{"id":172753,"date":"2017-04-28T19:00:55","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=172753"},"modified":"2017-04-28T15:23:36","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T13:23:36","slug":"as-south-africas-anc-implodes-thabo-mbeki-tries-to-rewrite-his-own-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/172753\/as-south-africas-anc-implodes-thabo-mbeki-tries-to-rewrite-his-own-history\/","title":{"rendered":"As South Africa\u2019s ANC implodes, Thabo Mbeki tries to rewrite his own history"},"content":{"rendered":"

As South Africa\u2019s political climate goes from fractious to feverish, with protests mounting<\/a> against the embattled president, Jacob Zuma, a former national leader and titan of the ANC has waded into the fray.<\/p>\n

Thabo Mbeki, who led South Africa between 1999 and 2008, recently wrote<\/a> about the possibility of another no confidence motion against Zuma<\/a>, now being tabled by the opposition. He argued that should such a vote happen, MPs should vote in the national interest rather than obey orders from their party.<\/p>\n

On one score, this is the latest iteration of Mbeki and Zuma\u2019s bitter, unreconciled feud, which dates back to Zuma\u2019s humiliating defenestration of Mbeki as ANC and state president in 2007-8. But there\u2019s something more purely self-serving going on here too.<\/p>\n

Mbeki has always viewed himself as an intellectual titan, not simply another calculating politician looking to land the latest blow. His contributions to the national and international conversation supposedly carry a weight and gravitas that demand deference. This supposedly elevates him above Zuma, an essentially grubby and scheming<\/a> politician devoid of substance who is incapable of raising his gaze beyond his own immediate political and material interests.<\/p>\n

Given Mbeki\u2019s record in national office, his lofty reputation is not entirely deserved. And whatever his intellectual pretensions at this extraordinary political moment, his position is extremely flimsy \u2013 and it may have more to do with rescuing his own reputation than anything else.<\/p>\n

Mbeki\u2019s argument that MPs are principally accountable to \u201cthe people\u201d would make more sense if they were directly elected. But they aren\u2019t. Under South Africa\u2019s proportional representation system<\/a> people vote for parties, not individual representatives. Parliamentary candidates run on lists drawn up by their party leaders, and their ranking on the list is what determines their chance of getting into office.<\/p>\n

This in turn means that whether or not lawmakers intentionally defy the will of the people (whatever that means), their understanding and expression of the people\u2019s interest is filtered through their party affiliation.<\/p>\n

Mbeki\u2019s position has an uncharacteristically populist edge, then, and it does\u2019t amount to much of a plan of action. How exactly should MPs determine the will of the people? The size of protest marches? Opinion polls? Radio phone ins? Strict loyalty to a party line is certainly contentious, but it can at least be traced back to a direct electoral mandate, not some nebulous sense of the \u201cmood of the nation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mbeki\u2019s new-found populism is also a radical about face from his own behaviour as president of both his party and his country. Freedom of conscience and deference to the electorate were not ideals which Mbeki was keen to nurture \u2013 quite the opposite, in fact.<\/p>\n

Iron fist<\/h2>\n

During his tenure, ANC MPs were regularly corralled, coerced, and threatened into line not least by Mbeki\u2019s own attack dog, Essop Pahad<\/a>. Perhaps the definitive example came in 2000, when Pahad, acting on Mbeki\u2019s behalf, demanded that ANC MPs serving on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts back off from their scrutiny of an infamous arms deal<\/a> and the widespread corruption it allegedly generated. (This incident was detailed in ANC MP Andrew Feinstein\u2019s book After The Party<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

When Mbeki was in power, no distinction was ever made between \u201cthe party\u201d and \u201cthe people\u201d: the ANC itself was considered synonymous with \u201cthe people\u201d, while opposition parties were all too frequently denounced as \u201cracists\u201d or \u201cenemies of transformation\u201d. Mbeki was a ferocious centraliser<\/a> who worked hard to concentrate power in his own office. He punished dissent, and imposed his own discipline on party and government from the top down; the ANC\u2019s parliamentary caucus became a rubber stamp, unable to fulfil its constitutional obligation to provide a full and proper oversight of the executive.<\/p>\n

So when Mbeki argues<\/a> that the controversy around Zuma has finally \u201cimposed on our country the opportunity and obligation the better to define the constitutional and moral relationship between the people and their elected representatives\u201d, one is compelled to ask: what exactly has changed? What about the many controversies that disfigured Mbeki\u2019s own presidency?<\/p>\n

The arms deal, the spread of corruption<\/a>, the concentration of presidential power<\/a>, disastrous HIV\/AIDS denialism<\/a>, the indulgence<\/a> of Robert Mugabe\u2019s ruinous tenure in Zimbabwe \u2013 none of these were extensively debated or scrutinised in parliament, with MPs encouraged to exercise their independent spirit and put the \u201cnational interest\u201d ahead of the party. Instead, Mbeki maintained a vice-like grip over all policy areas, forcing MPs do their leaders\u2019 bidding.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only right that many in South Africa and the ANC should want to end Zuma\u2019s squalid, incompetent and shameful presidency, but that is no reason to recast the Mbeki era as some sort of golden age. It was then that many of the ANC leadership\u2019s worst tendencies first became entrenched<\/a> \u2013 and five years into Mbeki\u2019s tenure, Archbishop Desmond Tutu lamented<\/a> the \u201csycophantic, obsequious conformity\u201d and \u201cunthinking, uncritical, kow-towing, party line-toeing\u201d which had become the ANC norm.<\/p>\n

This is the same vocabulary Mbkei is now using. As political conversions go, it\u2019s as hypocritical and cynical as they come.<\/p>\n