OPINION

Time Mbeki reflected on his own weaknesses

Alex Mashilo says the former president is still yet to grasp why the ANC turned against him

Red Alert

Former President Thabo Mbeki personalises complex political issues, continues to isolate SACP leaders

In his letter – “Dare you ponder the obvious: of course Mbeki is aloof” – Thabo Mbeki sets himself the task to dispel the notion that he was aloof.

He writes: “However, in my specific case, the charge of being ‘aloof’ rested on the assertion that whether intentionally or not, my very style of leadership meant that I deliberately chose to be ‘not in touch with the people’, (and the membership of the ANC), obviously having ‘arrogated to myself the status of being the source of all wisdom.’”

In “Former President Thabo Mbeki still doesn’t get”, published by Umsebenzi Online on 20 January and The New Age on 22 January, SACP First Deputy General Secretary Comrade Jeremy Cronin sufficiently responded to Mbeki, at least for now. The response remains valid in all respects, even to Mbeki’s “Dare you ponder the obvious: of course Mbeki is aloof”, as if the latter was not penned and published thereafter.   

In addition, it is important to underline that Mbeki is the first former ANC President to announce – in the very first elections once it was no longer about campaigning for him to hold on to the position – that his vote was a secret. This was the first election after the ANC’s 52nd National Conference held in Polokwane in December 2007 where, as he says, he contested the position of ANC President and did not win.

The majority of ANC delegates at the congress, representing ANC membership – which he says he was not distant from – did not vote for him. By so doing, the delegates clearly expressed the views and implemented the mandate of ANC membership.

Mbeki does not give any account why people who he says he was very close to took the decision. Instead of maintaining his “HIV does not cause Aids” denialist tendency, he should acknowledge that, like all other human beings, he has his own weaknesses. Unless he presents a compelling motivation, he must recognise that it was, among others, because of, and to those weaknesses that the membership responded in that way. This does not mean he was not good at other things. Neither does it mean that he did not have strengths.    

All along, ANC cadres such as myself worked very hard under Mbeki’s leadership as ANC President. One of my memorable campaigns was when I was involved with other comrades in organising his visit to Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa in Silverton, Tshwane, where I was working at the time and also serving as one of the leading shop stewards representing workers. During the campaign, Mbeki did not call on workers to make their vote a secret. He declared that his vote belonged to the ANC. He campaigned for workers, similarly, to both vote for the ANC and mobilise others to do likewise.

It was after he announced that his vote was a secret that I have never heard him campaign for others to vote for the ANC.

The inconsistency reveals one characteristic feature of Mbeki: he can personalise complex political questions and isolate individual comrades. This is what he has done in the last three weeks when he isolated Comrade Jeremy Cronin following which he isolated the SACP General Secretary Comrade Blade Nzimande, a few days ago. In between, he penned a letter alleging that there was a lie that President Jacob Zuma, then his deputy, was removed from his position and that this played itself out at the ANC National General Council in 2005, where no national executive committee member stood up to correct it.

A question can be posed, where was he, Mbeki, as the leader of that National Executive Committee? He was very much present. Did he stand up to make the correction he claims no one from the National Executive Committee stood up to correct? No he did not. Why would he, a decade after the meeting pen its minutes that have not been discussed and adopted by the collective. It is also ironic that Mbeki speaks about the National Executive Committee as if he was not its leading member thus outsourcing the very role he should have played in his capacity as ANC President and attributing blame on all others except for himself. Well, that Mbeki.

Currently we are facing serious economic problems: high levels of inequality, unemployment and poverty, among others. What does Mbeki do? He chooses to focus on himself as a person. This self-centredness and trivialisation of complex phenomena will not assist us as a country. The only thing it can achieve is to exacerbate tensions and cause further problems.

Especially at the current time when the rest of our movement must unite behind the clarion call for a second, more radical phase of our democratic transition and prepare to win local government elections, Mbeki will cause problems for the ANC and the alliance through such conduct.       

What we need, and perhaps this is more important, is to have a discussion on the relationship between the economic problems that we are facing today and the policy decisions – including those that were presented as non-negotiable – that were driven under Mbeki’s leadership. This in addition to going to the root of the problems in colonial and apartheid oppression, racist capitalist exploitation and the multiple crises of capitalism as a world system!

Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo is SACP Spokesperson, and writes in his capacity as Professional Revolutionary. A shortened version of this piece was first published by The New Age on 3 February 2016. It was subsequently published in the SACP’s online journal, Umsebenzi Online.