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Friday, 29 January 2016
Launch Date: February 1st (Black History Month)
Thursday, 28 January 2016
Rethinking a Continent: From Kwame Nkrumah to Thabo Mbeki
Written by Adekeye Adebajo - Mail and Guardian 30 April - 6 May 2004
The Kenyan political scientist, Ali Mazrui, was the intellectual father of the concept of Pax Africana in the 1960s. The idea is simple: Africans should through their own efforts consolidate, establish, and enforce peace on their own continent. During the 1960s, Ghana's founding president, Kwame Nkrumah, proposed the idea of an African High Command through which a continental army would be established to prevent external intervention and to undertake liberation wars. But Nkrumah was unable to win the support of his fellow leaders for his visionary plan, and as Cold War proxy wars spread across Africa, many of its rulers sought refuge in neo-colonial security pacts.
In the post-Cold War era, United Nations (UN) debacles in Somalia and Rwanda led to the most powerful western actors abandoning Africa to its own fate. The neglect of the continent forced regional actors like the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) – now the African Union (AU) – the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), many of them primarily economic organisations, to adopt security roles. However, these institutions remain weak, lacking financial and logistical means. Regional interventions became embroiled in political difficulties.
Amidst these problems, some progress has been made in stemming some of Africa's most intractable conflicts, largely through the efforts of regional peacekeepers. Nigeria led interventions into Liberia and Sierra Leone between 1990 and 1998. South Africa, the continent's other potential hegemon, launched a peacekeeping mission into Lesotho in 1998, and currently has peacekeepers in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). But neither Pax Nigeriana nor Pax Pretoriana were able to establish durable peace in these countries. The UN's return to Africa after 2000 to establish missions in Sierra Leone, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Liberia, and Côte d'Ivoire, was a clear sign of the continuing deficiencies of regional peacekeeping. Despite efforts by African actors to create security mechanisms to manage local conflicts, the UN's role remains critical.
The increasing recognition of the link between bad governance and insecurity has resulted in increased efforts by Africa's civil society actors to contribute to peacemaking and democratization efforts on their continent. This has also led to the establishment by a group of African leaders of a New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) which seeks greater western aid, investment, and debt relief in exchange for an African self-monitored peer-review system of good governance.
South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, the chief architect and leading prophet of NEPAD, can, in some ways, be regarded as this age's Nkrumah. Future African griots (story-tellers) will note that both were renaissance men: visionary intellectuals who were committed to a pan-Africanist vision for the continent. Where Nkrumah championed the "African personality" in international affairs, Mbeki has championed the "African renaissance" and "African Century". Future chroniclers will also note that both men were concerned with the dignity and cultural equality of Africans. Both headed dominant-party states. Both were pragmatists who first championed socialism but cut deals with capitalism. While Nkrumah brought in American capitalists to assist his country's industrialization efforts, Mbeki has pursued neo-liberal economic policies that have delighted western financial gurus.
But where Nkrumah favoured a more supranational African High Command and talked of a United States of Africa, Mbeki's vision is a more gradualist one that seeks to build a stronger AU but supports a less federal Africa than Nkrumah promoted. Mbeki's idea of an African peacekeeping force is based on standby forces built around regional pillars. He is conducting an Africa-centred foreign policy that aims to force his culturally schizophrenic country to become an African power, help build a more peaceful and prosperous continent, and harness foreign economic policy to reversing decades of apartheid's inequities at home. In some ways, the heir of Nkrumah’s pan-Africanist political and military vision is Libya's mercurial Muammar Qaddafi whose vision for an all-African army was, like Nkrumah's, rejected by most African leaders.
A key difference between Nkrumah and Mbeki is that while Nkrumah led one of the smallest and poorest countries in Africa to punch above its weight in international affairs, Mbeki heads Africa's most prosperous and industrialised state. While Nkrumah was distrusted by fellow African leaders who feared his radical rhetoric and support of assorted rebels, Mbeki has taken careful cognisance of South Africa's inglorious military and mercantilist past under apartheid’s leaders in his dealings with his neighbours, and his country's wealth and technological prowess have given his leadership ambitions more credibility than Nkrumah had in his own day.
In the post-apartheid era, Pax Africana needs to be redefined to fit the needs of a new age where the increasing marginalisation of the continent could well replace former concerns about meddling Cold Warriors waging proxy wars. A new security architecture must be built around Africa's regional bodies, its civil society actors, and the UN. It is encouraging that unlike the OAU charter, the AU’s constitutive act allows for interference in the internal affairs of member states in cases of unconstitutional changes of governments, genocide, and conflicts that threaten regional stability.
