that must constantly challenge us. His attack on those who would address the fundamental inequities of South African society “through mere rhetoric” is a timely warning against a dangerous mood of complacency, which is settling on the more advantaged among us.
But the deputy president goes much further. Assertions are being made, he declares, that declining standards in government are due to the inefficiency of blacks: “In reality, we are not far from the day when the diplomatic language will slip and the point will be made openly that ‘the Bantus are not yet ready to govern’.” Corruption, he claims, is also being portrayed as “endemic to African governance” and as such “only three years old in South Africa”.
It is difficult to discover the source of such assertions. They are certainly not to be discovered in the columns of this newspaper: last week we dealt with corruption at the white-controlled KWV, this week with a white official who stole R8- million from a low-income housing project in Gauteng. We are no apologists for the National Party, but we would hazard that even FW de Klerk would not identify with the attitudes decried by the deputy president.
So why did Mbeki put up these straw men? Is he playing the race card in order to rally Africanist support? Or have we misunderstood him ? These are the riddles of the Black Pimpernel.