26 Apr 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: PoliticsWeb
Former DA
leader speaks on South Africa then (under Mandela) and now (Zuma)
Address by Tony Leon at the "Twenty Years of South African
Democracy" conference, St Antony's College, Oxford University, Friday,
April 25 2014
Thank you for the invitation to address this important conference
which takes place between two historic milestones back home in South Africa:
the death of former president Nelson Mandela over four months ago
on 5 December 2013, and our fifth democratic election which takes place
in less than two weeks, on 7 May 2014.
Few free democracies present quite the paradox which today's South
Africa contrasts. It is a free democracy with a black majority government, but
also one of the most racially unequal countries on the planet; the state
is engulfed by mushrooming corruption which a free media vigorously reports;
its multiracial elites shops in first world palaces of consumerist bling
and millions live in shacks; its ruling party is on course to a huge
re-election win in a few days but has never been weaker or more divided; just
since January this year there have been over 3 000 service delivery
protests, many of them violent, and yet the government has delivered more than
3m homes, electrified over 50% of them and ensured 90% of them have access to
piped water and 66% of home cooking is today done with electricity.
It has structural unemployment of over 25% of the adult population and
yet one-third of all South Africans depend on state grants for their income,
purchased on the back of just 6m personal taxpayers.
Its private sector scores in the top percentiles of global indices,
while its public sector severely underperforms to the extent that public
education, on which a greater percentage of GDP is spent than any other
developing economy, produces results equivalent to those achieved in Yemen.
In the well -chosen words of Bill Keller, of the New York Times:
"If South Africa does not leave you full of ambivalence, you have not been
paying attention...it is inspiring and it is dispiriting. "
Leadership had much to do with our relatively peaceful, indeed against
the odds transition from apartheid to democracy. That special and
transcending leadership embodied in Nelson Mandela and others from that time
provides some of the explanation, and its loss today is keenly felt.
From the perspective of 2014, I still believe - perhaps more
emphatically today than when I delivered it - that my tribute to Nelson Mandel
when parliament took leave of him in March 1999 holds true:
I am deeply honoured that I have been able to see from these benches the
ending of apartheid and the beginning of democracy under the presidency of
Nelson Mandela. My respect and admiration for him is unconditional. He graces
this House. He graces this country. He graces humanity.
Mandela had, famously, special relationships with a vast array of
people, from the famous and powerful to the obscure. In the former category
fell Queen Elizabeth II, who once said of her own self-described annus
horribilis in 1982 that ‘distance lends enchantment'.
In contrast, the years of Mandela's presidency constituted a sort of
national and personal anni mirabiles, or years of wonder. It could be
said that, today, our country , viewed against the weak leadership, corruption
scandals, misgovernance and deeply frayed communal relations, is enduring its
own annus horribilis, or indeed has suffered a succession of them.
But, a caution: his great personal characteristics aside, Mandela's
presidency had the advantage of occurring at a time of transcending national
and international change. He was the book end between the dying of the old
order and the dawn of a new age.
By the time he took office, the fifty-year era of Communist rule over
Eastern Europe, and forty-six years of apartheid rule (and three centuries of
racial domination) at home, had just come to at an end. It was an era of new,
brave and dramatic beginnings.
It was on Mandela's watch that a new constitution was negotiated and
inked, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission commenced and concluded its
work, and the country and its first citizen basked in the attention and
admiration of the world.
Such an alignment of stars is rare in any country's history. It is
equally true that sometimes it is easier to guide the ship of state through the
high seas of big events than it is to navigate the shallower, but often swifter
and more treacherous, currents through which it fell to his successors to
manoeuvre.
But, some gaffes and missteps aside, Mandela led by example in opening
up the free space necessary for a democracy to take root in this country. His
rare combination of personal history and the enforced twenty-seven-year period
of reflection and introspection perhaps uniquely equipped him for the task of
being the country's cheerleader-in-chief for democratic freedom.
Gestures and symbols are hugely important, and often underestimated, in
statecraft, and Mandela had an almost genius-like ability to use them to shape
his nation and bind its component parts together.
Paradoxically, Mandela, the most partisan of politicians, was also able
to look beyond the interests of the party and make tough calls on it to meet
the needs of the country-in-the-making.
There was a critical moment just after the 1994 elections, during its
chaotic counting process. Today South Africa's first democratic election is
remembered in reverential terms, even tinged with a touch of the miraculous.
For those of us involved in it, and even for others who can remember its
detail, it was a far more jagged affair, with its mess of unreconciled ballots,
pirate voting stations and other jarring irregularities.