African leaders have recently established a 15-member Peace and Security Council to allow more effective decisions on managing Africa's conflicts. Although the idea is anathema to many Lilliputian states in Africa, a five-member Council of permanent members needs to be created which includes regional Gullivers like South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, DRC, and Algeria. These states have the potential to be their subregion’s most powerful military powers (though more time will clearly be needed to put the Congolese Humpty Dumpty back together again) and should form a concert of African powers providing the bridgeheads for the AU's stand-by peacekeeping force to be established by 2010.
In the area of governance, South Africa and Nigeria, which both account for about half of sub-Saharan Africa's economic strength, must deepen their strategic partnership and provide the leadership that will drive Africa's peer review mechanism. Pretoria and Abuja must create an "inner core" of states within the AU that can provide political and economic models for the continent. They must establish a peer review mechanism which has some "teeth" to bite offenders and not one that can be abused by tin-pot autocrats. Initiatives like NEPAD, the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA), and subregional governance protocols must be strengthened in pursuing this goal. South Africa and Nigeria must also rally the support of other AU states to ensure that unconstitutional changes of regime are not recognised. African leaders shunned military regimes in Côte d'Ivoire and Comoros in 2000, and refused to deal with military putschists in Guinea-Bissau last year. The "men on horseback" (the military) may still ride onto the national stage, but pressure must be mounted on them to return to their barracks and to hand power back to elected civilians.
At the global level, the fifteen-member UN Security Council must be radically reformed and its members increased to 20. The five permanent members of this anachronistic club (US, Russia, China, France and Britain) still reflect the victorious alliance of the Second World War. Their undemocratic veto power should immediately be surrendered and decisions must be made by a two-thirds majority. In a reconstituted Council, Britain and France must subsume their individual seats into a single seat consisting of a troika with Germany. Japan, the second largest contributor to the organisation after the US, should be offered a permanent seat. The rest of Europe outside the European Union (EU) troika should be offered an additional seat. Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean would also gain three additional seats. Africa would gain a permanent seat to add to its existing three, and this seat would rotate between South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria. With this reconstituted UN, Africa would have an enhanced presence at the top table of global diplomacy to ensure that its security concerns are taken more seriously and to prevent future Rwandas.
Finally, African leaders must organise a new Berlin conference on their own continent. The European conference of 1884-5 carved up Africa into territories that reflected the compromises of avaricious European imperialists rather than the political and economic interests of Africa. The curse of artificial borders has caused untold suffering in post-colonial Africa, and while the decision to freeze the map of Africa in the 1960s was wise in a sovereignty-obsessed era, Africa's statesmen must now muster the ingenuity to negotiate new arrangements that better reflect African realities. Federations and regional trade blocs must be negotiated and territorial concessions made which reflect better the cultural realities of a vast continent and helps avoid future conflicts. After detailed planning, African leaders must proceed to the ancient empire of Ethiopia – the seat of African diplomacy – and reverse this scandalous act of cartographic mischief inflicted on the continent by European statesmen over a century ago. Our leaders should invite the ancestors to this continental diplomatic feast, so that Nkrumah can finally hand over the torch of Pan-Africanism to Mbeki.
Dr. Adekeye Adebajo is Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution at the University of Cape Town.
SOURCE: Adekeye Adebajo / Mail and Guardian 30 April - 6 May 2004
The Kenyan political scientist, Ali Mazrui, was the intellectual father of the concept of Pax Africana in the 1960s. The idea is simple: Africans should through their own efforts consolidate, establish, and enforce peace on their own continent. During the 1960s, Ghana's founding president, Kwame Nkrumah, proposed the idea of an African High Command through which a continental army would be established to prevent external intervention and to undertake liberation wars. But Nkrumah was unable to win the support of his fellow leaders for his visionary plan, and as Cold War proxy wars spread across Africa, many of its rulers sought refuge in neo-colonial security pacts.
In the post-Cold War era, United Nations (UN) debacles in Somalia and Rwanda led to the most powerful western actors abandoning Africa to its own fate. The neglect of the continent forced regional actors like the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) – now the African Union (AU) – the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), many of them primarily economic organisations, to adopt security roles. However, these institutions remain weak, lacking financial and logistical means. Regional interventions became embroiled in political difficulties.
