Iceland shows how to get into and out of a crisis

24 Jun 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

Iceland’s recent financial implosion is instructive and has a local relevance, writes Tony Leon

LAST week, I made a journey to hell and back. To be precise, I visited Mount Hekla in southern Iceland, one of the most active volcanoes in the world — there have been more than 20 eruptions between the 12th century and as recently as 2000. During the Middle Ages, local monks believed it was the physical location of "Hell’s chimney", or perhaps of purgatory itself.

Happily, on the day of my visit, the volcano was not in eruption mode. But, in August 2008, Iceland exploded itself financially and embarked on its own journey to economic perdition. Not that the first-world ambience of the capital city, Reykjavik, betrays any sign of the recent crisis on this large island that is more famous for its elusive winter lights, luxuriant fishing grounds and geothermal geysers than for its banking prowess.

In fact, it makes most other European capitals seem, even on our depleted currency, bargain basements by comparison. Its citizens throng the luxury downtown restaurants, where a bottle of rather ordinary South African pinotage is on offer at about R1,000. It’s easy to become a convert to beer with dinner at those prices.

But the point about Iceland’s recent financial implosion is instructive for two reasons that have a wider, and even a local, relevance. First, how did this sparsely populated country of about 320,000 people get into such a mess? Second, how did it emerge so quickly from the cauldron of near national insolvency to regain its place as one of the wealthiest countries, per capita, in Europe in just three years? In August 2008, just one month before Lehman Brothers collapsed and the world’s financial system froze, Iceland revealed itself as the harbinger of the global economic storm to come. Its prime minister, having been rebuffed by both the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, went to Moscow to seek a loan, an extraordinary posture for a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

But, as he later explained, he wanted to "signal the severity of the situation" and did not want to go cap-in-hand to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bail-out. But when the extent of the crunch was exposed, it was the IMF that provided the stand-by facility that helped calm its troubled economic waters. In essence, as the headline of Fortune magazine proclaimed in December 2008, Iceland was "a country which became a hedge fund".

Its three largest private banks, enjoying the loose reins of the now vanished era of deregulation and the hunt for profit and the excessive rewards for excessive risk, had become so large that their assets were 10 times the size of the economy. These banks, which duly collapsed in the wake of the crisis, had not just extended their largesse locally, but also went global. Among others, more than 100 local authorities in the UK invested about £50m in Icelandic banks.

The severity of this crisis — caused, as one local advised, by "our unique instinct for a gamble and the universal instinct for greed" — became quickly apparent. As the banks were in effect nationalised, the economy went into free-fall: unemployment hit 40% and the local stock exchange saw 90% of its value wiped out. But the countermeasures were equally swift: after the IMF facility was in place, significant tax hikes and painful austerity measures followed. Yet within three years, by August 2011, the pain had eased and the economy recovered to positive territory, budget debt was brought down sharply and the IMF facility was ended.

Today, in comparison to the downgrade of our sovereign rating from stable to negative by Fitch, the same agency has recently upgraded Iceland to stable again.

President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation speech last week did not at first blush indicate that his administration has grasped the gravity of our own economic straits: one downgrade away from junk status or below investment grade. Or if, indeed, the government is so seized that there were no announcements and few measures to arrest the downward spiral. Perhaps the tangled alliance politics of the African National Congress makes any implementation of the necessary policy changes impossible.

The only relief in sight came from an unlikely source. In 2011, Ngoako Ramatlhodi said the "constitutional transition was a victory for ‘apartheid forces’". These were the very sentiments repeated last week in the theatrical parliamentary debut of Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema.

He was then a humble deputy minister. Now that he is charged with the far more consequential job of salvaging our mining industry as Minister of Mineral Resources, he at least appears to recognise the gravity of the situation. His decision to reconsider the investment-crushing Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act Amendment Bill might indicate, if followed through, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Not just greater darkness or an IMF bail-out.

