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Thabo Mbeki, Mandela's heir, is a mediator in meltdown
Independent on Sunday, The, Apr 20, 2008 by Paul Vallely
Hero or Villain?
Thabo Mbeki was always on a hiding to nothing. Anyone taking over from Nelson Mandela, the world's favourite leader, was bound to suffer by comparison. But the South African President's failure to deal robustly with Robert Mugabe after the Zimbabwean election fiasco has exhausted not just the patience of the rest of the world, but that of his own citizens, too.
It was all so different a decade ago when Mbeki was Mandela's deputy and anointed successor. True, those who had known him as a charming and amusing student at the University of Sussex were surprised at how glum and dour he became on entering government. But Mbeki decided that there was no point in trying to compete with Mandela's charisma, and presented himself as an intellectual and a technocrat - the man capable of turning Mandela's vision of a better life into a political reality.
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He cultivated the image of an independent and original thinker, and determinedly rejected populism. First, he risked unpopularity by lobbying the ANC to swap the armed struggle for negotiations with the apartheid regime. Then, in power, he took difficult decisions on the economy. He was shocked to find that the white regime had bequeathed a siege economy close to collapse rather than the stashes of cash needed to provide new homes with water and electricity for the black population. He rebuilt the economy, championing free- market economics to attract foreign investment, control inflation and create new jobs, rather than giving in to his communist and trade union comrades who wanted pay rises in the public sector. He played a leadership role in forming the African Union and its New Economic Partnership for African Development.
But the disdain he developed for what others thought of him - he wanted to be respected, not liked - led him into an intellectual arrogance. It tripped him up mightily over the issue of Aids. His ideological distaste for white colonialism fed a fixation that the idea of Aids being primarily sexually transmitted was an attempt by white scientists to paint blacks as promiscuous and Africa as a place of disease and hopelessness. For years, he refused to make antiretroviral treatment for HIV infection available. Mandela became publicly cool towards his successor.
But it was on the growing economic and political chaos in Zimbabwe that he has most disappointed. As international concern grew, Mbeki remained quiescently supportive.
Why? Was it out of respect for Mugabe's status as a battlefield leader of the liberation struggle, against which the backroom boy Mbeki felt inferior? Or out of a resentment at the condemnation by white nations, including Britain, the former colonial power? Or because he thought the best way to bring change was by what he called "quiet diplomacy" behind the scenes?
Last year, he conducted private negotiations with Mugabe's party, Zanu-PF. He had some success. He forced a change in Zimbabwe's election rules that required the results at each individual polling station to be nailed up on its door. This is what, this time, allowed independent observers to work out that Mugabe had lost. But the talks broke down without achieving a substantive agreement on political succession.
After the elections, other African nations appointed Mbeki as mediator between Mugabe and the poll winner, Morgan Tsvangirai. But he has been seen as too partisan towards Mugabe, pronouncing that there was "no crisis" and then giving permission for a shipment of Chinese arms to pass through South Africa to Zimbabwe, despite pleas that it should be quarantined until the crisis is over.
Tsvangirai called for him to be replaced as the key mediator. Thabo Mbeki, he said, had lost all credibility. It was hard not to agree.
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