Amidst these problems, some progress has been made in stemming some of Africa's most intractable conflicts, largely through the efforts of regional peacekeepers. Nigeria led interventions into Liberia and Sierra Leone between 1990 and 1998. South Africa, the continent's other potential hegemon, launched a peacekeeping mission into Lesotho in 1998, and currently has peacekeepers in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). But neither Pax Nigeriana nor Pax Pretoriana were able to establish durable peace in these countries. The UN's return to Africa after 2000 to establish missions in Sierra Leone, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Liberia, and Côte d'Ivoire, was a clear sign of the continuing deficiencies of regional peacekeeping. Despite efforts by African actors to create security mechanisms to manage local conflicts, the UN's role remains critical.
The increasing recognition of the link between bad governance and insecurity has resulted in increased efforts by Africa's civil society actors to contribute to peacemaking and democratization efforts on their continent. This has also led to the establishment by a group of African leaders of a New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) which seeks greater western aid, investment, and debt relief in exchange for an African self-monitored peer-review system of good governance.
South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, the chief architect and leading prophet of NEPAD, can, in some ways, be regarded as this age's Nkrumah. Future African griots (story-tellers) will note that both were renaissance men: visionary intellectuals who were committed to a pan-Africanist vision for the continent. Where Nkrumah championed the "African personality" in international affairs, Mbeki has championed the "African renaissance" and "African Century". Future chroniclers will also note that both men were concerned with the dignity and cultural equality of Africans. Both headed dominant-party states. Both were pragmatists who first championed socialism but cut deals with capitalism. While Nkrumah brought in American capitalists to assist his country's industrialization efforts, Mbeki has pursued neo-liberal economic policies that have delighted western financial gurus.
But where Nkrumah favoured a more supranational African High Command and talked of a United States of Africa, Mbeki's vision is a more gradualist one that seeks to build a stronger AU but supports a less federal Africa than Nkrumah promoted. Mbeki's idea of an African peacekeeping force is based on standby forces built around regional pillars. He is conducting an Africa-centred foreign policy that aims to force his culturally schizophrenic country to become an African power, help build a more peaceful and prosperous continent, and harness foreign economic policy to reversing decades of apartheid's inequities at home. In some ways, the heir of Nkrumah’s pan-Africanist political and military vision is Libya's mercurial Muammar Qaddafi whose vision for an all-African army was, like Nkrumah's, rejected by most African leaders.
A key difference between Nkrumah and Mbeki is that while Nkrumah led one of the smallest and poorest countries in Africa to punch above its weight in international affairs, Mbeki heads Africa's most prosperous and industrialised state. While Nkrumah was distrusted by fellow African leaders who feared his radical rhetoric and support of assorted rebels, Mbeki has taken careful cognisance of South Africa's inglorious military and mercantilist past under apartheid’s leaders in his dealings with his neighbours, and his country's wealth and technological prowess have given his leadership ambitions more credibility than Nkrumah had in his own day.
In the post-apartheid era, Pax Africana needs to be redefined to fit the needs of a new age where the increasing marginalisation of the continent could well replace former concerns about meddling Cold Warriors waging proxy wars. A new security architecture must be built around Africa's regional bodies, its civil society actors, and the UN. It is encouraging that unlike the OAU charter, the AU’s constitutive act allows for interference in the internal affairs of member states in cases of unconstitutional changes of governments, genocide, and conflicts that threaten regional stability.
African leaders have recently established a 15-member Peace and Security Council to allow more effective decisions on managing Africa's conflicts. Although the idea is anathema to many Lilliputian states in Africa, a five-member Council of permanent members needs to be created which includes regional Gullivers like South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, DRC, and Algeria. These states have the potential to be their subregion’s most powerful military powers (though more time will clearly be needed to put the Congolese Humpty Dumpty back together again) and should form a concert of African powers providing the bridgeheads for the AU's stand-by peacekeeping force to be established by 2010.
In the area of governance, South Africa and Nigeria, which both account for about half of sub-Saharan Africa's economic strength, must deepen their strategic partnership and provide the leadership that will drive Africa's peer review mechanism. Pretoria and Abuja must create an "inner core" of states within the AU that can provide political and economic models for the continent. They must establish a peer review mechanism which has some "teeth" to bite offenders and not one that can be abused by tin-pot autocrats. Initiatives like NEPAD, the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA), and subregional governance protocols must be strengthened in pursuing this goal. South Africa and Nigeria must also rally the support of other AU states to ensure that unconstitutional changes of regime are not recognised. African leaders shunned military regimes in Côte d'Ivoire and Comoros in 2000, and refused to deal with military putschists in Guinea-Bissau last year. The "men on horseback" (the military) may still ride onto the national stage, but pressure must be mounted on them to return to their barracks and to hand power back to elected civilians.