• Leon is the author of Opposite Mandela (Jonathan Ball) Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

Deurdagte, kritiese blik op Mandela

21 June 2014 | Willem Jordaan  |  Rapport

Opposite Mandela deur Tony Leon. Uitgewer: Jonathan Ball. Prys: R220. Resensent: Willem Jordaan

* Die boek is ook beskikbaar op Kalahari.com teen R189 of as ’n e-boek teen R110.

Is oudpres. Nelson Mandela ’n heilige of ’n Machiavelli? Dit is een van die vrae waarmee Tony Leon homself konfronteer in Opposite Mandela.

Ongekende internasionale rou oor ’n staatsman – tereg gekenmerk deur ’n uitstorting van lof en eerbewyse – het gevolg ná Madiba se dood op 5 Desember 2013. G’n mens is net goed of net sleg nie, en daarom is dit vanselfsprekend dat hierdie perspektiewe in die proses van geskiedskrywing met kritiek getemper sal word.

In die tyd wat voorlê, sal baie van hierdie perspektiewe geboekstaaf word, en Opposite Mandela is ’n belangrike bydrae tot die historiese post mortem waaruit die veelkantigheid van Mandela – die goed én die sleg – noodwendig in groter balans gebring sal word.

Die feit dat Leon as leier van die DP (voorganger van die DA) oorkant Mandela in die opposisiebanke gesit het, plaas sekerlik ’n sekere historiese plig op sy skouers om ’n vername aandeel aan dié projek te hê. Net soos wat dit nie maklik kon wees om dié internasionale ikon die politieke stryd aan te sê nie (of om nee te sê vir ’n uitnodiging om lid te word van Mandela se kabinet), is só ’n nadoodse kritiese beskouing ’n moeilike taak.

In teenstelling met sy verhouding met oudpres. Thabo Mbeki, is Leon se verhouding met Mandela uit sy oogpunt gekenmerk deur warmte en wedersydse begrip, afgewissel met oomblikke van groot politieke spanning.

As sodanig skryf Leon in aansienlike detail en met groot waardering oor verskeie persoonlike interaksies, insluitend telefoonoproepe, etes saam, Mandela se teenwoordigheid op sy 40ste verjaardagparty en sy ingreep toe die ANC Leon se pa (regter Ray Leon) wou brandmerk as een van apartheid se “hanging judges”.

Dié waardering keer Leon egter nie om Mandela ook krities in oënskou te neem nie, en uit ’n geskiedkundige oogpunt is dít juis waar die boek se waarde lê.

Die skrywer wys byvoorbeeld uit dat die ANC-regering se grypsug en korrupsie reeds in Mandela se tyd posgevat het met onder meer die berugte wapenkontrak.

Hy meen dat Mandela se morele status hom in ’n unieke posisie geplaas het om die toenemende neiging om te keer, maar dat hy nagelaat het om sterker op te tree.

Ander kritiek sluit in Mandela se geneigdheid om hom aan die neus te laat lei deur sy persoonlike lojaliteit teenoor individue, wat op politieke oordeelsfoute aan sy kant uitgeloop het.

’n Kwarteeu nadat F.W. de Klerk aan die bewind gekom het, verskaf die boek ook fassinerende perspektiewe op hoe Mandela met De Klerk en ander in die opposisiebanke omgegaan het.

In hoofsaak vertel dit die storie van ’n man wat hulle as teenstanders benader het eerder as vyande, soos wat die praktyk onder Mbeki geword het.

Opposite Mandela is dus veel meer as bloot persoonlike vertellinge oor twee politieke teenstanders se verhouding. Dit is toeganklik geskryf met ’n sterk historiese bewussyn wat dikwels dien as heenwysing na huidige politieke kwessies.

Só byvoorbeeld is terloopse besonderhede van Leon se stram verhouding met Mbeki waarskynlik geen toevalligheid nie. Die feit dat die man wat vandag in Leon se parlementêre stoel sit, Mmusi Maimane, ’n groot aanhanger van Mbeki is, is bepaald ironies.

Namate die debat oor die toekomstige rol van die DA momentum opbou, gaan dié boek belangrike konteks verskaf.

Besonderhede van pres. Jacob Zuma se destydse rol en opkoms, asook van die verloop van die ANC se Mafikeng-konferensie, gee potensieel nuwe insig in wat verwag kan word onder Zuma se idee van “ ’n tweede fase van oorgang”.

