Opinion | Columnists
Arrogance leaves a dream derailed
Mbeki's career had once promised to mark him out as one of the great statesmen of post-colonial Africa. Instead he has suffered a humiliating fall from grace.
- By Alec Russell, Financial Times
- Published: 23:32 September 26, 2008
When Thabo Mbeki succeeded Nelson Mandela in 1999 there was a sense that his leadership was just what the nascent post-apartheid state needed. For five years the great humanitarian had worked his reconciliatory wizardry to forge a new nation.
His courteous and canny successor would be the technocrat to consolidate South Africa's democratic foundations. It was clear even then that Mbeki would never be a crowd pleaser. A committee room full of economists rather than a podium was his natural habitat. He regarded soundbites as beneath his dignity and peppered his speeches with literary references rather than political rhetoric.
But as a would-be policy intellectual he exuded confidence that he would make the rigorous decisions necessary to revive the economy. He would, he proclaimed, steer Africa into a new era when it would no longer be mocked as a continent of basket cases. Journalists hailed his charm, his foresight and his knowledge.
How distant those encomia now seem. On Saturday he was ousted from the presidency, accused by his rivals in the ruling African Na-tional Congress of abusing the offices of state to pursue his political enemies, mock-ed abroad for his policies on Aids and the crisis in Zimbabwe and derided at home for losing touch with his people.
His career had once promised to mark him out as one of the great statesmen of post-colonial Africa. Instead he has suffered a humiliating fall from grace.
The son of a legendary party intellectual, in his nearly three decades in exile until 1990, when the ANC was unbanned, he was often tipped as a future leader. He studied economics at the University of Sussex and was then groomed by Oliver Tambo, the ANC's leader in exile, as a likely successor.
Regretted
Mandela was one of the few who had misgivings. Years after in effect anointing Mbeki as his successor at the end of white rule in 1994, by making him deputy president, he confided to friends that he regretted not picking Cyril Ramaphosa, a former union leader. On handing over the leadership of the ANC, Mandela warned his successor against arrogance - advice he ignored to his cost.
Business people will remember Mbeki fondly for his stewardship of the economy. In the mid-1990s, when he was, in effect, Mandela's prime minister, he yanked the ANC away from its traditional left-wing stance and enforced orthodox free-market macro-economic policy. The boldness recalled his bravery in pushing for negotiations with the apartheid government in the 1980s when most in the ANC dreamt of driving into Pretoria on the turret of a tank.
His policies led to South Africa's most concerted period of growth since the second world war, climaxing with 5 per cent growth between 2004 and 2007. But while a black middle class blossomed, adult unemployment remained at nearly 40 per cent and his disdain for the glad-handing side of politics left fertile terrain for his opponents to cultivate.
His international reputation suffered in 2000 when he began a catastrophic association with the dissident scientists who dispute a link between HIV and Aids, ensuring that thousands were denied access to anti-retroviral drugs. He also courted controversy over his policy to-wards Zimbabwe. Fired up, Western diplomats believe, by an Africanist and anti-western impulse, for eight years Mbeki pursued "quiet diplomacy" which became tantamount to doing nothing as Zimbabwe descended into near tyranny and economic collapse.
But it is poor politics not policy that led to his downfall. The ANC did not question his policy on Aids, nor until last year on Zimbabwe. His undoing, friends and enemies agree, was his aloofness. Zackie Achmat, an HIV-positive former anti-apartheid activist who led the campaign to change the Aids policy, says Mbeki was more of a "Victorian gentleman" than an African leader and never felt at home in the townships.
Saki Macozoma, a politician turned businessman who is an Mbeki confidant, concedes that Mbeki alienated too many people. "Simply spending time together, having lunch, patting backs and giving an audience ... that is as important in politics as clarity of ideas. That part of politics has been lacking in a Mbeki presidency," he said.
In his heyday Mbeki liked to quote a line from Langston Hughes, the US poet: "What happens to a dream deferred?" The last three words became the title for an authoritative biography of Mbeki. Asked about the book and Mbeki's presidency, one of the best known leaders in the ANC snorted: "It's not a dream deferred," he said. "It's a dream derailed."
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