At the global level, the fifteen-member UN Security Council must be radically reformed and its members increased to 20. The five permanent members of this anachronistic club (US, Russia, China, France and Britain) still reflect the victorious alliance of the Second World War. Their undemocratic veto power should immediately be surrendered and decisions must be made by a two-thirds majority. In a reconstituted Council, Britain and France must subsume their individual seats into a single seat consisting of a troika with Germany. Japan, the second largest contributor to the organisation after the US, should be offered a permanent seat. The rest of Europe outside the European Union (EU) troika should be offered an additional seat. Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean would also gain three additional seats. Africa would gain a permanent seat to add to its existing three, and this seat would rotate between South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria. With this reconstituted UN, Africa would have an enhanced presence at the top table of global diplomacy to ensure that its security concerns are taken more seriously and to prevent future Rwandas.
Finally, African leaders must organise a new Berlin conference on their own continent. The European conference of 1884-5 carved up Africa into territories that reflected the compromises of avaricious European imperialists rather than the political and economic interests of Africa. The curse of artificial borders has caused untold suffering in post-colonial Africa, and while the decision to freeze the map of Africa in the 1960s was wise in a sovereignty-obsessed era, Africa's statesmen must now muster the ingenuity to negotiate new arrangements that better reflect African realities. Federations and regional trade blocs must be negotiated and territorial concessions made which reflect better the cultural realities of a vast continent and helps avoid future conflicts. After detailed planning, African leaders must proceed to the ancient empire of Ethiopia – the seat of African diplomacy – and reverse this scandalous act of cartographic mischief inflicted on the continent by European statesmen over a century ago. Our leaders should invite the ancestors to this continental diplomatic feast, so that Nkrumah can finally hand over the torch of Pan-Africanism to Mbeki.
Dr. Adekeye Adebajo is Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution at the University of Cape Town.
SOURCE: Adekeye Adebajo / Mail and Guardian 30 April - 6 May 2004
Wednesday, 27 January 2016
SOUTH AFRICAN NEWS
Mbeki rubbishes 'lie' that he axed Zuma
In his recently released third letter, Thabo Mbeki dismisses the suggestion that he sought to monopolise power by firing his deputy.
SOUTH AFRICAN NEWS
Mbeki still doesn't get it: Jeremy Cronin's full response to the former president
Jeremy Cronin | 20 January, 2016 12:52
Thabo Mbeki. File photo.
Image by: Tsheko Kabasia
Image by: Tsheko Kabasia
Former President Thabo Mbeki still doesn’t get it The more he obsessively denies having an intolerant and grudge-bearing streak‚ the more he displays those very characteristics
That’s a pity.
I have never‚ I still don’t‚ harbour any personal animosity towards him. In fact‚ I am more puzzled than angered by his latest missive in which I feature centrally (“When your position can’t be sustained‚ create a scare-crow – the menace of post-apartheid SA”).
In the political underground of the 1970s and perhaps more into the mid-1980s I was an admirer of a faraway Thabo Mbeki whose voice I would hear occasionally on Radio Freedom.
He was a leading exiled ANC spokesperson and I was proud to be a foot-soldier back in South Africa in a movement that could produce such an evidently lucid political intellectual. My first direct encounter with him in London in 1987 was‚ however‚ a personal disappointment. He was distinctly hostile towards me.
I couldn’t understand why. I subsequently attributed this to the fact that I was then closely associated with Joe Slovo. Unbeknown to me at the time‚ Mbeki had fallen out with Slovo for reasons which Slovo never disclosed to me. I have heard allegations from others‚ but it would be unfair to Mbeki now to air those on the basis of hearsay.
In April 1989 I was a delegate from Lusaka to the SACP’s 7th National Congress held in Cuba. Mbeki was then a senior Political Bureau member of the SACP.
He was tasked with chairing three days of congress‚ which he did quite brilliantly. In many long-winded‚ subsequent meetings chaired less well by others‚ I have often fondly remembered Mbeki’s chairing skills. However‚ it was at that congress that I learned something else about Mbeki and his management of meetings.
The SACP programme that emerged from that congress‚ buoyed by the rolling waves of mass struggle at home‚ while not ruling out negotiations‚ was distinctly insurrectionary in character. I was one of those arguing for this perspective.
During one of the breaks‚ the puzzled Cuban observers at congress approached some of us. “Is your comrade Mbeki not briefing you?” In the evenings‚ Mbeki had apparently been informing Cuban colleagues in detail about the secret negotiations process he was leading with the apartheid regime.
