On Monday of last week President Thabo Mbeki cheerfully set off in his spanking-new Boeing, launching the ‘Spring Collection” in his popular ‘Personable African Statesman” international appearances. He uses these frequent trips both to air the gold-plated jacuzzis in his new aircraft and to let the rest of the world see how successfully South Africa is servicing its new democracy. After all, when a latter-day African president pitches up in a luxuriously appointed Boeing 737-800, costing R2,25-million a month to run and showing all the signs of having actually been paid for, the rest of the world has little option but to believe that the profligacy records of the likes of Mobuto Sese Seko, Daniel arap Moi, Robert Mugabe et al are easily crushed. (In as little as two-and-a-half years the basic operating costs of our new presidential jet could pay for Mugabe’s retirement palace. Actuaries are currently working out how many low-cost houses R72-million would buy.)
While appeasing his chronic travel bug, Mbeki has been running a series of astute political experiments. Each time he jets off, Mbeki installs a try out for the major Cabinet reshuffle he’ll be making next year when, as is more or less inevitable, the African National Congress will win the next general election. I say ‘more or less” because you don’t pepper ‘information” organisations like the SABC and Independent Newspapers with your personal supporters when there’s any danger you could be judged electorally solely on your record. That would be pushing luck a bit too far. Also, when you fly that high in your private Boeing you can’t hear what they’re actually whispering about your presidency down there among the hovels.
Mbeki’s travel time has been used wisely. Apart from sharing with the wider world the eminent gift of his company, he’s been using his frequent international absences as road tests for Cabinet appointments, right up to deputy president. This last Monday, none other than Mbeki’s most treasured minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, was sworn in as acting president of South Africa. Think of that, ‘MTM Goodbye the Future” was up there for a whole day, her tolerant hands fondling the reins of power.
Clearly this was some ‘trying out” exercise. And not only up at presidential level — though, given the looming Schabir Shaik trial, warming up some standbys for the post of deputy president might be a pragmatic move. What Thabo really wants to see is how the more trusted members of his Cabinet will behave when given, even on a short-term loan basis, unlimited power. No matter how carefully house-trained, not everyone in the Cabinet can be expected to measure down to the uncompromising moral standards set by previous incumbents like Mac Maharaj and Joe Modise.
But what if Mbeki came back from his latest air odyssey to find that Acting President Tshabalala-Msimang had let the sudden winds of power waft straight to her head? What if she’d issued a summary repeal of the recent Cabinet decision to supply anti-retroviral drugs to people with the HIV? What would Thabo do? Would he recognise with satisfaction that his minister of health had proved herself as highly independent, a courageous activist? Would he be delighted that she was still seeing the overblown problem of HIV/Aids in the appealing medieval way he does? Or would he be enraged at the sheer chutzpah of her mutiny?
Probably a bit of all of those. What Manto’s presidential road test would have indicated is where her doubtless gifts should best be deployed come next April. Making Manto acting president for a day was not just a way of giving a rigid finger to the country — as Mbeki often shows, he has far more effective ways of doing that — it was to let Manto show what she could do on the short-distance acceleration and braking trials and whether her anti-skid is properly greased.
In the past others in the Cabinet have been awarded the same signal honour, though when Mangosuthu Buthelezi stood in for the president it was less a try out than some extremely practical realpolitik. Don’t expect diplomatic impunity when you play footsie with Zulu chiefs. Ask Piet Retief.
In closing this week, something I haven’t been able to publish due to a short stay in the Eastern Cape where I was shocked to find they don’t distribute more than 10 copies of The Sunday Independent. Still, better late than never, I extend my congratulations to talented Sunday Independent columnist Jeremy Gordin who, in rich fulfilment of his life, appears to have had the courage to ‘come out”. In his column — though admittedly under the pseudonym of Karen Bliksem — Jeremy recently revealed he experiences an occasional desire to go ‘tickling the firm buttocks of young male sub-editors”.
Well done, Jeremy. As your revelation so proudly demonstrates, there is nothing shameful, either in being a journalistic drag act, or in responding to previously suppressed life urges. Your admission is of both dignity and worth.