In die jare wat kom, gaan die rakke in boekwinkels nog kreun onder die gewig van skrywers wat hul persoonlike belewenis van Mandela weergee.

Leon se weergawe verdien sy plek as ’n geskiedkundige perspektief met ’n deurdagte kritiese element.

Willem Jordaan is adjunkredakteur van Die Burger. Hy het gedurende Leon en Mandela se termyn uit die parlement verslag gedoen.

 

Podcast: Tony Leon Presents His Unique Perspective on Madiba in Opposite Mandela

18 Jun 2014 | Original Publication:  Books Live

Although there are many books on Nelson Mandela, only Tony Leon’s Opposite Mandela is written from the perspective of someone who was “objectively a political opponent of his”.

Leon spoke to Sue Grant-Marshall on her Radio Today show about his relationship with Madiba, which, despite him being the leader of the official opposition at the time the ANC came to power, was characterised by warmth and friendliness.

Leon says that Opposite Mandela also looks at the seeds that Mandela planted “to make South Africa more democratic, to make parliament more responsive and to make opponents friends not enemies”.

Listen to the podcast:

http://jonathanball.bookslive.co.za/blog/2014/06/18/podcast-tony-leon-presents-his-unique-perspective-on-madiba-in-opposite-mandela/

Brazil scores an own goal with costly World Cup

17 Jun 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

Popular image of hemispheric giant masks other darker and more pressing realities, while run-up to World Cup has been a series of disasters, writes Tony Leon

BRAZIL’s decidedly bumpy start in Thursday’s opening ceremony and match of the Soccer World Cup contained many metaphors for the sovereign host, all of which seemed to revive the old joke that "Brazil is the country of the future and always will be".

Over the past decade, this super-sized state, more than 8-million square kilometres and with a population just shy of 200-million people, appeared to have decisively cast off its image and reality of never having achieved its national or international potential. On the back of surging growth rates, sensible economic policies, which added a populist touch to pro-growth strategies, the country emerged from the historic shadows to arrive as an acclaimed international superstar: although it never overcame its huge inequalities, it certainly reduced them as millions were lifted from dire poverty onto the lower rungs of the middle classes.

Its agricultural and resource exports surged and it became the "B" of "Brics’ — with Russia, India, China and South Africa — the premier club of the developing world, in which it also became a diplomatic leader. By 2012, it had overtaken the UK as the sixth-largest economy in the world. The award by world soccer governing body Fifa of hosting rights for this year’s World Cup, followed by the International Olympic Committee decision to hold the Olympic Games there in 2016, appeared to set the seal on its national reinvention.

If not exactly lit by the illusions of samba music and sunshine-drenched beaches and tanga-clad bathers, the popular image of this hemispheric giant masks other darker and more pressing realities — corrosive corruption, heavy-handed and bloated governance and a huge economic dependency on consumption. The run-up to the World Cup has been a series of disasters for Brazil.

In fact, on the day of the opening match, police had to use tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse angry demonstrators in downtown Sao Paulo, who were venting their spleen at the very idea of huge public spending on the soccer fiesta (which, at about $11bn, is double the cost of SA’s hosting of the event). Even if Brazil’s love affair with the "beautiful game" is legendary, it’s clear that many, indeed a hefty majority of Brazilians, according to a recent Pew Research Centre poll, would rather the government spent more at home on repairing its chronically underperforming infrastructure and corroded public services than pay the costs for soccer’s quadrennial extravaganza.

Thus, when in the 11th minute of Brazil’s opening match against Croatia in the giant Arena Corinthians, Sao Paulo’s barely completed new stadium, home player Marcelo Vieira turned the ball into his own net, he achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the first Brazilian in history to score a World Cup own goal. But his country appeared to have scored many of them in events leading up to the tournament. Perhaps that is why the crowd apparently chanted crude insults throughout the match, aimed in equal measure at Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Fifa. This "verbal aggression", in the decorous language of the BBC, was hardly what the president had in mind for an election year. But although each of the Brics nations has undergone fairly serious economic contractions in the past few years, only India’s prime minister was decisively rejected at the polls earlier this year. President Jacob Zuma cruised to re-election; Russia’s Vladimir Putin invaded a neighbouring country to shore up his domestic standing; and China’s leadership doesn’t have to bother with elections at all.