He told the Cubans‚ but there was not even a hint of this from Mbeki our chairperson through three-days of discussion within the sessions of the SACP congress itself. He allowed us to wander on our merry insurrectionary way.
This was a pattern of aloofness that was often to recur. It was Mbeki and not Slovo who‚ in the midst of the CODESA negotiations‚ secretly pushed the idea of sunset clauses.
But it was Slovo who had the courage to open up the proposal for what became a heated but eventually useful debate within the ANC and alliance.
In 2006 and 2007‚ as tensions between Mbeki and then ANC deputy President Jacob Zuma palpably deepened‚ and Zuma faced the prospect of criminal charges‚ Mbeki failed to open up these challenges facing the ANC for a collective political discussion within the NEC. Instead‚ there was all manner of background manoeuvres involving factions of the state apparatus.
In 2002 I was to be a minor target in all of this manoeuvring. In April 2001 and then again in January 2002 I had given two lengthy video-taped interviews to the Irish academic‚ Dr Helena Sheehan. A leading left academic‚ Sheehan had been a member of the Irish Communist Party and active in the anti-apartheid movement. Like many others she was deeply disappointed with the trajectory of the ANC in government after 1994.
She posed a range of critical and challenging questions. Why had the ANC-led government adopted neo-liberal macro-economic policies? Why the tragic AIDS denialism? Why did the ANC-led government turn a blind eye to violence directed against the democratic opposition in Zimbabwe? In particular‚ she wanted to know what those of us in the SACP were doing about these matters. These were fair questions and I found the opportunity a useful space to reflect critically and self-critically on the trajectory of post-1994 developments.
I soon forgot about the interviews and assumed that Sheehan was using them as background for her own academic research. She did however post transcripts of the interviews on her own relatively obscure website which (since I always find reading transcripts rather tedious) I failed to check on myself. I was subsequently told years later by someone then serving in the intelligence services that it was they who tracked them down, briefed the presidency‚ and kept them up their sleeves for an appropriate moment.
The appropriate moment arrived months later. One Sunday in July 2002‚ out of the blue and without any forewarning from the journalists involved‚ I found myself making headline‚ front-page news in the Sunday Times.
The Sunday in question was clearly not accidental. It was in the week that the SACP’s 11th National Congress was to be held. In the following days some of the rougher ideological bouncers in the ANC NEC attacked me personally in the media. I was called a “white messiah”‚ a snake in the grass whose head should be crushed‚ I was (interestingly) a Trotskyist. Mbeki himself was silent‚ but he never then‚ or to my knowledge subsequently‚ called to order those who were unleashed in this way.
I am not recalling all of this now to evoke sympathy. It wasn’t a pleasant time for me‚ of course‚ but I have a pretty thick skin. I enjoy and engage in robust debate‚ and I hold to the adage that if‚ as a politician‚ you can’t stand the heat you shouldn’t be in the kitchen.
If all of this was an attempt to undermine my standing within the SACP‚ it backfired. SACP delegates to the Congress that week clearly appreciated the critical matters I was reported to have raised in the interviews about macro-economic policy‚ about AIDS denialism‚ about Zimbabwe policy‚ and above all about attempts from the Mbeki-circle to marginalise the SACP and COSATU.
In the midst of all of this I finally bothered to read the transcripts for myself. I stood by and still stand by the substantive points that I was making in the interviews.
In fact‚ they were no different from countless media articles I had written in the latter 1990s and early 2000s and ever since. However‚ on reading the transcripts I realised that I had sometimes spoken too casually‚ occasionally in a gossipy way about who had said what in closed meetings of the NEC‚ for instance.
Apart from a breach of the confidentiality rule‚ several of the more flippant personal characterisations detracted from the substantive perspectives I was trying to advance. Of course‚ those in intelligence and their masters who had uncovered the transcripts had made no attempt to contact me so that I could request Sheehan to remove these from her site. The concern was not to protect ANC confidentiality and to limit any damage but to humiliate me.
In the days following the SACP congress I wrote a letter to the ANC officials via Kgalema Motlanthe‚ then the Secretary General of the ANC‚ apologising for these mistakes.
In a subsequent one-on-one‚ follow-up meeting with Motlanthe‚ he explicitly indicated that “Mbeki is still not satisfied”. Motlanthe’s only substantial criticism of the actual content of the interviews was that in warning of the dangers of incumbency (with which he agreed)‚ it was unwise to characterise the tendencies specifically as “Zanufication”. The point could be made‚ he said‚ without referring to any one particular national liberation movement. I am sure Motlanthe was right.