During the long tallying process, the very future hung in the balance
due to extreme electoral infringements in key places. At one point, senior ANC
officials met in Johannesburg and demanded the party take action, and at least
call a press conference, concerning what many insiders apparently regarded as
‘grand theft', which they believed had robbed the party of victory in
KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere. An eyewitness at the meeting describes its
conclusion:
Mandela had said nothing during the discussion. Then he brought the room
to a full stop. ‘Tell the comrades to cancel the press conference. We will not
do anything to make the election illegitimate. The ANC will not say the
election is not "free and fair". Prepare our people in Natal and the
Western Cape to lose.'[i]
He followed through on this example when, towards the end of his
presidency, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission prepared to publish its
interim report in October 1998, and both his predecessor and successor as
president attempted legal action either to amend or to suppress its findings.
In contrast, Mandela said the equivalent of ‘publish and be damned'. As his
authorised biographer, Anthony Sampson, noted: ‘As head of state he saw himself
as having loyalties which went beyond the ANC ...'[ii]
A different set of attitudes prevails today in South Africa's inner
councils of power. A gloomy, but, I fear, accurate, description of it appeared
in an editorial of the local Financial Mail in August 2013:
‘Rightly or wrongly, the ANC struggles to bring itself to listen to any
institution, organisation or individual outside its own ranks. The most
important debates within the ANC happen within the ANC. In the minds of the
cadres, many of whom think of themselves as part of a liberation movement
rather than a political party, outside critiques are almost by definition
wrong.'[iii]
At our first meeting after the 1994 election, Mandela told me, ‘It is
important for the opposition to hold up a mirror to the government and point
out where we do things wrong.' He used almost exactly the same formula when, in
public, he benchmarked his soon-to-be-elected government's relationship with
the media. In February 1994, Mandela told the International Press Institute
Congress:
... the media are a mirror through which we can see ourselves as others
perceive us, warts, blemishes and all. The African National Congress has
nothing to fear from criticism. I can promise you, we will not wilt under close
scrutiny. It is our considered view that such criticism can only help us grow,
by calling attention to those of our actions and omissions which do not measure
up to our people's expectations and the democratic values to which we
subscribe.'[iv]
Four years in office changed Mandela's views, both on opposition and on
media scrutiny. In December 1997, at the ANC's 50th conference in
Mafikeng, he severely criticised the press, non-governmental organisations, the
opposition and other elements of civil society. He identified them as part of
some vast and ill-defined ‘counter-revolutionary movement'.
However intemperate those remarks, they are a far cry from the poisoned
waters that seem to separate government and the media, the opposition and civil
society today. They certainly did not lead to the introduction of any
legislation to muzzle the media, such as South Africa was to witness in more
recent times. But perhaps it sowed the seeds for a future showdown.
The years between his relinquishing office and his death were marked by
tumult at home and abroad: the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 had tilted
the balance of the world economy, although there were no apparent winners and
an ever greater circle of losers, from southern Europe to the United States and
even mighty China, whose roaring economy was starting to slow.
Nations and commodities fell in and out of favour, and in again and out
again, with nervous and ever more fickle investor sentiment. South Africa was
hit hard as its currency cratered, a reflection of its widening twin (trade and
budget) deficits, oscillating global sentiment on emerging market economies and
multiple own goals at home.
When Mandela left the presidency in 1999 the currency, the rand, traded
against the US dollar in the R6.00 range; when he died in December 2013 it had
fallen to around R10.69, a decline of over 40 per cent, on a measurement
sometimes indicated as the ‘sovereign's share price'.
In 1998/1999, the country ranked top in Africa, at forty-seventh place,
on the World Economic Forum's global competitiveness index of 148 nations; by
2013/2014 it had fallen six positions to fifty-third, now second in Africa to
Mauritius.[v]
Far more precipitous - and explicable by the cascading corruption
drenching the state - was South Africa's slide down the rankings in perceptions
of corruption. When Mandela left office, his country was rated thirty-fourth on
Transparency International's index.[vi]
By the time of his death in 2013, it had fallen to seventy-second place
out of 177 nations surveyed.[vii]
Mandela's presidency made little impact on the country's serious and
structural unemployment crisis, a key and continuing failure of governance, and
today the position has worsened, with fewer than two in five working-age adults
having jobs in formal employment.[viii]
More consequentially, it was Mandela's attitude towards the courts and
his faith in the supremacy of the constitution and respect for its institutions
that separated him from his successors.
Indeed, President Jacob Zuma's own ascent to office can, diplomatically,
be best described as a Houdini-like escape from the coils of court procedures
and the multiple corruption charges he avoided before becoming president,
rather than an embrace of them. In contrast to Mandela's high regard for the
constitution, which he both championed and signed into law, the recent
scepticism of senior ANC national executive member and Deputy Minister of
Correctional Services Ngoako Ramatlhodi, provides a studied contrast.
