[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Charlene Smith on Mbeki's farewell

[David Everatt]

It is clearly raining on the historical texts, too. The ANC did not vote 
to allow white members in 1956 - they were able to be members of the 
Congress of Democrats, one of the 4 members of the Congress Alliance, 
but not the ANC, until a decade and a half later; and the PAC didn't 
break away till 1959.

____________________

David Everatt

Strategy & Tactics (Johannesburg)

www.s-and-t.co.za




Patrick Bond wrote:
> thoughtleader.co.za
>
> Hamba Mbeki! Welcome, hope
> by Charlene Smith
>
>
> It's raining in Johannesburg. In Africa, we believe rain is a 
> blessing, that it cleanses, brings new life.
> This week African National Congress delegates at Polokwane make the 
> most important political decision the movement has taken since 1956 
> when it voted to allow white members, and pan-Africanists under Robert 
> Sobukwe broke away.
>
> In the same way that the Youth League of 1948 under Nelson Mandela, 
> Walter Sisulu and others shook up an organisation that had grown 
> slothful and corrupt under founder Pixley ka Seme and his cohorts, 
> those who at Sunday's opening of the conference jeered ANC chairman 
> Terror Lekota and President Thabo Mbeki are demanding an ANC that is 
> once more accountable to the people.
>
> You'd have to be the most cynical of observers not to see how hopeful 
> those scenes were — not in the way Mbeki was humiliated, but in the 
> way citizens of an African country, those who belong to the ruling 
> party, essentially told a leader to go to hell because he had failed 
> them. If you do not see that as the brightest star to shine above this 
> continent for a long time, then little will persuade you. It shows 
> democracy in action; this is the African renaissance.
>
> Delegates essentially told an ANC leadership increasingly distant and 
> contemptuous of its supporters that without economic freedom, there is 
> no political freedom. A vote should be a ticket to a better future for 
> all, not to Mercedes 4×4s for an elite.
>
> It has set a precedent that every leader, in business and politics, 
> should take careful note of — people are tired of waiting. They demand 
> to be heard, to be respected.
>
> Mbeki has the arrogance of one born into the ANC; he thinks he can 
> direct it. Those who reject him are a new generation; they chose to 
> join the ANC not because of what they hoped it could destroy 
> (apartheid), but because of the promise of what it could build. These 
> are the members not of struggle, but of democracy. They want what they 
> were promised. And they want a say in decisions.
>
> In every post-liberation African country, citizens have been cowed by 
> the lies of revolutionary leaders. They have stayed silent as their 
> countries have slid down the slope. In Polokwane on Sunday, people 
> held up their hand against the slide.
>
> A brave activist friend in Zimbabwe sent me these words by Alice 
> Walker: "It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched 
> our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of 
> activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of 
> heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building 
> of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their 
> offerings out of shame. This is the tragedy of the world. For we can 
> do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a 
> destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, 
> and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile."
>
> If the citizens of Zimbabwe had stood up to Robert Mugabe the way 
> South Africans did to Mbeki and the ANC leadership on Sunday, he would 
> have been long gone. And no, our struggle is not over; it has just 
> begun, but if Zimbabweans had done the same to Mugabe eight years into 
> his reign, the destiny of that country would not be as bleak. On 
> Sunday, a few South Africans showed they will not submit quietly and 
> by doing that, they gave us back our future.
>
> In an interview with the Mail & Guardian last week, his first in eight 
> years, Mbeki said he had not realised the discontent of voters. Does 
> he not read newspapers? If he did not realise the extent of 
> discontent, why did he spend so much time attacking citizens, 
> journalists, business people and others in his Friday letter? If, 
> instead of walking shielded by bodyguards and speeding through 
> communities with seven-car cavalcades, vehicles three abreast, if he'd 
> stopped and walked among his people as Nelson Mandela did, then 
> perhaps he may have known.
>
> But in truth, Mbeki's problem was that he believed he knew everything. 
> It is better to have a president who knows what he doesn't know and 
> surrounds himself or herself with sound advisers than one who rejects 
> counsel.
>
> This week, the ANC's pan-Africanist president will face the judgement 
> of those he neglected, those against whom he orchestrated dirty 
> tricks, those he insulted and those he wrongfully accused of plotting 
> against him. He may still win, of course, but if he does it will be a 
> bitter victory — for him and the nation.
>
> Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale, forced out of the ANC presidential 
> race by Mbeki before 1999 and who later claimed they had organised a 
> conspiracy against him in 2000, are backing Zuma. Big businessman 
> Patrice Motsepe has also turned his back on Mbeki.
>
> In Latin America, it was said after repeated coups in the 1970s and 
> 1980s that no coup could succeed without the backing of big business. 
> Mbeki is likely to discover that his pro-business position was always 
> tenuous because it lacked sufficient attention to the poor. The 
> interests of the rich are always in danger, when too many of a 
> populace go to bed hungry.
>
> The poor do not threaten us; those who manipulate them do. High rates 
> of crime here, as an example, are not a result of poverty, but of 
> syndicates that have bribed the already privileged. It is the powerful 