The attempt to create havoc in the SACP Congress having back-fired‚ the next opportunity to deal with me came with the August 2002 ANC NEC meeting. Lest I be retrospectively accused of breaking the confidentiality rule‚ I won’t say who said what‚ except to recall that one more sympathetic comrade‚ who clearly felt the need to join the chorus nonetheless‚ accused me of being a follower of Gramsci.
I was happy with that.
For nearly a full-day and a half the NEC discussed the Sheehan interviews‚ very little substantive criticism was levelled with the thrust being that‚ along with some other SACP and COSATU comrades‚ I was part of a dark conspiracy. At the end of the discussion I apologised for giving the interviews in a way that breached NEC confidentiality. I stand by that apology‚ and I stand by the substantive content of what I said in the course of the interviews.
It was not the first or last time in the Mbeki years that I was singled out in the ANC NEC for what appeared to be an orchestrated attack.
And I was certainly not the only one. The most egregious case‚ as others have recalled in some detail‚ happened some years later‚ when a retired Nelson Mandela attended an NEC meeting and was subjected to a carefully choreographed wave upon wave of insults from the usual suspects.
Mandela had dared to publicly question government AIDS denialism at the time. The top table‚ with Mbeki among them‚ said nothing but allowed the disgraceful drubbing to continue.
What’s the point of recalling all of this now? In responding in this way to Thabo Mbeki I am all too aware of the danger of perpetuating an unwanted distraction. As South Africans we are facing major crises – searing unemployment‚ poverty‚ inequality‚ persisting global economic turmoil‚ a drought‚ and more. Too much public commentary and too much of the energies of those of us in politics get focused on demonising (and sometimes eulogising) personalities‚ on the comings and goings of game-of-thrones‚ palace politics‚ and on appealing to tweet length attention spans.
President Mbeki was not the devil incarnate. But he was also centrally responsible for a tragic AIDS denialism (unfortunately‚ in the coming weeks‚ I suspect we will have another Mbeki letter denying the denialism).
But while personalities with their strengths and flaws matter‚ we also need to situate‚ in a particular historical context‚ Mbeki’s managerial aloofness and the accompanying tendency to want to erase anything that got in its way (an AIDS pandemic‚ trade unionists‚ communists).
When the ANC achieved democratic state power in the mid-1990s‚ progressive policy alternatives were in varying degrees of crisis. The Soviet bloc had imploded spectacularly.
Ruling national liberation movements‚ not least in southern Africa‚ were stagnating partly as a result of internal weaknesses and largely as a result of horrific apartheid destabilisation. The social democratic tradition was a pale and rather cynical shadow of its former self. Neo-liberalism appeared to be the only show in town.
Thabo Mbeki bought into it‚ and it bought into him. There was an affinity in temperament. Shock therapy was the recipe. Out of the blue‚ zap the economy with undebated‚ written in stone‚ macro policy. What’s the point of policy debate when all the answers are pre-given and managerial in character? All the old isms (as someone put it) had now become wasms. Ideology was dead‚ history had ended.
This was the ambience in which the Mbeki persona flourished‚ at least for a time. We are now living in a somewhat different world and national context.
The global capitalist crisis that began in 2008‚ and which has not disappeared but whose epicentre shifts‚ has punctured the myth of rote unilateral responses to recession‚ or unemployment‚ or global inequality.
The hottest decade in recorded history is telling us that the neo-liberal mantra of endless compound growth is unsustainable.
This is a time that requires thoughtful policy debate‚ and a respect for heterodoxy‚ not endless attempts at disciplinary entrapment of those with whom one differs.
I hope that I have learned from my 2002 experience that it is important to respect the organisational integrity of the formations of which one is a member. I hope that I have never forgotten that this does not mean suppressing difference or undervaluing constructive debate or remaining silent in the face of wrong. #TMstillDoesn’tGetIt
- Jeremy Cronin is the SACP's 1st Deputy General Secretary and ANC National Executive Committee Member
SOURCE: TIMES LIVE
SOUTH AFRICAN NEWS
Volume 2 of the Thabo Mbeki letters - 'When your position can’t be sustained‚ create a scarecrow – the menace of post-apartheid SA'
TMG Digital | 18 January, 2016 14:51
Former South African president Thabo Mbeki
Image by: ELIZABETH SEJAKE
Image by: ELIZABETH SEJAKE
It is obvious that when the ANC became a ruling party in 1994 we could not foresee and prepare for all the challenges the organisation would face in terms of its work.
