South Africa After Mbeki
By Modupe Ogunbayo
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Thabo Mbeki’s exit as president of South Africa causes a quake which is now threatening unity in the African National Congress, ANC
It has been one united political front right from the days of the struggle for popular democratic rule in South Africa. But African National Congress, ANC, South Africa’s ruling party, last week began walking a new path which many think could lead to its destruction. The party asked Thabo Mbeki to resign and replaced him with Kgalema Motlanthe in circumstances which have been condemned by highly respected opinions in and outside the party.
The ANC had asked Mbeki to resign over claims that he unduly influenced the proceedings of a corruption lawsuit against Jacob Zuma, his former vice-president. The party said the move was necessary in order to foster party unity. This left Mbeki with no choice but to announce his resignation on September 21 and his eventual hand-over, September 25.
But the circumstances leading to Mbeki’s exit has created misgivings in some quarters within the ANC which could split the party if not properly managed. Soon after Mbeki’s resignation, eleven ministers, quit the cabinet rather than serve in a government presided over by Motlanthe. The resignation came despite ANC’s moves to prevent the exodus of cabinet ministers. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, his vice-president, who had been speculated earlier as Mbeki’s replacement also resigned. It had been thought that she might succeed Mbeki but she made it clear that she would not stay back. Mlambo-Ngcuka, who became deputy president in 2005 after Jacob Zuma was sacked, has been a staunch Mbeki’s supporter. Her resignation cleared the way for Motlanthe’s appointment as caretaker president. He won 269 out of 360 votes cast last Thursday to emerge the country's new leader.
More pro-Mbeki ministers are still expected to quit. They are those who disagree with the choice of Motlanthe because he is widely seen as a Zuma protégé and since Zuma’s ANC’s leader, the ministers think he would be ruling by proxy.
David Aworawo, a doctor of International Relations and lecturer, University of Lagos, agreed that though Zuma’s profile has been rising since his election as ANC’s leader in December, his influence would further expand with the emergence of his loyalist as the interim president. Mbeki’s supporters also think that Motlanthe’s emergence as the new interim president before the April 2009 elections would easily ensure Zuma’s victory in the presidential election. Mbeki’s group is said to be considering establishing another political party which would be strong enough to contest against Zuma in the 2009 elections.
But, it is still doubtful if such a move could change the direction of politics in South Africa because ANC has been the dominant party in the country for a long time. Aworawo said Mbeki would not fully subscribe to the idea of forming another party. "Like his father, Mbeki is a die-hard ANC loyalist who has spent all his political life in the party. It does not look certain that he would quit ANC," he said. Mbeki was born into one of ANC’s leading families. Govan, his father, was a stalwart of both the ANC and the Communist Party.
The impending split in the ANC is causing apprehension within the country’s business sector. Initial fears of a slump in the economy over Mbeki’s resignation were dispelled when ANC assured them that the country’s economic policies would continue regardless of the change of leadership. The party had assured them that Mbeki’s ministers would continue serving under Motlanthe. But that is not likely to happen. The business elite in South Africa is uncomfortable despite the fact that Trevor Manuel, the widely respected minister of finance has agreed to serve in the new cabinet.
The economy of South Africa had done well under Mbeki. He created and nurtured an enabling environment for business and investment to thrive in the country. Mbeki, a former member of the South African Communist Party, SACP, used tight monetary and budgetary targets to achieve this. He had used open markets, privatisation and a favourable investment climate to drive the country’s development agenda. This has resulted in five percent growth annually in recent years. This financial growth developed from a policy known as Growth, Employment and Redistribution, GEAR, formulated by Manuel in June 1996.
The GEAR policy is unpopular with SACP and Congress of South African Trade Unions, COSATU, the trade union movement. Both were fiercely critical of the strategy and argued that they had been excluded from its development and implementation. In SACP’s report to the Communist Party Congress in July 1998, the Central committee report spelled out its objections to GEAR in detail. "We remain convinced that GEAR is the wrong policy. It was wrong in the process that developed it, it is wrong in its overall strategic conception, and it is wrong in much of its detail. At the end of the day, we cannot allow our entire transformation struggle to be held hostage by conservative approaches to the budget deficit." In May 2008, the Communist Party re-echoed this same sentiment.