So perhaps despite the signs of waning support, Rousseff could yet be safe in October’s election.

But the glum mood in Brazil is indicative of its severely slowing economy, which grew only 0.2% in the first quarter of this year, a far cry from the heady days of 2010, when the country’s long economic boom culminated in 7.5% growth.

It was in 2010, of course, that South Africa organised a near faultless and universally admired World Cup. And we perhaps surprised ourselves and the world with our hosting (rather than on-field) performance.

But in the subsequent four years, we have netted the ball in our own goal far more times than Vieira managed last Thursday. In the international league of contracting economies, we significantly exceeded Brazil’s poor performance, when our economy contracted by 0.6% in the first quarter, its worst performance since 2009. Incoherent economy strategies, anarchy on the platinum belt and rising public debt were cited by the two rating agencies, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s for the credit-ratings downgrades they visited on us in past days.

Croatia had good reason to blame the Japanese referee for a dubious penalty awarded against it in favour of match-winning Brazil last week. We could do the same, as the Treasury, appeared to do in contesting our downgrades. That’s easy, but futile. Better and more enduring is to fix the many things we have broken in recent times.

 

Gilded age of robber barons is back to taunt us

10 Jun 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

The age-old controversy on wealth disparity has been reignited by French economist Thomas Piketty, writes Tony Leon

NEWPORT, on the coast of Rhode Island, is an apt place to add some colour to the stark debate on inequality now raging across the US and other centres of economic thought.

Actually, the age-old controversy on wealth disparity was reignited recently by a French economist, Thomas Piketty, when the English translation of his 685-page book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, achieved the improbable feat (for an academic treatise) of topping the Amazon bestseller lists.

But Newport is the place where you can still see the luxurious seaside retreats of the US tycoons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These plutocrats bestrode the "gilded age", the phrase Mark Twain coined in 1873 as his uncomplimentary literary synonym for the graft, materialism and corruption he associated with the so-called US robber barons who dominated its economy at the dawn of the modern industrial age.

Visiting the most lavish of the dozen or so renaissance-style palaces that have been kept perfectly intact by the local preservation society induces a certain jaw-dropping wonderment. The Breakers is the grand pile that the heir to a railroad empire, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, built between 1893 and 1895, for which he imported its marble, mosaics and gold leaf finishes from across the world to construct his monument to posterity, or vulgarity, depending on your sense of aesthetics. Certainly, its 70 rooms on five floors, with the choicest views of the Atlantic Ocean beyond its front lawns, redeem the promise that this elite succeeded in its "determination to imitate the European aristocracy in its lifestyle", to quote from the audioguide, even if, as the narrator archly noted, "they lacked their noble pedigree".

Fast-forward about 120 years to Piketty’s thesis. He contends, with a welter of data drawn primarily from tax records, that the US and much of the developed world are again in the "gilded age" of the Vanderbilts and their neighbours in Newport, in which wealth is increasingly concentrated in a few hands (the 1%) and inheritance rather than the talented individualism of US lore is the basis of accumulation.

Piketty’s key finding, staunchly endorsed by his chief US praise-singer, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, is that, since 1980, the wealth gap in the US has regressed to where it was more than 100 years ago. And his key methodology shows that income from capital (such as inheritance) and not earnings is the key to unlocking the explanation. The New York Times provides ample coverage for Piketty’s proposal to levy an 80% tax on incomes of more than $250,000 and, to lessen outsize accumulation, a 2% annual tax on net worth in order to prevent an excessive concentration of wealth.

Doubtless, at home, Judge Dennis Davis and his tax commission will look closely at this thesis and these proposals as they get to grips with the local tax data to determine exactly how concentrated, and unevenly spread, SA’s infamous levels of inequalities actually are.