WHEN YOUR POSITION CAN’T BE SUSTAINED‚ CREATE A SCARECROW - THE MENACE OF POST APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA
By Thabo Mbeki
January 18‚ 2016
It is obvious that when the ANC became a ruling party in 1994 we could not foresee and prepare for all the challenges the organisation would face in terms of its work.
Part of what happened was that with much of our leadership deployed in the state executive structures‚ the legislatures and the administration‚ these could not pay as much attention to work in the ANC as they used to.
At the same time there was now the demand that in addition to its normal tasks as a political organisation‚ the ANC had to grapple with the challenge to elaborate policies and programmes relating to government work. Of course this was made more demanding by the fact that this government work entailed the transformation of South Africa from an apartheid state to a democratic Republic.
This meant that especially the National Executive Committee (NEC) had to have many discussions‚ which necessarily had to break new ground‚ concerning both the functioning of the ANC and the transformation of the country through our interventions at the executive‚ legislative and administrative levels. In this regard‚ in an interview with the then e.tv television station in 2001 I said: “We…increased the regularity of meetings of the National Executive Committee of the ANC.
I raised this in 1997 after the (National) Conference to say that I think that the National Executive Committee needs to meet more frequently because it needs to set the policy for its officials like myself. And if you do not do that‚ if the gap is too wide‚ then officials will take the decisions.” The situation demanded that not only should we increase the frequency of NEC meetings but also that we encourage everybody to apply their minds to all the tasks we had to carry out so that the widest variety of views possible so that we emerge with the best possible policies.
Fortunately the whole process which had taken us through the negotiations to end apartheid rule‚ through the adoption of such policy documents as “Ready to Govern” and the “Reconstruction and Development Programme”‚ the selection of candidates for the 1994 elections‚ and so on‚ had meant that the leadership had to encourage wide and open discussion within the ranks of our organisation and broad democratic movement. This built on a long-held view within the ANC about how it should conduct its work.
In this regard‚ for instance‚ the 1958 Constitution of the ANC said among the Rights of a member of the ANC were “(i) to take part in the discussion and formulation of the policy of the Congress‚ and (ii) to criticise any official or decision of the Congress; such criticism shall be made to members of Congress or at a properly convened meeting of the members of the Congress.”
It also said that some of the Duties of a member were “(iii) to raise the level of his understanding of the political‚ economic and social problems of South Africa‚ and (iv) to explain the policy and programme of the Congress to the people.” However‚ despite everything I have said‚ the media began to report that there was growing dissatisfaction within the ANC because I particularly‚ as President of the ANC‚ was suppressing open discussion and dissenting voices within the organisation.
Sello Moloto was elected Limpopo ANC Provincial Chairperson in 2005. Like all such Chairpersons‚ this made him a member of the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC)‚ which he then began to attend. For the first few meetings he kept quiet‚ presumably to familiarise himself with how the NEC conducted its business.
When he finally made his maiden statement‚ it was to make a startling observation. He said that some members of the NEC who were present at the meeting‚ some of whom he mentioned‚ had repeatedly told him that President Mbeki in particular did not allow for open discussion and debate at NEC meetings. This resulted in the general practice in the NEC of the suppression of dissenting views.
Sello Moloto continued to say that he now had the advantage that he was participating in an NEC meeting. His direct observation was that contrary to what he had been told‚ there had been absolutely no suppression of any view at the meeting‚ despite the fact that various conflicting views had been presented.
He expressed his profound concern that an absolute falsehood he was convinced had originated from within the NEC had gained currency in the media‚ presented to the public as a true reflection of how the NEC conducted itself. Nobody stood up to contest what Sello Moloto had said. And perhaps needless to say‚ nobody also stood up to apologise for having deliberately gone out of the way to feed Sello with false information.
Nevertheless‚ undoubtedly some of us at the meeting recalled the unpleasant instance three years earlier‚ in 2002‚ when the NEC had occasion to engage one of its members‚ Jeremy Cronin‚ about his communication of fabrications concerning the workings of the NEC.
In a 2002 interview conducted by the Irish historian‚ Dr Helena Sheehan‚ Cronin had said‚ among others‚ that‚ “there is bullying of the left” in the Alliance‚ and that “there are tendencies now of what some of us refer to as the Zanufication of the ANC. You can see features of that‚ of a bureaucratisation of the struggle…”
He added that “I was increasingly marginalised by an emerging leadership‚ the Mbeki leadership‚ within the ANC itself… Blade (Nzimande‚ SACP General Secretary) and others and myself…we’ve been through a tough several years in the NEC.
