President Thabo Mbeki performed a gutsy version of the defiance campaign song Senzeni na (What have we done?) during his three-day imbizo tour of Gauteng last week.
Mbeki’s point was that there was no longer any need for defiance — but it was clearly an attempt to strike a more popular note. He showcased a fine tenor that once led the African National Congress youth choir.
His more flamboyant style was also highlighted when he leaned over the door of his official car to address crowds in Orange Farm.
Eight weeks ahead of the leadership elections at the ANC’s national conference, Mbeki said that despite complaints of poverty, unemployment, housing shortages, water supply problems and crime, he had encountered ”no sense of despondency”. The people, he said, are ”in good spirits”.
The hundreds who gathered at the West Rand township of Bekkersdal on the last day of his imbizo applauded his announcement that Bekkersdal would be treated as a ”special project”.
A sceptical scribe later asked Mbeki whether the residents had really been appeased by their ”special project” status. ”Didn’t you hear them?” he shot back.
Not all the spectators were, in fact, appeased. Norah Ntamele had dressed up her two young sons for a possible handshake opportunity with the president or ”at least a wave”. She remarked in a despondent tone: ”He is not the people’s president like [Nelson] Mandela, who would walk among us or wave at us.”
Ntamele posed a question at the imbizo about housing, and felt Mbeki should have walked around the township to see residents’ problems for himself.
The day before, in the Vaal township of Evaton, Mandela had also been mentioned. Retrenched petrol pump attendant Thembi Mdhladhla remarked that ”the old man” would have said: ”Let me go to my people.” Two giggling schoolgirls interrupted her, calling Mbeki the ”Aids guy”.
Mdhladhla said her mother had recently been raped and her home burgled. With children and grandchildren to support, she is clearly angry: ”All the ANC leaders were born here in Evaton — they have forgotten us. We have the highest rape rate; we are not even safe in our homes. I live on God’s mercy. I would rather vote for Jesus!”
Placards highlighting unemployment and escalating prices greeted the president as he handed out title deeds to three senior Orange Farm residents. A particularly polite placard, held by an Orange Farmer, read: ”Mr President, the cry of the country is unemployment, poverty. Thanks.” A bystander sporting an Orlando Pirates hat remarked: ”We need a suburb here.”
Later, at a local church, Evaton residents questioned Mbeki on housing, electricity, water supply and escalating prices. Some even had queries about privatisation.
But the question that brought the house down came from a schoolgirl who asked if Mbeki was going to set the police on children who played hookey from school. A grinning Mbeki told her he would.
Mbeki listened intently to the old and the disabled. He assumed the demeanour of proud parent as he heard a young woman police reservist in Bekkersdal implore the community for help in combating crime.
It was the more familiar analyst in Mbeki that surfaced at the stakeholders’ forum in Sandton on the first day of the imbizo. Responding to a query on the high incidence of child rape in the country, he argued that one had to understand the historical context and the community where the crime was most prevalent — the Northern Cape and the coloured people.
He pointed out that the coloured community had a history of alcohol abuse because of its association with the Western Cape’s wine farms. The community also had the highest prevalence of family breakdown, he said.
Mbeki then moved on to the market crash that followed the leaking of the draft mining charter. ”The difficulty resides in our heads,” he argued, adding that if mining companies were more accepting of the need for racial transformation, there would have been no head-to-head.
After three days of heat, dust and endless bottles of mineral water, it was all over. Whether the president had shifted popular perceptions of his persona is a moot point. Asked what he thought of the imbizo, a South African Communist Party council official remarked: ”Nothing new — the usual stuff.”