Bryan Rostron:A SECOND LOOK
Once upon a time, in the bad old days, when I was a rookie reporter in Cape Town, a regular assignment was to greet the Union Castle as it docked, in order to ask some fading English celebrity or ageing actor on the last leg of a declining career, before he or she had even set foot ashore, “So what do you think of our wonderful country?”
It was a pitiful sign of a lingering colonial deference. But what are we to make of the fact that nearly 30 years later, with the African National Congress firmly in power, the government has invited a disgraced British political huckster to advise it on the forthcoming election? A lingering post- colonial deference?
At least the ANC appears to be so embarrassed by this revelation – despite the existence of a letter accepting the offer of Peter Mandelson’s help dated a mere three weeks after his political disgrace and forced resignation from British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Cabinet – that it has gone into complete denial. Perhaps that is the first lesson it has learnt from the arch-manipulator. After all, rapid rebuttal was one of Mandelson’s specialities.
It is a relief, given Mandelson’s famed ability to manipulate news about himself, that we have not yet seen British newspaper headlines proclaiming, “Prince of Darkness to save Dark Continent”. For there is only one person who will benefit from this exercise: the fallen former Cabinet minister will undoubtably gain brownie points back home for charitably helping A Good Cause.
Why on earth do we still need to import these used goods? Mandelson’s malign influence here, where he has already had talks with senior ANC officials, is exactly what South Africa does not require at this fragile hour of our young democracy. The Labour Party has fed us a poisonous pill. Mandelson’s machiavellian gifts are utterly noxious for our political process.
His dubious talent is in the disreputable art of news manipulation and the replacement of real policies with presentational razzmatazz. Mandelson is a backstairs politician who thrived when lurking in the shadows, whispering by turn flattery and threats to journalists and politicians on his cellphone. His gifts are those of the adman: the replacement of content by presentation, the abandonment of any policy or principle if it doesn’t play well with media tycoons or the middle classes. It is the pursuit of power at any price.
Bryan Gould, a former Labour leadership contender, recently told Mandelson’s biographer that “Mandy” was only interested in the machinery of politics and getting into government. It is a common assessment. Gould concluded: “It doesn’t matter what you do in government in Peter’s mind.”
But the ANC is already in government and there is no danger, whatsoever, of it being dislodged. What it needs is policies to deliver on its promises to the desperately poor in our society. Is Mandelson here to help the ANC, in his famed fashion, to simply glide over these massive problems?
The Mandelson Principle of Politics is content-free. It is driven by market forces: design your policies around the latest opinion poll. It is the powerful, the articulate, the well-established that make themselves heard. Mandelson’s contribution to “New” Labour in Britain has been to mould it into a sharper, trendier version of the Tory Party. Is this what we really want?
Another Mandelson practice of policy-making, which he regularly employed in Britain, is to assemble “focus groups”. It may be a successful ploy for marketing beer, but not for solving the problems of social inequality. You can be sure that these groups will not consist of the poor, the unemployed and the dispossessed. Once again, they would be left voiceless.
Mandelson also has a fascination, well chronicled in the London gossip columns, with the rich and famous. He’s an old-fashioned social climber. His is the very last example the ANC should follow. It is not difficult to imagine, for example, what most of the world’s media would make of an African politician accepting a massive interest-free home loan like Mandelson did.
Before the British election, “Mandy” also accepted the loan of a limousine from a young London nightclub millionaire. An acquaintance of mine was present when this brash youth and Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, Elizabeth, were laughing about how he had, in so many words, Mandelson in his pocket.
The Mandelson Principle, now “New” Labour dogma, may be a gimmick to find out how people like baked beans packaged, but is not a way to solve the massive social problems we face here.
Mandy’s Magic might work on South Africa’s nervous middle-class whites, but his style of politics would once again disenfranchise the majority of our population. My God, is this really the fruit of President Nelson Mandela’s 27 years in prison?
Mandelson proffers a potent variation of the sorcerer’s elixir: in Mandy’s case not the promise of eternal life, but of eternal power – at any price.
The ANC should resist at all costs the temptation to drink this magic potion. It is pure poison.