The consummate politician didn’t wear socks. Thabo Mbeki’s sockless feet was one of few down-home symbols as the new-look African National Congress leader made one of his first forays on the hustings last weekend.
On a sodden Saturday afternoon in Soweto, Mbeki displayed the political colours he will wear on the election trail. Like being on the set of Primary Colours, moving with Mbeki on his voter registration drive was fast, professional and as much a political game as life on the American presidential campaign captured in the film and book.
The passage of one political era to the next was evident two nights later when Nelson Mandela went into action in Johannesburg at a northern suburbs primary school. In a very different style, the ANC icon took 12 questions when he wasn’t meant to answer one, chided his audience and stayed for longer than many of them.
He walked outside into the starry night after the packed meeting, straight past his waiting Mercedes Benz and into the crowd where he coochy-cooed at a baby, charmed a teen and had the parents gobsmacked.
Mandela is at once the politician’s politician and no politician at all: his particular style of working an audience, shaking hands, asking “Hello. How are you?” and waiting for an answer are more the mark of a leader than a politician.
While Mbeki has said he will not try to emulate Mandela, the younger man has clearly been watching … or he has an affinity for babies. >From the workers’ canteen at the Soweto Council where he had lunch to the Mofolo Park school where he checked on voter registration, Mbeki was drawn to the young ones, questioning them and kissing the babies.
The hustings are new to this politician who is still regarded as a master of the back- room manoeuvre. He is not officially on the trail for votes – the ANC only kicks off its campaign in three weeks – but he used the weekend as a getting-to-know-you exercise.
Mbeki’s golden Mercedes led a cavalcade of shining cars with traffic police at its front and rear, cutting a swathe on his 20-point whistle-stop tour to urge lethargic voters to registration points.
In the rain, a phalanx of body-guards watched their charge, elbowing the proletariat out of way and whispering into the very American lapel microphones they wore. To make up time – he was two-and-a-half hours off schedule – Mbeki’s stops were lightning fast.
In the rain, disappointed spectators caught just a quick sight of his dashiki as he got into and out of the Mercedes. In Soweto, they had walked for kilometres to see the new man in the flesh.
At a Tladi school, a woman asked: “Where’s Thabo going now? We’ve been waiting all day for him.”
Supporters have been turning up in droves to meet the 57-year-old leader. They’re getting their tongues around support songs, replacing “Nel-son Mande-la” with “Tha-bo Mbe-ki”.
In turn, he practised beaming and shook hands, slightly diffident in his actions. He put on what in Primary Colours is called “big ears” and listened intently to little problems like that of the man who has been trying to get his house back from the council. And he signed his autograph slowly – clearly not an everyday exercise.
At a matchbox house which doubled up last weekend as an Independent Electoral Commission registration point, Mbeki was the dutiful son. A woman in Zion Church cloth praised him with “hallelujahs” and embraced him with one bear-hug after the other. He looked dutifully down before helping her across a puddle.
On dirt roads rendered scarcely navigable in the sludge, Mbeki got to the party’s grassroots support-base: simple schools and shack-lands where the only sign of change were the electric pylons with power pulled crudely in through corrugated iron roofs.
Mbeki will lead the ANC’s campaign while Mandela will pay a support role. Both will go to every province but Mandela will take up the slack in areas where ANC support is shaky especially among white, coloured and Indian voters.
If Mandela was the party’s Teletubby, then Mbeki will be its Action Man. The message he will convey on this election trail is that it is time for big-time delivery after four years of policy-making.
Mandela’s main message was one of reconciliation among races: in his time in office, he dined with Betsy Verwoerd, discussed a volkstaat to stave off right-wing rebellion and accepted the atonement of his jailer, Percy Yutar.
Political analyst Keith Gottschalk believes that “Mbeki doesn’t need to make these gestures very much. He doesn’t have the same need to defuse white counter-revolution. He must Africanise.
“He will be concerned with a firmer stance on black empowerment in every shape and form. He will not bend over backwards to deal with white whiners. He will expect every South African to roll up their sleeves and do their duty.”
It is, seemingly, striking a chord. In Soweto, a one-armed man said: “We like this young one because the whites are too fear for him.”
At Houghton, Mandela’s home suburb, the rainbow nation turned out in droves to hear him. Kugels with lots of hair stood cheek-by- jowl with women in saris and black executives who favour the comfortable northern suburbs. Madam was joined by Eve as domestic workers and gardeners thronged to the meeting as well.
Mandela was in vintage form: energetic, he spoke at length and then answered questions and joked. He was, in one evening, the “country boy” who cajoled millions from white business, “just an old man” who wanted clinics and schools for his people, the elder statesman who declared that there are “good men and good women in every party” and finally he was, just “… tired. It’s time for me to go home and sleep,” he said.
Watching Mandela and the patrician way in which he wears the mantle of leadership, the size of the boots Mbeki must step into seemed unfillable. But in other ways it was clear that the baton had been passed and the old man was speaking the young man’s language.
Gone was the message of easy reconciliation for the white members of the audience.
He started by chiding: “One of the things the white community should accept is that you voted for a government which had the most evil policies.”
Then he lectured: “Don’t be supporters of lost causes. White supremacy will never come back.”
Finally, he responded to the questions with a question. “You must ask yourself, what role did you play in building your society?”