But Piketty’s findings and proposals have hardly gone uncontested. The Financial Times, for example, has picked holes in his data and calculations. And entering, stage right, in this economic drama last week was, predictably enough, the house paper of the modern plutocrats, the Wall Street Journal. John Steele Gordon, author of the 2004 study, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power, weighed in with a furious dismissal of Piketty’s soak-the-rich proposals as "a monumentally bad idea". Actually, his polemic commences with a concession. He notes that, judging by the Forbes 400 list, the richest Americans have been getting richer very quickly. In 1982, the first year the list was compiled, there were only 13 billionaires on it. In contrast, he writes, "the 2013 list has nothing but billionaires, with $1.3bn as the cutoff. Sixty-one US billionaires aren’t rich enough to make the list."

Gordon, however, does not regard this great growth of fortune in past decades as sinister. "Instead," he contends, "it is simply the inevitable result of an extraordinary technological innovation, the microprocessor (or computer chip in laymen speak)." Seven of the 10 largest fortunes in the US today were built on this technology. He goes on to demonstrate that, just as the railways built by Vanderbilt powered the first US industrial age, the growth of the information superhighways built by Bill Gates and others "came into existence only because the public wanted the products and services — and lower prices — that the microprocessor made possible".

His argument does not address the outsize presence of hedge-fund managers and wealthy dynasties on the list, whose range of activities is presumably of less social utility than that of the developers of Apple and Microsoft. But this debate and how it plays out will be the key one of the early 21st century, just as Newport’s mansions stand as opulent symbols of the early 20th century.

• Leon is the author of Opposite Mandela (Jonathan Ball) Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

Hello, Mickey Mouse, This is Goofy

9 Jun 2014 | Greg Penfold, David Capel | Original Publication:  Leadership

He cut his political teeth as a young city council hopeful for the then Progressive Party (PP) in a bitterly contested by-election in the Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville in 1986, eventually scraping home by 39 votes.

No one, then, could possibly have guessed just how well this young upstart was destined to perform, in a political career that was to span nearly three decades and during which he was to rise to the very pinnacle of opposition politics in South Africa.

On his retirement, former president Nelson Mandela said: “Your contribution to democracy is enormous. You have far more support for all you have done than you might ever read about”.

One of South Africa’s leading political commentators Justice Malala wrote about him: “Every South African should wake up today and say a little thank-you to Tony Leon ... he was fearless when many were fearful, vocal when many had lost their voices, openly critical when many would only speak in whispers ... the man has done a remarkable job.”

Mandela’s warmth toward this adversary is probably most movingly illustrated in this classic example from Leon’s book: When Mandela labelled the DA “a Mickey Mouse Party”, Leon retorted that, if this was the case, then Mandela must lead “a Goofy government”.

Some time later, as Leon lay in a hospital bed awaiting major heart surgery the following day, there was a knock on the door, “and a world-famous voice, by now very familiar to me, called out from the other side: ‘Hello, Mickey Mouse, this is Goofy. Can I come in?’” It was vintage Mandela…

This is Leadership’s interview with Tony Leon, a remarkable South African whose place in history is assured.

Can you offer us a few comments on your latest book, Opposite Mandela: Encounters with South Africa’s Icon?

Well, the key factor was that there is a lot of literature about Nelson Mandela, a lot of which I consulted, as you can see in the bibliography, but it occurred to me that no one had written a book, which was the only one that I could write, about that consequential era, about what it was like to oppose Mandela, rather than be his friend, his warder, his secretary or his authorised biographer.

I think some of the more remarkable features, not only of Mandela as a person but also of that era which Mandela bestrode – between 1990 and 1999, really, from his release to the end of his presidency – was something that I, simply by virtue of the fact of being the head of an opposition party at that time, as well as being the Member of Parliament for Houghton, the area that Mandela moved into in 1992, had this proximity to Nelson Mandela.