> who are corrupt that most endanger us. Beware, too, when you read 
> this, of making easy judgements. The arms deal warns us again and 
> again that there was a tapestry of top-level corruption, and less than 
> a handful have faced charges. Are we rotten at the top? Even Mbeki and 
> ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe sketched a nation and an 
> organisation riven with greed.
>
> Which may be why principled business in the form of Ramaphosa and 
> Sexwale are making a stand. Cyril Ramaphosa was the son of a 
> policeman; in 1977 he was expelled from the same university where the 
> ANC conference is being held for being part of black consciousness 
> protests. Tokyo Sexwale came from a humble background; so did Motsepe 
> — Mbeki, by contrast, didn't. As Mark Gevisser described at the launch 
> of his book A Dream Deferred, Mbeki came from a family that was an 
> intellectual, political and financial elite. From the age of 19 he 
> patrolled the cocktail circuits of Europe, returning home in his 50s 
> to a people Gevisser reports that he said he felt a "disconnect" from.
>
> Ramaphosa, Sexwale, Mac Maharaj, Jacob Zuma, Mathews Phosa — all those 
> Mbeki humiliated understand the need to assuage the interests of the 
> poor to grow the nation and to protect the fortunes they and the 
> country have amassed. They will provide a strong counter to Cosatu's 
> desire to move the country left.
>
> Mbeki, arguably the greatest political speech-writer in South Africa, 
> failed on Sunday when he most needed to persuade. He strode to the 
> podium in a brown golf shirt with pink and grey stripes, an ANC logo 
> on his left breast; he never smiled, never made eye contact with the 
> people with whom he should have sought to have some rapport. He spoke 
> in the same way he ruled: aloof, dispassionate, disinterested in those 
> before him.
>
> The South African Broadcasting Corporation cameras never showed us the 
> expressions of others on the podium. The SABC tried to control the 
> situation with rigid camerawork, but ANC rank-and-file members are not 
> under orders from Snuki Zikalala. There was occasional low-key 
> heckling of Mbeki. Then, before the startled eyes of older cadres who 
> had never yet been to a contested presidential election at an ANC 
> conference, after Mbeki finished speaking chaos broke out with 
> sustained pro-Zuma chants and singing. A beleaguered Terror Lekota, 
> once one of the most popular people in the ANC until he began 
> fervently backing Mbeki, failed to restore calm.
>
> Earlier during his almost three-hour speech, Mbeki did something 
> psychologically telling; when he began talking about "confronting 
> poverty and underdevelopment", he took out a white handkerchief and 
> wiped his brow.
>
> Mbeki should have inspired and yet he went through a dull litany of 
> what his government had achieved and how it could have achieved more 
> but for the corrupt. The point, however, is that it was he who had the 
> power as president of the ANC and of the country to call opportunists 
> and the corrupt to book, but in too many high-profile cases he either 
> did nothing or prevented investigations.
>
> The sacking of Vusi Pikoli, head of the National Prosecuting Authority 
> and widely considered an honourable man, just before he was due to 
> arrest police Commissioner Jackie Selebi is one point. Tony Yengeni's 
> brief sojourn in jail and the suspension of a police officer who 
> claimed he was driving drunk is another.
>
> Mbeki spoke of how public spending had increased by 9,4% in the past 
> five years and that "spending per person has grown twice as fast as 
> the growth of the economy" — but failed to note how much of the money 
> allocated had not resulted in delivery. Take as an example the 
> R5-billion allocated to education in the poverty-stricken Eastern Cape 
> and not spent because of bureaucratic ineptitude.
>
> Mbeki noted, too, that, "the areas with the greatest number of violent 
> crimes are poor and depressed economically. In those areas there are 
> few recreational facilities, unemployment is high, there are many 
> shebeens, there are dysfunctional families and the level of substance 
> abuse is very high." But why, one wondered listening to him, have you 
> done so little to remedy this? Where is the building of parks or youth 
> centres or intense programmes to stop drug or alcohol abuse and help 
> those addicted?
>
> He was booed when he denied that under him there had been a 
> "centralisation of government power in president" or an "abuse of 
> state power". He responded: "It is easy for members to be misled." And 
> here he made the most serious mistake any political leader can make — 
> speaking to his constituency as though they are children and lack the 
> wisdom to make their own decisions.
>
> If people walked in clean, safe streets, believed they had work 
> opportunities, if clean water flowed from taps and children had good 
> education and effective medical care, then no trouble maker could 
> succeed.
>
> It will be remarkable if Mbeki wins at the polls. If he does, I do not 
> want to be in Polokwane, because it is a decision that will not be 
> believed either there or in other parts of the country. If he loses, 
> history will commend him if he calls an early national election and 
> goes with dignity. He has made so many enemies that it is hard to see 
> what post he could assume here or internationally. A United Nations 
> post seemed obvious, but South Africa's record at the Security Council 
> has been so contentious that it is now probably out of the question. 
> His position at Portugal recently in defence of Zimbabwe's Robert 
> Mugabe alienated many Europeans.
>
> By contrast, Zuma will be elected knowing that many mistrust him. He 
> is starting off a low base, but has the backing of some remarkable 
> people. Much has already happened in Polokwane to give cause for hope. 
> Perhaps the rain is a messenger.
>
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