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Did Thabo Mbeki
make a difference? Would South Africa have been a different place had
Mandela decided to take on a second term? These questions have surfaced onto
the political agenda every now and then, but they have become even more
relevant in recent months given the spate of reviews on South Africa’s first
ten years of democracy. Public discourse on the subject suggests that the
prevailing opinion is that South Africa would indeed have been a different
(most would say better) place had the Mbeki presidency not happened.
Commentators often reflect on how different the Mandela and Mebki
presidential terms have been. Not only do they reflect on the personalities
of the two presidents, lamenting the aloofness of Mbeki and comparing it to
the amiableness of Mandela, but they often also suggest that Mandela’s
presidency was marked by reconciliation, which Mbeki is said to have
abandoned for empowerment and narrow African nationalism. Mandela is thus
seen as the reconciler and democrat, while Mbeki is perceived as the
ultimate technocrat, busy centralising power in an ‘imperial presidency’.
But is this a fair
description of the two presidencies? We would argue that the case is
overdrawn. A careful look at the annual ‘State of the Nation’ addresses of
both presidents, delivered at the opening of parliament in February of each
year, will reveal that they have covered much the same issues and reflected
on the same concerns. Mandela did indeed engage in reconciliation. His first
presidential address in 1994 began with a poem from Afrikaner poet, Ingrid
Jonker, stressing the compatibility of simultaneously holding an Afrikaner
and an African identity.
Moreover, throughout his
administration, he undertook high-profile symbolic reconciliation
initiatives in an effort to convince whites and other minority racial groups
that they had a place in post-apartheid South Africa. But this theme was
also carried by Mbeki’s ‘State of the Nation’ addresses. In his 2002
address, for instance, he approvingly quoted a study by the University of
Stellenbosch, which validated his administration’s delivery record. He
praised this bastion of the Afrikaner establishment for the constructive
role it was playing in the reconstruction of post-apartheid South Africa.
Similarly, his overtures to the New National Party to form an electoral
alliance in the aftermath of the break-up of the Democratic alliance was
partly inspired by the desire to provide Afrikaners with a stake in the
post-apartheid political establishment. Then again, in her most recent
address, not only quoted Ingrid Jonker again, but also commended journalist
Rian Malan for his retrospective confession of the ‘swart gevaar’ fears he
held after the 1994 election, and how they have proved to be wholly
unjustified.
There has also been a high
degree of consistency between the presidencies on the economic front. The
shift to neoliberal economics, as reflected in the adoption of the Growth,
Employment and Redistribution Strategy, occurred early in the Mandela
presidency and was consistently defended by both presidents in their State
of the Nation addresses. Even Mbeki’s much vaunted Black Empowerment thrust
predates his presidency, having its roots in the Reconstruction and
Development programme that served as the ANC’s electoral manifesto in the
1994 elections. Furthermore, the tensions within the Tripartite Alliance and
the ANC leadership’s stringent approach to dealing with criticism from the
Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party
have spanned both presidencies. Indeed, it was Mandela who first publicly
chastised the Alliance partners for their criticisms of the government’s
macroeconomic policy, and asked them to leave the movement should they be
uncomfortable with its direction.
The overlap and consistency,
in both positive and negative terms, between the two presidencies is thus
significant. Nonetheless, a careful reading of the underlying overtones of
both presidents’ speeches, conduct and behaviour also suggests some
differences. This has been reflected in the foci and emphases of the two
presidents. The former undoubtedly stressed the reconciliation theme far
more effectively than he did either the empowerment or redress ones. The
result was that, midway through his term, concern emerged within the ANC and
amongst large segments of the populace that too much was being done to
appease the beneficiaries of apartheid and too little to address the
concerns of the victims of racial oppression. This concern reflected itself
in the controversy accompanying the release in October 1998 of the first
five volumes of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
when a significant component of the leadership of the ANC rejected the
report for what it saw as the equation of the crime of apartheid with some
of the human rights abuses conducted in the course of the liberation
struggle.
The philosophy and ethos of
the Mbeki presidency is best captured in his ‘Two Nations’ address on the
occasion of the parliamentary debate on reconciliation and nation-building
held in May 1998. In an often moving and even poetic treatise, Mbeki
described two nations, one white and the other black. The former’s citizens,
he argued, exhibited the lifestyles of the developed world, and were
‘relatively prosperous with access to developed economic, physical,
educational, communication and other infrastructure’). The latter’s
inhabitants were subjected to the poverty and immiseration resulting largely
from the condition of underdevelopment typical of the most marginalised and
disempowered communities in the world. This dichotomy between privilege and
disadvantage, which was racially defined, had to be transcended if South
Africa was to have an even chance at reconciliation and nation building.
Was South Africa on the path
to transcending this divide? Mbeki answered in the negative, lamenting the
fact that the beneficiaries of our past refused to underwrite the upliftment
of the poor. Comparing South Africans to the Germans who poured enormous
resources into their nation-building project, Mbeki made a passionate plea
for a greater magnanimity on the part of South Africa’s privileged citizens.
It was their generosity, he declared, that was required for a reconciliation
project that has at its core the principle of social justice. Without such
justice, neither racial reconciliation nor nation building would be possible
in South Africa.
The irony, of
course, is that Mbeki’s own economic policy strategy undermines his desire
for reconciliation with justice. So the question remains: would South Africa
have been very different if Mandela had chosen to stay on as president? We
doubt it, even though there would have differences of emphasis and of
foreign policy. However, in its essentials, South Africa would have been
very similar. Inequality in society, poverty, racial tensions and stresses
within the tripartite alliance would all, equally, have been the likely
characteristics of a Mandela second term. Against that we would not have had
NEPAD, and we might not even have had the African Union. On the plus side,
however, we would have had far more energy and less obfuscation in the
battle against HIV-AIDS, and we would have had less toleration of bad
governance and abuses of human rights in Zimbabwe. But for the person in the
street and on the veld, life would have been pretty much similar. For the
rich and the upper middle classes: pleasant if problematic. For the
marginalized and unemployed: nasty, brutish and –alarmingly – on average,
getting shorter.
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