In his years in office, Thabo Mbeki was treated as a philosopher-king, the chief executive officer of South Africa Incorporated, a Machiavellian politician and a dissident scientist.
Now 71, Mbeki, South Africa’s president after Nelson Mandela, was born into a family of disciplined communists and anti-apartheid activists. His father, Govan Mbeki, was considered the intellectual among the group of eminent ANC leaders that included Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo.
While still a student and with his father imprisoned, Thabo Mbeki left South Africa to join the then exiled ANC. Under the tutelage of its then president, Oliver Tambo, he rose through its ranks to become the head of its international department. Urbane and sophisticated, he was part of the initial “talks-about-talks” between the ANC and the apartheid government, which ultimately led to the end of apartheid.
Although it was widely known that Mandela wanted Cyril Ramaphosa, now ANC deputy president, to be his deputy and successor in the first post-apartheid government, Mbeki was manoeuvred into the post by his comrades from exile.
He became a deputy president of South Africa in May 1994 and then succeeded Mandela as president in June 1999. He was subsequently re-elected for a second term in April 2004.
While Mandela spent his term in office bringing South Africans together into a new nation, behind the scenes Mbeki was the one running the government.
Mbeki had his own national and international agenda. His speech at the adoption of the new South African constitution was a stirring statement of hope for the future. He said: “I am an African. I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa….This thing that we have done today, in this small corner of a great continent that has contributed so decisively to the evolution of humanity says that Africa reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes.”
His speech was a powerful rallying call to South Africans to move beyond their history and create a modern democracy that would be an example to the rest of the continent — and many readily embraced it. It was poetry from a politician who was later to be pilloried for being too cold and distant.
But, while Mandela proved immune from criticism, Mbeki was not. The country’s powerful trade union movement railed against his government’s relatively conservative fiscal and economic policies, even as the country’s social security programme was rapidly expanded. But, the state bureaucracy generally remained slow, inefficient and was becoming increasingly corrupt.
A Black Economic Empowerment programme — aimed at transferring ownership and economic skills from White to Black — was seen to be benefitting a politically-connected elite and while the economy expanded, South Africa remained one of the most unequal societies in the world, with persistent unemployment and increasing reported crime rates.
In the face of increasingly harsh criticism, Mbeki began to resort to a coterie of political henchmen to smother debate and sideline his opponents, sparking a fight between factions in the ANC. The litany of real and perceived misjudgments and injustices that Mbeki visited upon his political opponents is long, but there are two that stand out.
In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Mbeki challenged the link between the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which was ravaging South Africa. It could have been a debate over semantics, but people were dying and Mbeki was seen to be delaying the rollout of drugs that could reduce the rate of infection.
Mbeki insisted that malnutrition and other diseases, not the virus, were the major causes of death among those with a compromised immune system. Even in a recent interview he stood by this view, although he conceded that his views “perhaps could have been presented in a different way”.
South African civil society organisations and activists — that had cut their teeth taking on the apartheid government — turned on Mbeki and the campaign for treatment programmes became a rallying point for his opponents.
The other running sore was allegations of corruption in a then $4,8 billion (Dh17.6 billion) arms deal that the South African signed up for in 1999. Even now, it is still being investigated by a commission of inquiry.
Despite determined efforts by Mbeki’s cronies to derail Parliamentary and independent investigations into the deal, details of bribery and corruption of ministers and officials leaked out.
Fingers were pointed at Mbeki, but he emerged relatively unscathed. His then deputy, now South African president, Jacob Zuma was not so lucky. In 2005, Mbeki removed Zuma from his post of deputy president of South Africa after allegations that he was involved in corruption in the arms deal. It was a moment that boosted the rule of law and public accountability in South Africa. Zuma was later charged with corruption.
But the arms deal investigation had become a weapon in a power struggle for control of the ruling ANC. Despite the corruption charges Zuma had been elected president of the ANC, with the support of unionists and activists who opposed Mbeki’s economic and health policies in 2007. Mbeki had become so isolated and out of touch with the rank and file of the ANC, that he was thoroughly trounced by Zuma in the electoral contest.
Although it was dragged out, the charges against Zuma were ultimately dismissed, because of political interference and procedural problems in the investigation and prosecution. Now it was Mbeki who stood accused of abusing the arms deal investigation and the criminal process to remove a political opponent, even as he ignored allegations of corruption against his own allies.
In September 2008 Mbeki was forced to resign as President of South Africa, after the ANC recalled him from the post. He went without a fight, even though he insisted that he had not interfered in the state prosecution of the arms deal.
The investigation drags on. Mbeki is expected to appear before another commission into the arms deal early next year to explain the rationale for the deal that in many ways brought down his presidency.
Since he left office, Mbeki has remained outside of ANC politics, seemingly deliberately steering clear of commenting on current affairs in South Africa. Instead he has concentrated on mediating in conflicts in Africa and developing leaders for the continent.
