Howard Barrell
Over a Barrel
A senior member of our new security and intelligence apparatus, who has professional frustrations the like of which could give a hippopotamus anorexia, has begun sounding more cheerful recently.
“Why?” I asked him a few weeks ago.
“Because,” he said, “things are going to change. We are getting ourselves a kick- arse president. Thabo [Mbeki] is going to make things happen.”
If he is right, many of us, both inside and outside the government, will feel greatly encouraged – with the usual proviso, of course. That is, that we tend to like a kick- arse chap at the top as long as it is not your backside or mine to which he turns his attentions.
On the campaign trail in recent weeks, Mbeki has given enough undertakings of efficient, clean, disciplined government under his presidency for us to feel justified in holding him to them. He clearly expects us to.
That being the case, what might we expect from a kick-arse Mbeki?
It is probably best to start with the man’s abilities and “feel”. As a journalist and undisclosed member of the African National Congress in the 1980s, I had regular dealings with him. I quickly formed an opinion which I have since had no reason to change.
Mbeki has extraordinary intellectual gifts which few people he encounters at his level will ever match. Certainly, I believe neither of his two predecessors as ANC president, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, could match him intellectually – although, until now, Mbeki has lacked their easy, finer human judgment.
Mbeki is serious – in the sense that he expects a serious problem to be addressed by plausible means. He has little respect for rhetorical flourishes.
I remember a put-down of the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) he delivered in the early 1980s. In an outburst of the earnest anxiety that used to affect young white leftwingers like myself in those days, I was expressing my alarm at the easy time some in the black consciousness movement were having attacking the ANC- aligned “charterists” for trying to attract almost anyone with a democratic impulse in their veins into alliance with us against the apartheid government.
“But, Howard,” said Mbeki, “Azapo’s methods demonstrate no seriousness at all – and people do see this.”
I am sure it was a similar judgment that underlay his pivotal role in the search for a negotiated settlement in the late 1980s. He could see, among other things, that the ANC’s armed struggle – useful though it was as propaganda and as a demonstration of at least some seriousness within the organisation – was implausible.
However, Mbeki did not then – and still does not now – inspire affection in others. Respect, yes, fascination, yes, close attention and even fear, yes. But seldom spontaneous warmth.
That may rapidly change, though, if his arrival at the top – finally, and after a long and faithful apprenticeship – now gives him the kind of confidence and personal ease which his gifts and stature justify. His contribution to this country and its progress could then dwarf even that of his predecessor.
How so? Because the challenges now are practical. They are about delivery.
Enough of miracles, it is now about piecemeal, incremental achievement, most particularly about rapid economic growth, jobs, and a hand-up (not a hand-out) to help millions get themselves out of poverty.
And Mbeki is a man of detail, method and the long game – notwithstanding his foray into vision with talk of an “African renaissance”. That vision, in any case, will be realised or fail on detail – on the extent to which he and his government succeed in fostering an environment that enables people to get on with the details of their own lives.
In achieving such an environment, he will face more than enough external, practical problems. He will have no need to add to them through unquieted personal insecurities. He will need to be able to delegate, which means finding people on whose abilities, not only personal loyalties, one can rely.
He will also need to recognise that the autonomy of others is a source of complementary creativity. The fantasy of omnipotence and omniscience that underlay the Marxism-Leninism of his youth was, quite evidently, bollocks. There is great relief in realising our relative impotence as individuals – or governments, for that matter.
Mbeki has the wherewithal to oversee in South Africa an achievement equivalent to, say, what Lee Kuan Yew helped achieve in Singapore. In 30-odd years from 1959, Lee oversaw that island state’s transformation from a cesspool of squalor and degradation into one of the most thriving economies in the world whose people enjoy one of the highest standards of living around.
Our liberal Constitution does not permit Mbeki to resort to the authoritarianism Lee found useful in the Singaporean case – nor would we want it to. But Lee managed a combination of radical intelligence and discipline of a kind Mbeki can match.
I hope he does. As an occasional critic of Mbeki’s, I have also found myself hoping secretly for clear evidence of his disdain for my ilk – disdain of the kind he once dished out to Azapo in my presence.
For, painful though someone’s disdain can be, it can also be a comfort. It can indicate that someone knows what he or she is about, has identified a destination and knows how to get there.
In that kind of atmosphere a boot up the backside can even be a thrill.