At the celebrations marking the changing of the Reserve Bank guard last weekend, there was a fine crop of speeches as the outgoing governor of the Reserve Bank, Chris Stals, handed over to Tito Mboweni.
Stals gave a self-effacing, wry speech, listing what he believed were the 12 commandments of central banking, and expressing confidence about his successor.
Mboweni was his articulate, jocular self and, while not being overly generous about the man he replaces, received the baton with grace. But the real star of the evening was neither of these men, but President Thabo Mbeki. In a magnanimous speech, the president offered us a glimpse of a far more tender politician than we have seen until now. Self-assured and relaxed, Mbeki offered praise to the outgoing governor, reminding the gathering of 1 300 that the graceful, seamless way in which Stals had relinquished the governorship to Mboweni was “not normal”.
Mbeki stuck to this theme for long enough to give the impression that he was not trying to emulate Nelson Mandela’s trademark generosity to the old guard, but rather that he actually meant it.
In fact, he said more about Stals than he did about Mboweni, who was treated to a tease about his impatience to become the governor. Mbeki said the handover that night showed that South Africa could “manage change so that nobody feels threatened”.
The president’s heavy praise for Stals also served to confirm his conservative tendencies where monetary policy is concerned. Here was Mbeki signalling his affinity for a central bank governor who has steered one of the world’s most restrictive monetary policies. All of which would have surely laid to rest any fears on the part of the financial markets that the Mbeki government will push for a more relaxed approach to interest rates in its dealings with the Reserve Bank.
While this demonstrates Mbeki’s pragmatism, we at this newspaper hope to see our country’s monetary policy softened to meet the pressing needs of the impoversished masses.
But, more importantly, Mbeki’s words showed a man who has eased himself comfortably into the seat of power.
In the two months he has been in office, there have been other promising signs about his presidency – signs that again appear to underscore his increasing confidence.
Mbeki has set down strict performance targets for his ministers, effectively telling them they will be out of a job next year if they fail to make the grade. These are hardly the actions of a man who until recently was known for his fondness for surrounding himself with yes-men. They are the words of a man who appears increasingly fit to lead South Africa into the new millennium.
Laugh it out of court
The draft White Paper on the reform of the judiciary, on which we report in this edition, is a confused document which offers little help to public debate on an area of major importance. Its main weakness is that it confuses the problems facing the high courts and the magistrate’s courts.
The basic problems with the judges are well-known and have been repeated ad nauseam: they are, as a result of recent history, too white, too male and too conservative. The means to resolve this imbalance is already in the hands of the government of the day through its control of the Judicial Services Commission (JSC): they could, if they so wished, make the judges all black, all female and all radical.
The problem with the magistrate’s courts is that the Constitution requires that they be independent when they are in fact staffed by creatures of the executive branch of government – in effect by civil servants. The solution is to divorce the magistrates from the Department of Justice, place them under an independent body like the JSC and then drum into them over a period of years the message that they are independent, until such time as it becomes a firm tradition.
The policy unit of the justice department has got this all mixed up for reasons which are difficult to fathom, but which we suspect relate to an instinctive prejudice in favour of the executive.
Their suggestions are that there be a “united judiciary” in which the magistrates are renamed judges, a “career path” is created from the district magistrate to the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal, and the whole lot are made “accountable” – not to a two-thirds majority of the two houses of Parliament sitting in joint session, as required by the Constitution, but to the JSC, which is controlled by a simple majority in the House of Assembly. On all three counts the practical effect would be to reduce the judges to an executive-minded body, rather than promote the magistrates to an independent-minded body.
At one point the discussion document says that a challenge facing the legal system is “to ensure that the judiciary is independent in the sense that the judgment exercised by its members is not influenced by allegiance to a political persuasion, or expectation of extraordinary reward”. The crudity of the definition suggests that the authors have failed to take in the subtleties of the mechanism which went lamentably far in reducing the judiciary to an executive-minded instrument of the apartheid regime. We would suggest they consult their textbooks again.