Anthony Sampson
A Second Look
How different will South Africa really be after the June 2 election? Nelson Mandela’s successor Thabo Mbeki is so opposite in style that the contrast with his predecessor seems dramatic: he is short, introverted, intellectual, preferring to deal behind the scenes rather than lead from the front as Mandela did: like John Major after Margaret Thatcher.
More worrying to anxious white South Africans, he appears more like an African nationalist, favouring black consciousness aides and avoiding white advisers and journalists whom he frequently blames for misreporting the African National Congress and neglecting the “transformation” of South Africa.
But the outward contrast does not really reflect a contrast in policies. For the past two years, as Mandela never tired of explaining, Mbeki has been running the country – usually presiding over the Cabinet, making much of foreign policy and strongly influencing economic policy.
Ever since Mandela came to power in 1994 the white-friendly economic programmes, including abandoning nationalisation and the conservative fiscal and monetary regime, were encouraged by Mbeki, who sometimes had to persuade Mandela. And behind the scenes Mbeki has been very close to white and Western influences.
Mbeki is in many ways much more deeply influenced by Britain than Mandela was: he relished his time at Sussex University – though at first he complained about not being at Oxford – and when he later went to Moscow for military training he wrote letters full of nostalgia for England. He imbibed William Shakespeare, William Butler Yeats and a style of patient rational argument which made him a brilliant diplomat, able to charm and disarm the most hostile western businessmen – as I often witnessed in London in the Eighties.
But many of his African colleagues saw him as too thoroughly English, with his sports coats and curved pipe. Even when convivial, he was bookish and serious: as Mandela said: “He never played in his youth.” As one African-American unfairly complained: “He’s the only man in Africa who ain’t got rhythm.”
And his time in exile was inevitably a political problem. He was not seen as a natural African leader, as Mandela always was. The fact that his father, Govan Mbeki, was a heroic freedom-fighter who spent more than 20 years in jail was not altogether an asset; for Govan was an unreconstructed Marxist who was not very supportive of his pragmatic and cosmopolitan son.
More difficult, Mbeki had acquired the secretive traits of an exile beset by fears of betrayal: a preoccupation with close loyalties and a suspicion of outsiders. Returning to his home country, he surrounded himself with a few confidantes and kept his cards very close to his chest. He became Mandela’s successor without a painful power-struggle; but he still appeared unnecessarily insecure.
He was not chosen by Mandela personally, as Mandela made clear to me. Mandela had some doubts, including the fact that Mbeki came from the same Xhosa tribe as himself; but he left it to the ANC leaders, including Walter Sisulu, and to the South African Communist Party and trade union leaders, to decide his deputy, without (as Mandela emphasised), “indicating my own feelings”.
Mandela was still very supportive of his deputy, and by 1996 he was skilfully ensuring that Mbeki was accepted as his successor. But he gave hints of worries. At the ANC congress in December 1997 he made a surprising, and little reported speech, about the problems of being elected as an unopposed leader.
“He may use that powerful position to settle scores with his detractors, to marginalise or get rid of them [applause] and surround himself with yes-men and women [applause].”
He went on to explain that Mbeki understood those problems: “He is not the man who is going to sideline anybody.” But his ANC audience saw it as a warning to his successor. And Mandela had a fundamental clash with Mbeki when he tried to stop publication of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) last December, which contained details of the ANC’s own abuses of human rights.
Mandela insisted it must be published in full. “I am the president of the country,” he told me afterwards. “I have set up the TRC. They have done not a perfect but a remarkable job and I approved everything they did.”
But Mbeki was then president of the ANC, subject to all the party pressures, and the key question remains: how far will his outlook widen, now that he is president of the country, no longer under the shadow of the great Mandela tree? Will he be an uncertain leader, like Anthony Eden after Winston Churchill or Major after Thatcher, or a strong man liberated from an overwhelming boss, like Harry Truman after Franklin D Roosevelt?
Mbeki certainly had a difficult time working with a mythological figure who could do no wrong: he took the blame for Mandela’s mistakes, and too little credit for his achievements, including making peace with Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. He remains a superb negotiator and fixer; and South Africa still needs to be fixed.
The deeper question is whether his fixes will be at the cost of losing the moral high ground which was so crucial to Mandela’s authority and influence. The immediate test is the issue of amnesty – which takes Mbeki back to the TRC.
For the TRC was based on the principle of granting amnesties only to individuals, after they had told the truth: while Mbeki is clearly tempted to grant a blanket amnesty – not so much to protect the old apartheid governments, as to make peace with Buthelezi – whose own Zulu forces have been accused of countless atrocities and murders – and whom he may now choose as his deputy-president.
Mandela has no doubt. “There is no question as far as I am concerned of a general amnesty,” he said last November. “And I will resist that with every power that I have.” Mbeki, who is more pragmatic, will be more inclined to bury hatchets for the sake of peace with the Zulus and right-wing Afrikaners.
But Mbeki is still likely to face some heckling from Mandela. As an ordinary ANC member, Mandela has explained: “I will have the privilege to be as critical as I can be.” If things go wrong, he has warned, he will interfere, unless he is stopped.
Many others, too, will interfere. For the fact is that South Africa is a democracy, with a strong Constitution and careful counterweights; and the ANC’s powerful national executive, re-elected in 1997, is strikingly multi-racial – with only three Africans among the top 10. It is only when Mbeki chooses his new Cabinet in the next few days that his true preferences and intentions will become clearer; but he will defy Mandela’s legacy at his peril.