We’ve been marginalised‚ shouted down‚ subjected to heavy presidential attacks on us‚ beginning with Mandela and so forth. We’ve stood our ground‚ but it’s been hard.” The ANC NEC took exception to these Cronin comments and discussed them‚ in Cronin’s presence‚ at its meeting held in August 2002.
The NEC Bulletin issued after this meeting said: “The NEC re-affirmed the democratic practice and political discipline of the African National Congress following an extensive discussion of an interview given by NEC member‚ cde Jeremy Cronin‚ to Irish historian‚ Helena Sheehan.”
In this context the Bulletin said: “The NEC reaffirmed the right of every member to raise and debate issues with and within the structures of the movement‚ and reiterated that it is impermissible for any member to discuss ANC internal issues outside of its structures.”
It also said that the Cronin comments and the interview “carried distortions of organisational history‚ policies and resolutions of National Conference and decisions of previous NEC meetings‚ and was an attack on the leadership of the movement.”
It then reported that “the NEC received an unqualified apology from cde Jeremy Cronin on the contents of the interview…Cde Cronin undertook never to repeat such an offence. The NEC severely reprimanded cde Cronin and reserved its right to take firm action should there be a repeat of such transgressions of accepted conduct by any NEC member.”
However‚ what the NEC meeting did not explain or clarify was why Cronin‚ Deputy General Secretary of the SACP and member of the ANC NEC‚ had found it necessary to communicate outright falsehoods about the ANC to Dr Sheehan!
As the ANC NEC elected at the 1997 National Conference began its work‚ it decided that the first item on the Agenda of all meetings of the NEC would be a “Political Overview” which would deal with current affairs and would be presented by the President. This was done.
The NEC would then spend many hours discussing the “Overview” before attending to other matters on the NEC Agenda. After a number of NEC meetings I proposed that the NEC should delegate the presentation of the “Political Overview” to various members of the NEC rather than leave this matter in the hands of the President.
This was agreed and implemented for at least the two subsequent NEC meetings. This matter was then re-discussed and the unanimous decision was taken that the President should resume the responsibility to present the “Political Overview”‚ which was done. The reason I had suggested that the “Overview” should be presented by other members of the NEC was my concern that members of the NEC might feel constrained in terms of responding freely and without hesitation to an “Overview” presented by the President. At the NEC sessions when the “Overview” was presented by other NEC members‚ I made it a point to speak last‚ to avoid inserting my views into the debate before all members had had their say‚ being very keen that all points of view should be canvassed and debated freely.
At the end of the second of these sessions‚ members of the NEC argued and agreed unanimously that we should again have the President present the “Overview”.
The members stated that because I had spoken last when the “Overview” was presented by other NEC members‚ this denied them the possibility to engage the views of the President who‚ speaking last‚ had‚ in some instances‚ advanced a perspective which nobody else had presented.
And so‚ as a result of this NEC decision‚ throughout the years I served as President of the ANC‚ I presented the “Political Overview” at all NEC meetings‚ which enabled members of the NEC to engage in an open political debate‚ without let or hindrance‚ freely challenging things I might have said with which they disagreed. The only opportunity I had to respond to what had been said was to conclude the discussion‚ after all members of the NEC who wished to speak had spoken. It was after listening to this “Political Overview” and witnessing the subsequent vigorous and comradely discussion that Sello Moloto spoke out against the propagation of the fabrication that open debate in the NEC was and had been suppressed.
Even as he spoke about the ‘shouting down’ of SACP members of the NEC‚ Cronin had been exposed to similar experience since 1998. The question remained – for whose benefit did he find it necessary to communicate fabrications about the functioning of the ANC NEC? Despite everything the ANC had said publicly during 2002 arising out of the Cronin matter‚ on December 1 of that year one of our newspapers published an article entitled “ANC sets out to crush dissidents”‚ arising out of proposed amendments to the ANC Constitution which would be discussed at the then forthcoming 2002 National Conference.
This newspaper made bold to say that "The ANC wants to amend its constitution to crack down on dissent and rein in members who speak out against the policies of the ruling party…This is being seen as a further move by the ANC leadership to turn the screws on its left-leaning alliance partners‚ Cosatu and the SA Communist Party."
Commenting on what lay behind the fabrications in this mischievous article‚ which were akin to the earlier false charges about “bullying of the left”‚ ANC TODAY said: “Implicit in the article is the suggestion that members of the ANC should break the pledge they made when they joined the organisation‚ by defying the decisions of the movement‚ by standing against candidates of the movement‚ and by abandoning the discipline that has enabled the movement to remain united and effective over many decades.
“It is a call for ANC members to destroy the organisation.”
- SOURCE: TIMES LIVE
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