There were some very important lessons to be drawn from that era, not just in terms of how adaptive he was as a politician and how shrewd, and how different, perhaps, from what you would normally expect from a political adversary, but also because of some of the clues it salted about where South Africa is now and what trajectory it’s on. The idea for such a book, which was first mooted by Jonathan Ball himself, seemed a good one because I had those war stories and that proximity that really reflected the Mandela personality in the round. It wasn’t just admiration or warm moments, although there were plenty of those, but also some of the more adversarial interactions, which were absolutely necessary to help create a functioning democracy – and he handled those well, in the main.

The point is that Mandela was intensely human and also, something that is forgotten sometimes, a very partisan politician – there is just no doubt that had he been with us (in May) for the election, he would certainly have voted for the ANC on both ballots and would have taken about 32 seconds to make those crosses. He was a murg en been ANC supporter. He gave his life for the ANC and the cause of a democratic South Africa and, at critical moments in his presidency, he put the country above party, and we probably haven’t seen much of that since he left the presidency in 1994.

Would you say that by putting country above party in the way you describe, Mandela bore out the Public Protector’s recent statement that self-interest is incompatible with leadership?

Yes, except I disagree with Thuli Madonsela in that there is a great deal of self-interest in leadership, otherwise you’d have people who’d never lead at all, always deferring to the collective, to what the group wants. So I think Mandela had his vanities and his foibles, as we all do, but I think an effective good leader knows when to actually draw the line.

One of the earliest things I draw attention to in my book, going back to the 1994 election – which today we romanticise, but which was actually a very jaded affair when the country was on the cusp not only of violence but also of not having a credible outcome – was that at a critical moment Mandela, despite everyone in his party wanting to do something to denounce the election in Natal because of the IFP’s pirate voting stations, put his foot down and said: “Tell the comrades in Natal and in the Cape to be prepared to lose.” Now that came from someone who was about to become president, who considered the country’s interests were more important than the party’s interests in that case.

How do the likes of Mmusi Maimane compare, with his slick media campaign?

It’s too early to tell. I’ve met Mmusi at his request two or three times and he seems a very engaged chap, but he’s very young, very inexperienced – we don’t know. Now, being the leader of the parliamentary opposition – and I don’t derogate from his tremendous performance on the campaign trail – requires more than the ability to make a speech. You have to lead a very diverse team with some outsize personalities, and you have to engage what is called the ‘ear of the house’. The ANC hated what I said most of the time – not Mandela, but most of them – but they certainly paid attention. You have to command the respect of parliament, even if they don’t like a single word you’re saying, and that is something that’s earned through performance, not given because you have a title. And you also have to project an alternative upon the country. Now, Maimane is a young person who hasn’t spent a day in parliament, so it’s impossible to predict his performance. Hopefully, unlike his predecessor, he will spend a full five years in parliament, and then we can answer the question.

Has Lindiwe Mazibuko acquitted herself well or has she prejudiced the DA in some way with her resignation?

Having met her personally a few times and watched her perform, I think she has courage, intelligence and principle, which are very important things, but clearly she lacks staying power. I don’t know what the background factors were, but I do think that if you’re going to have a leader in parliament and a leader in the country who is not the leader of the parliamentary opposition, you’re going to have tension between those two roles. To use a Thabo Mbekism, you have two centres of power, which has conflict inherent within it. Or you say parliament doesn’t really matter, we don’t need our national leader in parliament – it’s irrelevant. So if parliament was going to be restored as an institution to take seriously, it would be helpful if the national leader of the opposition was also the parliamentary leader of the opposition.

How has Helen Zille fared recently, in your opinion?

To me, the external auditor of any political party is that results board at the IEC – whatever else you’ve done right or wrong, that’s how you’ll be judged. That’s why clearly failed leaders, like my friend Mangosotho Buthelezi – or Mamphela Ramphele, to draw a more extreme example – should read the writing on the wall and draw the logical conclusions.

In terms of performance and achievement, Helen Zille has been a very good leader for the DA. She’s grown the party to where it is now. Under my watch, it grew sixfold, but that was off a very low base – a bankroet poedel, as they say in Afrikaans. I bequeathed her a much bigger, more diverse party, and she has doubled that. On that basis, you can’t fault her. The other achievement she has under her belt is the good govern of the Western Cape, and before that, the City of Cape Town. So if you add up those three not inconsiderable achievements, it’s significant.

