In his dotage Thabo Mbeki has acquired the status of a sage. When he speaks the country listens. And he is speaking more and more. So what is it that he is saying?
Through all his pronouncements there runs a constant thread. Whether he is talking about Eskom, corruption in the ANC or the prospect of a popular uprising, everything he says, without a single exception, exacts revenge on somebody who crossed him years ago.
And so, when talking about the crisis at Eskom Mbeki could not resist sticking the knife into the (now former) chair of its board, Malegapuru Makgoba, who more than two decades ago stood up to his bizarre stance on Aids. And his prediction of an Arab Spring took shape as a swipe at President Cyril Ramaphosa, who spoke sharply against him at the 2008 ANC national executive committee meeting that resolved to recall him from office. Once he had tasted Ramaphosa’s blood he wanted more, taking the opportunity of the Phala Phala scandal to slap him around again.
Why have South Africans decided that this horribly vindictive man is a sage? After all, his presidency, which might have been the most successful in SA’s history, was ruined by the deficiencies in his personality. I remember vividly a conversation with a minister in Mbeki’s cabinet at the beginning of his second term in 2004. My interlocutor was summoned from his bed by a phone call just before midnight the day before Mbeki was to announce his new cabinet. The chief wants to see you, he was told.
So he shrugged off his pyjamas, put on his work clothes and scurried off. He was made to wait nearly an hour before Mbeki would see him. As he sat there trying to guess his fate he asked himself why he was choosing to put up with the humiliation. After all, several decades had passed since he had been a teen at a puritanical boarding school. Having the time to think some more, he asked himself what on earth possessed Mbeki to treat his cabinet this way. The unvarnished disrespect, the use of the cheapest gimmicks to show who was boss. What a strange human being I work for, he thought.
Mbeki was defenestrated in 2008 at the peak of the commodity supercycle. Behind him lay nearly a decade of robust GDP growth. It ought to have been the easiest time to control the governing ANC. Everyone in SA was better off than they had been when Mbeki came to office. The ANC had recently won a landslide victory at the polls. It is the sort of moment the leader of a broad, complex and unruly party dreams for; there is enough to go round, enough to make even the stubbornly discontented happy.
Astonishingly, Mbeki managed to lose control of the party at precisely this time. He did so because the rancour he had caused over the years exploded in his face. It is one thing to tell the leader of the official opposition, the leader of union federation Cosatu, the leader of the SACP, that they are intellectually inferior and cannot be taken seriously. But he’d insulted everybody, even his closest allies. Many of those who led the charge against him ought to have been his friends.
He lost control of the party at the most unfortunate time. A little less than a decade earlier he had abandoned a programme of privatisation, deciding instead that with himself at the helm he could use the country’s utilities to drive state-led growth. When he lost the party he handed those utilities to his kleptocratic successor, who milked them dry.
It is a legacy worthy of satire. It’s not in the Liz Truss league of satire, to be sure, but it’s pretty bad. A leader who allowed a bunch of thieves to pick the keys to the future from his pocket because he was too blinded by his own nastiness to see them coming.
Now he stands above the fray and casts judgment on the mortals trying to clean up his mess. He should be apologising instead.
• Steinberg teaches part-time at Yale University.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.