COSATU and the Communist Party said the inability of former president’s financial strategy to tackle the problems of unemployment, in particular, contributed to his downfall. Zwelinzima Vavi, leader of the trade unions in COSATU and Blade Nzimande of the Communist Party, were some personalities touted as some of the masterminds of Mbeki’s removal.
Others who joined forces with Vavi and Nzimande to remove Mbeki are Cyril Ramaphosa, former ANC secretary-general, Tokyo Sexwale and Matthews Phosa who were former provincial premiers. It is their way of rewarding Mbeki for removing and sidelining them from ANC politics over controversial charges of planning to oust him in April 2001. This generated wide outcry at the time because the accused were among the party’s most respected figures.
Nelson Mandela, the former president, said then that he held all three in "high esteem". No evidence was ever found against them, no charges were made and the matter was swept under the carpet. The three men later became successful businessmen afterwards.
They both made a comeback to ANC recently. Phosa is now the ANC treasurer-general, one of the top party posts while Ramaphosa and Sexwale are members of the National Executive in ANC. Against the background of Zuma’s emergence as the party leader in a bitterly-contested race last year, the re-emergence of these politicians slackened Mbeki’s hold on ANC in the country.
Mbeki spent his early years in Transkei, a rural settlement. He assumed leadership at a tender age because due to his father’s frequent absences on party business, he presided over the family store while simultaneously attending school. At 14, Mbeki joined the ANC. He left South Africa in 1962, travelled to Tanzania before going on to Britain where he studied Economics at Sussex University.
Reputed to have a keen intellect, this attribute did not endear him to the predominantly illiterate South African populace. At the university, though he was a popular figure, his contemporaries said he was always somewhat aloof. This seeming aloofness is a trait that is also commonly associated with Mbeki. These factors informed his pairing with politicians who have the ability to connect with people; he was Mandela’s deputy while Zuma was his vice when he assumed the presidency.
In 1970, Mbeki went to the Soviet Union for military training and then on to Lusaka, Zambia, where he started to take part in ANC activities by members in exile. He was also part of the exile movement in Botswana, Swaziland and Nigeria before returning to Lusaka to become political secretary to Oliver Tambo, the party’s former leader. In 1985, Mbeki was a member of a delegation that opened secret talks with South African businessmen and leading Afrikaners which gradually led to the unbanning of the ANC and the end of apartheid.
In May 1994, he became deputy president to Mandela. In the administration, he chaired the key committee that negotiated the controversial $5bn deal to modernise the country’s defence force. It was a deal that was to haunt both him and the country with allegations of corruption against leading ANC members including Zuma, its current leader.
In December 1997, Mbeki succeeded Mandela as ANC leader. He became president two years later and won a second term in 2004. As South Africa’s president, he has had his fair share of strengths and weaknesses. He was widely criticised for his stand on HIV and AIDS, when he supported alternative treatments rather than backing medical advice. His stand on Zimbabwe was also attacked when he resolutely refused to openly pressurise President Robert Mugabe because he believed that quiet diplomacy would yield better results.
Two weeks ago, his stand finally yielded dividends when a power-sharing deal was signed. Under his leadership also, South African troops went into Darfur and supported peace operations in Burundi. He backed efforts to bring peace to the Democratic Republic of Congo and less successfully, in Ivory Coast.
Osita Eze, director-general, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, said he is both sad and happy over Mbeki’s resignation. He is sad that Mbeki, an intellectual and astute politician who has ruled South Africa successfully resigned. But then, he admired Mbeki for the respect his action would bestow on Africa which goes along with Mbeki’s philosophy of African Renaissance. "Mbeki exemplified African Renaissance by the manner of his resignation which is a landmark decision ever made by an African politician. He believes that the time is ripe for Africa to move in the right direction and take the initiative to do so without being prodded…," he said, adding, "This is what he did by becoming the first ever African president to resign because the platform through which he was elected asked him to go. Mbeki could have dug in and gone to the law courts. But he left with self-respect and self-dignity."
For Motlanthe, 59, who only became a lawmaker in May, it is a jump in his political political profile. But he has impeccable credentials within the ANC. The new interim president spent much of the 1980s in jail on Robben Island along with Mandela. He became the ANC secretary general in 1997 and became the party’s deputy leader in December when Zuma was elected as the party leader. He occupied that position till his latest appointment by ANC.
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