What are some of her flaws?

Well, she’s always been pretty obstinate, she has a ‘my way or the highway’ approach, but some of that is consequential on being tough-minded – I think the word is hardegat. You just don’t get anywhere on the stony road of opposition politics without being single-minded and focused. I’m not really in a position to judge because I was the leader before her and haven’t been around since then in any meaningful way. You’d have to ask people closer to her leadership style. But the necessary question she’ll have to ask herself is whether she’ll lead the party into the next general election. I would say almost definitely not. I’d be amazed. I think two elections is about right for any leader.

So you don’t think the Economic Freedom Fighters party has much to offer?

Well, it’s a radical, populist version of the ANC. That’s another unnoticed feature of the 2014 election results: that while the ANC is ‘down’ to 62%, the EFF, which picked up some 6%, is merely a more left-wing version of the ANC, so you could argue that the ANC and its iterations got nearly 70% of the vote.

Which government personalities today offer themselves as beacons of hope in terms of leadership?

There are a few. People I know and have a high regard for include people like Cyril Ramaphosa. I know he’s somewhat discounted as being too soft, too comfortable, too rich or too careful – and that may all be true – but I’ve known him since we were both in our twenties, and he’s a smart man, he’s very thoughtful, and he’s very tough-minded when he needs to be. If he brings those skills to the table in a meaningful way, rather than occupying a position and doing nothing, then that would be very helpful. He also understands several environments – the business one, the political one, and the union one – which very few people do.

I also have a high regard for Tito Mboweni, whom I crossed swords with countless times in parliament when I was also the labour spokesman for the DP; we had so few MPs. I describe his era in my book. Mboweni was very intelligent, very adversarial, but you could have a huge row with him and then have a drink with him afterward, or dinner, as it often happened.

On a personal level, do you miss the cut-and-thrust of politics?

Tony Benn once said, “I’m leaving parliament to spend more time on politics.” I don’t miss parliament because since the glory days of 1994 to 1999, it’s a much diminished place, for various reasons. It has been sidelined as a national institution of importance. I don’t think the ANC sends its A-team to parliament at all, while on the opposition side, there is a sense not so much of calling or vocation but that it’s rather a nice job to have. There are notable exceptions, of course, MPs for whom I have a very high regard.

But I’ve moved on now. I do enjoy engaging in public debate when the occasion arises.

I also do some other things to make money, which is necessary, despite what you may read about parliamentary pensions. I do a lot of sovereign risk analysis on Africa and Latin America for a business intelligence company called K2, based in London. I also do many lectures overseas. My wife, Michal, has a flourishing business coaching practice.

Returning to the book, what were some of the standout moments you had with Mandela?

There were many – I guess that’s why I wrote the book! I really think my most significant interaction with Mandela, described in a chapter called ”The Temptation”, was when very early one morning Mandela asked me to come to his house, and asked me to become part of the government, to join the Cabinet. We were a party of seven MPs and we interrogated that very closely, he and I, in a number of meetings. And for reasons that are explained in the book, I declined; it wouldn’t have been an independent opposition had I fallen for the temptation. But it’s hard to say no to Mandela. However, the actual dynamic of our relationship didn’t change an iota – he didn’t suddenly become cold or distant, and I didn’t feel spurned.

Looking at what is going on in the country at the moment, what do you think would be Mandela’s greatest concern?

It would be impertinent for me to answer that. The last conversation of any significance I had with him was way back in December 2006. I don’t want to overstate my proximity to Mandela’s thinking.

But certainly, if you look at the track record of things that Mandela not only said but practised, he could not be happy with the predations against the rule of law by the government or the presidency. He could not be happy with the undermining of the Constitution.

Mr (Ngoako) Ramatlodi, a senior member of the ANC, said in 2011 – and this is a view that is widely held among the ANC, although not perhaps a majority view – that “the constitutional transition was a victory for apartheid forces who wanted to maintain white domination under a black government, emptying the legislature of real power and giving it to other constitutional and civil society movements”. I cannot think that Mandela, who demonstrated by and large a very keen abiding commitment to the Constitution, helping draft it and signing it into law in 1996, would have been thrilled with that. Without claiming to intuit the inner thoughts of Nelson Mandela, but based on his public behaviour, that must have been a source of deep concern to him today.

