Howard Barrell
WHO IS … JACKIE SELEBI?
When word leaked out early last year that Jackie Selebi was about to be appointed director general of foreign affairs, departmental officials who had not been in the African National Congress and so did not know him were worried. They quietly phoned colleagues who had been working with him in Geneva.
“What’s he like?” they whispered.
“Fair” was a word that cropped up a lot in the answers they got. “Extremely hard working” also featured. So, too, did “hard taskmaster” and “he doesn’t suffer fools gladly”.
Now, just 17 months and a departmental revolution later, Selebi is headed for the police, where he will succeed George Fivaz as commissioner.
So what advice would a foreign affairs official give a police officer about working for Selebi? “Easy,” said one this week. “Don’t try to bullshit him. And make sure you deliver.”
Delivery is something that has been long in coming from the police. But those who know and have worked under Selebi say that if anyone can turn the police around, he can. We’ve heard that before, yes – among others of Meyer Kahn.
But Selebi is probably tougher even than the boytjie from the breweries. He did his political apprenticeship in the ANC underground inside South Africa in what were probably the bleakest and most difficult years, the early 1970s. As a young teacher in Soweto, he taught a number of the young people who now run large segments of the civil service. When he eventually had to go into exile, his abilities and political skills were soon recognised. He served in a variety of capacities, among them leader of the ANC Youth League. In 1987, he became a member of the organisation’s national executive committee, and in 1991 he oversaw the difficult repatriation to South Africa of thousands of ANC exiles.
Since the return he has proven to be a rare animal: a public servant with a real genius for detecting the big issues in the detail, with the good sense to tell colleagues simply what needs doing and with the will to make it happen.
In little more than a year, Selebi has raised foreign affairs from the paralysis into which it had fallen under former director general Rusty Evans and the lacklustre political leadership of Alfred Nzo. It is now one of a half-dozen state departments said to be functioning very well.
Instead of being a post office for scores of semi-detached missions abroad, the department is now driving foreign policy in close co-ordination with a president who is himself a force in the field. After wide-ranging structural reforms instituted by Selebi, the department has developed a centre of gravity, a focus and a simple mission: enhancing South Africa’s prosperity and security.
In these achievements, Selebi has been greatly helped by his status as a political insider. A colleague describes him as being “plugged in – he knows how the blocks fit together at the top of the government”. Another senior colleague described him as having the ear and respect of President Thabo Mbeki, a man to whom he is said to be fiercely loyal.
Selebi has also been helped at foreign affairs by his talent for “kicking arse”. Although usually shrewd and measured, he is nonetheless capable of volcanic eruptions of temper. But, according to the senior colleague, “he will always come back a bit later with a mea culpa”.
It was in Geneva that Selebi really made his mark. He arrived in this most snobbish of Swiss cities with little on his curriculum vitae save evidence that he was a reliable ANC apparatchik. According to a foreign diplomat serving there at the time, the local diplomatic community thought he sounded like a poor substitute for the flashy Allan Boesak, then beset by scandal.
But, within about six months, Selebi had emerged as leading spokesperson for the developing countries group. Within a year, he was being praised to the Alps as, quite literally, the best thing that had happened to diplomacy and the local United Nations community in many a year.
Recognition followed quickly. He became, among other things, chair of the UN Human Rights Commission, president of the Preparatory Committee of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation and president of the Anti- Personnel Mine Conference in Oslo. In that last role, his stewardship of proceedings was considered outstanding. >From it, he gained an international reputation as a champion of international human rights.
Selebi maintained iron discipline in proceedings over which he presided. He did not tolerate late arrivals – no matter what the rank of the offender. And on one famous occasion, according to the senior colleague, while chairing a meeting he dealt somewhat summarily with a speaker who droned on despite orders from the chair to shut up: Selebi left his podium and, to loud applause, frogmarched the offender from the assembly.
IT IS THE KIND OF ATTITUDE THAT SHOULD HELP AT SAFETY AND SECURITY. SELEBI WILL, HOWEVER, NO DOUBT TEMPER IT WITH A PROFOUND CONCERN FOR THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE OFFENDER.