As the next election draws closer, and in preparation for the resignation of The Great Mandela, it is stimulating to watch Thabo Mbeki as he patiently welds and rivets himself into position.
Renaissance and other long-term projects, like getting shot of Professor Sibusiso Bengu, aside, Mbeki is showing great imaginative tenacity in virtually every field of political endeavour. One of his latest sets of beneficiaries will be those African National Congress political office-bearers who will probably be losing their parliamentary and public service sinecures in the 1999 elections.
In an admirable exhibition of what might be termed Thabo’s Miracle Corn Plasters, Mbeki has assured these plummeting acrobats that their falls will be cushioned by the ANC, that they need not worry about future unemployment. He is making plans to see that their talents, however hideously deficient these might seem under patient evaluation, are guaranteed redeployment somewhere less so well-illuminated among the bureaucratic sideshows.
In typically eleemosynary fashion, Mbeki added that those of the faithful who were not voted back into Parliament and – here comes the subtle caveat – “who had financial obligations” would not be “left in the lurch”.
This admittedly loyal but otherwise speedball generosity is a bit perilous. Let’s look at an entirely possible possibility.
Think of some genial laddie appointed, in all good faith after the last elections, to a position of lavishly remunerated public service. He got the job as part repayment for his role in the diasporal struggle to free South Africa from the colonialist stranglehold.
Bubbling with the winds of democracy, our laddie had taken over some hideously white male Afrikaner-ridden racist bureaucratic domain. Since the moment it fell under our laddie’s suzerainty he has screwed up, not only on the job and all of those within hawking distance of it but, despite even Mungo Soggot’s personal attention, has actively helped steal and/or squander the entire resources of the now penniless department of whatever.
After the next election he is fired in disgrace. There he sits, jobless. Out in the cold. Friendless, scared, shivering in the new gloom. Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel is growling at his heels for all the outstanding perks tax; the Lexus is only an eighth paid off; the new Pajero on delivery schedule for next Tuesday; Voyager miles piled up in their hundreds of thousands; all six bonds on luxury Linksfield mansion costing him lank bucks; a gargantuan unsettled breakfast bill at Hyatt; other pressing bonds and personal promissory notes on game reserves and elephant hunting ranches; private school bills three years in arrears; all the rest of the profound burdens of freedom.
But wait! What’s that fast-moving dot on the grey hillside? That merry yodelling sound? Good heavens, it’s Thabo the Impervious, galloping at high speed towards our grieving laddie!
But what’s that flappy white thing Thabo’s waving in one mailed fist? Why, it’s a brand new government job-offer for our laddie. All carry over perks, housing expenses, game reserves, demographically equitable education facilities guaranteed so that our laddie’s financial obligations are not viciously snatched away from the taxpayer who’s been honouring them up till now.
Once again Mbeki has come up with a wonderful idea. Jobs for the boys and girls has now metamorphosed into everlasting jobs for the boys and girls. There will, of course, be those in the white-controlled media who say that he’s taking ubuntu a bit far. For myself, I think it’s the best thing that has happened in a long time.
During the few terrified years I managed to work up and sustain enough personal courage to be a flying instructor, I knew it was pointless to discourage a pupil pilot, deny him his rightful place in the aviation meritocracy, merely because he tended to wipe the undercarriage off every time I let him do the landing unassisted.
Like all sensible instructors, I picked myself up, dusted myself off and let him try landing again. Which is all Mbeki is proposing he be recognised for doing for the pupil pilots in his own political flying school.
Nobody warned our luckless laddie that he should trim his sails when it came to signing up for luxurious impedimenta. It was Mbeki, himself, who helped set the example when only a couple or so years ago he spent R2,5-million in upgrading his official residence to a standard befitting his high rank.
However disastrous it turns out to be, no conscientious attempt at political virtue should ever go unrewarded. That’s all Mr Mbeki is trying to say.