”You might be happy to say one individual sacked somewhere or the other — I think it’s a cul-de-sac. I mean, you can sack as many people as you like; it’s not going to bring the electricity. What we’ve got to do is to address the actual challenges that we face.†— Thabo Mbeki.
This is the president’s response to why nobody is taking the rap for the power crisis. It is the attitude that has been the Achilles heel of Mbeki’s presidency.
Mbeki favours collective responsibility without accountability. He told Independent Newspapers after a weekend interview that he did not know of any failures in his Cabinet, even as he alluded to failures in handling electricity in last week’s state of the nation speech and the performance of setas (sector education and training authorities) during a television interview.
I thought of several others in health, education, local government and criminal justice.
His inability to hold his Cabinet accountable has militated against Mbeki’s legacy as Mr Delivery, an identity he assiduously courted in his first years in office.
He believes there should be no Mbeki legacy; it is the ANC legacy and the legacy of the South African people that will be bequeathed to other generations, he insists. It is a collectivist approach that has not demanded individual accountability.
This is why Mbeki will harm his sunset years in office and why, even when it would be politically astute to do so, he will not reshuffle his Cabinet.
Mbeki’s sincerity and commitment to eradicating poverty, creating employment and uplifting the black poor is hardly in doubt.
But the man who has effectively run this country since the 1994 elections, will walk away from it all next year with his ‘dream deferred†(as aptly captured by his biographer, Mark Gevisser). As many carefully crafted plans and noble ideas have either failed or been corrupted by greed, incompetence and a lack of commitment, he has not insisted on accountability.
Why do we still have serial non-performers like Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, Prisons Minister Ngconde Balfour, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Cassaburri and Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa in Cabinet?
These ministers should not come back next year. Not because I suggest a conspiratorial purge of Mbeki’s people, but precisely because they have undermined his legacy so much. Or if not his legacy, then, in his words, that of the ANC and the South African population.