In 2011, he stated that the constitutional transition was a victory for
‘apartheid forces' who wanted to ‘retain white domination under a black
government'. This was achieved ‘by emptying the legislature and executive of
real power' and giving it to ‘the other constitutional institutions and civil
society movements'.[ix]
Apparently, other powerful voices in Mr Ramatlhodi's party and government share
this sentiment.
We might conclude from this contrast that, while the ruling party
embraces Nelson Mandela and his early legacy of struggle, revolution and
sacrifice, it is far more ambivalent about what I have termed ‘latter
Mandelaism', such as his respect for the restraints on unfettered state power,
and many of the presidential characteristics well known to this audience.
But let me sound one note of hope on the theme of "now versus
then". Between Mandela leaving office in 1999, and entering what we might
call "a twilight of greatness" before his death last year, there has
been, for all the collateral damage inflicted by his successors on key
constitutional instruments, more of the open spirit of democracy, freedom and
robust dialogue than at any other stage of our two decades of democracy.
During the Mandela presidency, South Africa's parliamentary opposition
was deeply fragmented, its civil society was still finding its feet after the
long dark night of apartheid, and the press, whose leading editors were mostly
drawn from the minority, was at some quite decisive moments, mute and offside.
The radiance of Mandela's leadership, ironically, both warmed our hearts
but also sometimes blinded ‘some among us' (to borrow a favourite phrase of
former President Mbeki) to our roles and the rules of engagement needed for
democratic deepening.
In this respect, at least, there has been a sea change today. Without
the protection of what The Economist dubbed ‘Mandela's saintly aura',[x]
both the ruling party and its leaders will be more harshly judged. Difficult
for them, perhaps, but positive for the country's long-term democratic
prospects.
Days after Mandela's funeral near his birthplace in Qunu in the Eastern
Cape, the powerful National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) trade
union announced it was disaffiliating from the ruling ANC, whose factiousness
was starting to resemble a circular firing squad. Doubtless it will still
remain in power for some years yet, but the Madiba aura appears to be
non-transferrable to his political heirs, and thus normality begins to settle
on the country's politics.
In June 2013, Constitutional Court Justice Edwin Cameron delivered an
influential address at the Sunday Times Literary Awards. He eloquently
described how, in one vital respect, and despite the considerable damage done,
the country's democracy remains afloat:
Our polity is boisterous, rowdy, sometimes cacophonous and often angry.
That much is to be expected. But after nearly two decades, we have far more
freedom, more debate, more robust and direct engagement with each other - and
certainly more practically tangible social justice than 20 years ago.[xi]
The push-back by a diverse range of civil society actors and the delayed
passage and marked improvement to the Protection of State Information Bill in
the year of Mandela's death was a striking, encouraging example.
Just four years before Nelson Mandela's 1990 release and his walk back
into freedom, another famous political prisoner was released from jail, the
first in the Soviet Union to be freed by Mikhail Gorbachev.
Natan Sharansky had also been convicted and imprisoned for high treason.
After nine years in jail, he went into exile in Israel and subsequently became
a political leader there. In 2004, he published a powerful polemic, The Case
for Democracy, in which he elaborates, with passion and clarity, the idea
that freedom is rooted in the right to dissent, to walk into the town square
and declare one's views without fear of consequence.[xii]
For the many things that have gone right and wrong with South Africa
since our first steps under Mandela's leadership toward becoming a free society
back in 1994, Sharansky's universal observation that ‘the democracy which
sometimes dislikes us is a much safer place than the dictatorship which loves us'
must serve both as guide and as inspiration into the future.
Conclusion:
Last week marked the passing of the literary giant Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. There is indeed more than a touch of the miracles and wonders he so
brilliantly described of Latin America in the journey of our country in the
South from apartheid to democracy. But like any other national or international
achievement, the story needs to be renewed and refreshed, so we are not simply
remembered, as a golden historical footnote for the big thing we got
right two decades ago and not for the lesser missteps since then.
We need to re-imagine the future and not succumb to the sclerosis of
power, corruption and complacency.
My concluding wish is that, in our own narrative going forward, we never
lose the vision of our own "shining city on a hill" that we set for
ourselves and the world.
With purposeful renewal comes the reality of hope. As Marquez
expressed it: "It is not true that people stop perusing dreams because
they grow old. They grow old because they stop perusing dreams."
Tony Leon served as Member of Parliament from 1989 to 2009; Leader of
the Democratic Alliance (Official Opposition from 1994 to 2007); South African
Ambassador to Argentina from 20009 to 2012 and has just published his latest
book "Opposite Mandela-Encounters with South Africa's Icon" (Jonathan
Ball. 2014)
Footnotes:
[iv] Nelson Mandela, ‘Nelson Mandela's Address to the
International Press Institute Congress', 14 February 1994,
http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=3651.
[v] ‘How the world rates South Africa',
http://www.southafrica.info/business/economy/globalsurveys.htm#competitiveness.
[xii] Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy - The
Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror, pp41-42.
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