Mbeki: If we are divided, what divides us?...Delegates: You!

A week is a long time in politics. Two were spent in Cape Town and you can just imagine all the things that happened. A Turkish plane got shot down by the Syrians, the elections in Greece and the installation of the (former) Muslim Brotherhood veteran Mohammad Morsi as Egypt’s president, textbooks in Limpopo and the ANC’s policy conference. 

What was constant during these two weeks though was (reading) Frank Chikane’s, Eight Days in September: The Removal of Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki had celebrated his 70^th Birthday, about three weeks ago, and this blog just could not let the occasion go by without commenting on this man.

When the book was first launched in South Africa and Chikane did all his speeches and tours, quite a number of fingers went to keyboards about it. True to faction, those “for” Mbeki, the Mbekites of old, praised Chikane for his bravery and for telling “their” truth. Those against Mbeki, in 2005-2008, were a bit more cautious as they were either regretful about what they had done to the man (or is it regretful who they replaced him with?) or ready to acknowledge that history could repeat itself. One supposes that’s the beating of “history repeating itself”; you don’t know until it’s history.

Mbeki was a brilliant man as he was his own worst enemy. He questioned, as any intellectual does, but often this blinded him from the orthopraxy of things: rolling out ARV’s, redesigning and restructuring the economy, addressing patronage in the party and public sector, among other things. But as for setting the African agenda, building on the work of Nelson Mandela, there was no doubt that Thabo was the man and remains the man to have served the country and the continent at that critical juncture. Chikane stresses (not) revealing classified information, the role of the intelligence and one wonders whether he is indirectly suggesting that (Western) foreign powers had anything to do with the Eight Days.  

Mbekites, if such still exist, would often remind us that we should never compare Mbeki to Mandela. Mbeki, they would argue, was a leader with intellect and experience in his own right. This is a good lesson when trying to understand any leader: judge them for how they react to their particular circumstances. Would Gandhi have succeeded in fighting for Indian rights in the UK? Or even SA? Maybe his stint in SA became well known only after thriving in India. Will Gandhi be successful in India today? Was Gandhi successful at all?

However getting back to the book, which is clearly written by a Mbekite even though Chikane repeats, often enough to make one nauseous, that he is not writing in support of Mbeki, against the ANC of Polokwane or the Zuma administration, it is clear that the author is crying over spilt milk.

He makes it clear that his version of events, even though acting as a public servant where one had to be apolitical, as he stresses, but forgets to add that it is a political appointment, is to paint Mbeki as a victim of the ANC, at least post the “Polokwane-project”. Chikane is anything but un-biased and we must remember that 2012 is an election year in the ANC.

Be that as it may, some questions arise. Chikane certainly had access to information which he could have shed light on but not once did he even allude to them. Information that could certainly help us, as ordinary South Africans, understand what caused those Eights Days. Questions like:

• at the National Executive Committee meeting of the ANC on 19 September 2008 at Esselen Park, where according to Chikane the ‘ngoku’ (now) group won and the decision was made to recall Mbeki immediately, why was Thabo Mbeki not present? As a former president of the ANC, he has the right to attend any meetings of the ANC, ex-officio. Though this rule is hard to find in the ANC’s Constitution, it was used by Nelson Mandela in March 2002, where, in the presence of Mbeki, Mandela was humiliated and the president of the ANC, at the time, did nothing to defend Mandela.

• what made Mbeki want to run for a third term, as president of the ANC? While Chikane defends the book as being an account of those Eight Days, he does venture into pre-Polokwane days and maybe in the second book (which he has promised but which I doubt will materialise) he might explain Mbeki’s desire to remain in office. Whilst Chikane is at pains to portray Mbeki as a man who wanted to set a good example of an African leader, he does not come near to mentioning why Mbeki wanted a third term. Surely there were cadres, other than Mbeki himself, who were capable of running against Jacob Zuma?

• based on the later Supreme Court of Appeal judgement, Chikane argues that it was unfair to recall Mbeki based on the Nicholson judgement. Yet why did Mbeki choose to recall Zuma, his deputy, based on the Squires judgement, in the Shaik case? A judgement that was yet to be tested in the SCA.

• Mbeki lost Polokwane to Zuma, 60-40. Yet Chikane fails to explain why, in his opinion, Mbeki had become so unpopular. But then again, he believes that Polokwane and the Recall was simply the work of a cabal. That Mbeki could have been the architect of ill-discipline that developed in the ANC, as witnessed in the NEC meeting of March 2002, where Mandela was called a liar, is just not possible for Chikane.

It is important to read the book, not because one is pro- or anti-Mbeki rather, because it does give insight into what happened in those Eight Days albeit a recount that was in favour of Mbeki. It fails to tackle the “real” issues and seems to have as its aim making a martyr out of Mbeki, a PR exercise as it were. Words such as “coup” and “crucifixion” lend itself to this interpretation.

Mbeki was one of South Africa’s brightest thinkers, especially within the political realm. However, he had his time and, as with Mandela, we must move on.