Parks Mankahlana
CROSSFIRE
The Mail & Guardian carried an assessment on the first year of Thabo Mbeki’s presidency by Professor Sipho Seepe in which he shows total disregard for facts, logic, history and the obligation among scientists, natural or social, to add empirical value to national discourse.
In his assessment of the presidency, Seepe alleges that four ministers – Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi, Minister of Public Works Stella Sigcau, Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele and Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna – do not deserve to be in the Cabinet.
Mbeki understands his Cabinet more than anyone else. He elevated Mufamadi to the position he currently holds because he was aware of the responsibilities and challenges of the new millennium. One of the responsibilities of Mufamadi is governance in its overall context. Governance is the determining factor whether we are going to be a successful democracy or not. Mbeki would not have appointed Mufamadi into this elevated position if he were not convinced about his abilities.
The recent flood disaster co-ordination was left to Mufamadi. Everyone is happy. The state information technology transfer into 2000 was ably supervised by Mufamadi. Everyone agrees he has done a good job.
Figures show that the housing delivery programme and the approval rate for subsidies have grown threefold since Mthembi-Mahanyele became minister of housing.
We are wiping the shame of apartheid by providing shelter to more than four million people and creating an enabling environment for more than 100 000 households to be in line to acquire homes of their own. This is Mthembi-Mahanyele’s work!
A random check among black empowerment companies will reveal that the Ministry of Public Enterprises, while Sigcau was minister and now that she is minister of public works, are leaders in facilitating the entry of black people into the economy.
The morale that Seepe is alleging is now present in the police force, not that it was not present before, is a product of sterling work that is being done by Maduna, Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete, Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota and their subordinates. So why should Maduna be discarded?
Seepe’s arguments are premised on the fears that are often expressed by white commentators and parties – people whose point of departure is that a black government should fail and that the one of Mbeki will also fail. Seepe’s comments also bear the imprint that everything and anything that is said by a white person is accurate.
Seepe bemoans the fact that the media is not hostile towards Mbeki. In his opinion a true media is one that is the “government’s vocal critics” and which adopts a “hostile approach to Mbeki”. Why should the media be hostile to Mbeki? Simply because the right of Mbeki to be hostile towards the media if they are hostile towards him cannot be taken away. It is called fairness. And so the freedom of the press would really be threatened and our democracy emasculated. This is dangerous talk, professor, don’t you think?
The president is accused of “a propensity to accumulate and centralise power”, he is “prepared to sacrifice comrades to realise his ambitions”. Not a shred of evidence to support this argument. But the presidency has taken a step further. We are organising a “working bosberaad” with leading journalists and commentators on governance in July.
Seepe argues that Mbeki has surrounded himself with sycophants and that appointments to other positions are made on the basis of loyalty to the president.
When Jesus spoke to his disciples at the last supper he was not celebrating his betrayal, but expressing a deep sense of sadness and hurt that not all his men would stand by him at the most difficult hour. In fact, the scriptures are replete with examples and demands of loyalty to “one God”. No one is suggesting Mbeki is God, but we are showing that since time immemorial the exercise of authority and its delegation has been greatly influenced by the degree of loyalty that exists between the principal and his or her immediate instruments of government. Shaka knew this, and that is why he was able to build such a powerful kingdom, one of whose historical achievements was the defeat of the mighty British empire at the Battle of Isandlwana.
There is the accusation that disagreement with the president is not tolerated. But the same edition of the M&G refers to six or eight discussion documents that differ with the president or other organs of the African National Congress on a variety of questions.
There is no tradition or rule in the ANC that the president shall be elected unanimously. No one in the ANC is aware of this tradition. Ask the president and the secretary general. They are not aware of it. Even Walter Sisulu, who is as old as the ANC, denies knowledge of this. Where does Seepe dig up this lie? It is true that the ANC guards its unity very jealously. We are prepared to go to war for it. If anyone wages war against us to destroy us, he can and must expect a ruthless reply. That is why we are the only liberation movement that has never splintered since the inception of national liberation movements.
The attack on the president for not recognising the “intellectual contribution of the likes of Stephen Bantu Biko, Mangaliso Sobukwe, Anton Lembede and Zeph Mothopeng” is the most ludicrous. It is true that Biko was a symbol of the Black Consciousness Movement, in the same way that Allan Boesak assumed the mantle of father of the resuscitation of the mass democratic tradition in the country in the 1980s. And in the same way that Cyril Ramaphosa came to be known as the father of South African trade unionism because of the difficult conditions under which he built a powerful union like the National Union of Mineworkers. The same applies to the urban legend that Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer are the makers of democratic South Africa through Codesa. The only difference between these people is that Biko is dead, and he died under the most atrocious conditions, and the others are still alive. Because we must respect the dead, we have to be generous in our adulation.
What intellectual contribution was made by Sobukwe, Lembede and Mothopeng I cannot figure out. Yes, if by intellectual agreement we mean academic achievement, Sobukwe would definitely score some points. But it seems we are not talking about that. It is true that Sobukwe and Mothopeng spent a long time in jail. But their time was shorter than Jeff Masemola’s and the president must therefore recognise him.
The only distinguishable thing about the three gentlemen the president is called upon to honour is that they were part of a breakaway from the ANC which resulted in the formation of a moribund mish-mash whose only achievement in the past 50 years has been debilitating in-fighting and a massive rejection by the South African people, both in 1994 and in 1999. A kick in the teeth from the masses is assured in November in the planned local government elections.
Seepe slates the president for his progressive interpretation of who an African is, to even include Afrikaners. But the definition and description of phenomena and objects is not static. Is it true that only the colour of the skin is the yardstick by which we should figure out who an African is? If there is general agreement that human life started in Africa, then every living human being, irrespective of his location on the globe or the colour of his or her skin, is an African. We must take this discussion forward.
Parks Mankahlana is the head of communications in the presidency