Howard Barrell
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THABO MBEKI by Adrian Hadland and Jovial Rantao (Zebra)
Our political institutions in South Africa are immature and largely untested. Our system of proportional representation places parliamentary seats more within the gift of party bosses than of bodies of voters. And internal African National Congress processes allow for the fairly arbitrary “redeployment” of high-calibre members at the behest of the party executive and president.
These factors combine to make the personalities of those at the top of the ANC inordinately important to our future success or failure as a democracy. Do they have the good sense to recognise the vital role dissent and debate have to play in securing our democracy? Do they have the wisdom to ensure there is a contest of ideas in which the best triumph, rather than inferior alternatives suggested by powerful individuals? Do they have the courage to throw out old beliefs, which demonstrably have not worked anywhere in the world, as they try to address the poverty and joblessness upon whose solution the survival of our democracy depends?
Ten years down the line we will have a fairly good idea of the answers to those questions. Many of them will have been answered by the personality of Thabo Mbeki who, at that point, will be preparing to step down as president. His second term will have come to an end, and he will be in the process of abiding by the existing constitutional provision which limits any individual’s occupation of the office to two five-year terms. We hope.
In view of these institutional patterns and uncertainties, any serious attempt to throw additional light on Mbeki and his character is welcome. What Adrian Hadland and Jovial Rantao have produced is a well-written, easy-to-read account of “the life and times of Thabo Mbeki” in which even the few who claim to know the man well are likely to find new insights into the enigma that he is.
Hadland, assistant editor on The Sunday Independent and its parliamentary correspondent, and Rantao, political correspondent of The Star, have combined others’ research and conclusions with original work of their own. They have interviewed Mbeki’s parents, friends and some of his closer political comrades.
Hadland and Rantao have also, evidently, had some – very limited – co-operation from Mbeki himself. This is unlikely to have been for lack of effort on their part. Equally, Mbeki is free to decide with which of his aspirant biographers he should co-operate and to what degree. Yet in being so shy of his biographers in this instance, Mbeki may have squandered an opportunity to deepen substantially his relationship with the country he is about to lead. Hadland and Rantao are credible, senior political journalists. On the evidence provided by this book, they would have dealt sensitively and seriously with any more intimate material to which they had been granted access.
As it is, Hadland and Rantao have produced a brief biography well balanced in its treatment of what some see as Mbeki’s virtues, others as his faults. More serious and detailed studies of Mbeki will doubtless come in future years. Until then, this book will be a must-read for journalists, diplomats, politicians – in fact for any South African or foreigner wanting to understand this country and its political processes in the next few years.
In writing this biography of Mbeki, Hadland and Rantao have also done a service for South African journalism. Too few of our journalists have been willing to write longer contemporary history – a process in which they are often privileged observers. When they have done so – as in the case of Allister Sparks – the results have been very valuable. Hadland and Rantao have struck a further blow in the battle to re-skill South African journalism after the ravages of the past.
The main impression their book leaves behind is that, to no lesser extent than in the case of Nelson Mandela, the struggle has been Thabo Mbeki’s life.
He suffered greatly as a child and young man for his parents’ preoccupation with politics and from the banal brutality of apartheid’s rules and the petty officials who carried them out. His family was torn apart. Yet the story Hadland and Rantao tell is, simultaneously, one of enormous hope. For Mbeki’s story is one about the triumph of an extraordinary intelligence: of how a bookish young boy learnt to employ reason and an empathetic insight into others as weapons in a struggle for peace in South Africa that has borne miraculous fruit since 1989.