Tony Leon’s Opposite Mandela: Encounters With South Africa’s Icon is published by Jonathan Ball.

“Mandela was intensely human and also, something that is forgotten sometimes, a very partisan politician – there is just no doubt that had he been with us for the election, he would certainly have voted for the ANC”

 

Obama cautious of foreign adventures for US

03 Jun 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

The US finds its leadership in the world confronted by a sea of troubles, writes Tony Leon

A GREAT deal happens in just 24 hours in New York. Last Wednesday in the Big Apple, I participated in two such happenings and watched a third, each of them connected to the others and the wider world, illustrating both the height and the shrunken limits of what US President Barack Obama calls "American exceptionalism".

The morning began with a visit to the recently inaugurated National September 11 Museum, situated at "Ground Zero", where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.

That was until that fateful morning 13 years ago, when 3,000 people, from more than 60 countries, were immolated or leapt to their deaths when terrorist hijackers flew two planes into the edifices of the US headquarters of global capitalism and trade. As Thomas Friedman noted, thus began a war started by a "super-empowered angry man (Osama bin Laden)", who struck the homeland with deadly force, which led even the most hardened New Yorkers to regard the site of the attack as hallowed ground.

The museum itself is a monument to decorum. It contains more than 10,000 items collected from the carnage of that day. There is a roll call of the dead engraved around the two reflecting memorial pools on the precise site where the twin towers once proudly stood. The attack, of course, revealed just how vulnerable even the strongest nation is when confronted with an extremist ideology with no limits in its tactics or strategy.

Precisely how the US protects itself and its allies from the risk of future attacks and the metastasising of the global networks of terror that now afflict our own continent, from Nigeria to the Sahel, was the subject of another event that day in upstate New York.

Obama arrived at the military academy in West Point to deliver a "commencement address" (US-speak for graduation ceremony) for the cadets.

In reality, it was yet another attempt by the much-criticised commander-in-chief to reset and restate his foreign and military policy, which both left and right in this hyper-divided nation have pummelled for its indecisiveness and caution.

I thought he struck a note of realism when he told the graduating cadets — and, of course, the US’s many friends and enemies beyond West Point: "US military action cannot be the only — or even primary — component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail."

He then offered a blend of multilateral engagement, military action where vital interests are at stake, and a form of outsourcing the war on terror to countries at the coalface of it through a proposed $5bn fund for local training and resources. Perhaps the cash-strapped and resource-poor African Union will find this tempting, but some, in view of their anti-western bias, will be unwilling to take this proffered largesse.

The speech was, in fact, a thinly veiled repudiation of the legacy of former president George Bush, whose response to 9/11’s ineradicable stain on the US’s hitherto invincible psyche was to launch two invasions. As the thoughtful conservative columnist Christopher Caldwell noted: "Changing US foreign policy after George Bush is the main thing he was elected to do. He has done it."

But, at the same time, the US finds its leadership in the world confronted by, literally and metaphorically, a sea of troubles from Chinese aggression in the South China Sea to Russian revanchism in Ukraine, Iran going nuclear, and failed and warring states elsewhere in the Middle East. And uber-cautious Obama would rather err on the side of indecision than blunder into the wars without end launched by his predecessor.

He also operates with a shrunken budget and the smallest number of soldiers since before the Second World War, and a loss of appetite from his citizenry for further foreign engagements. The Pew Center polling group last year published a survey showing that, for the first time since 1964, a majority of Americans felt their country should "mind its own business internationally".

In fact, 1964 was the subject of a mesmerising play I saw the same evening — All the Way, starring the outstanding Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad TV fame (if you haven’t watched the series yet, you should).

In this production, he portrays in riveting detail president Lyndon B Johnson and shows, in the 50th anniversary year, how Johnson used an armoury of his extraordinary powers of personal persuasion and legislative mastery to push through the Civil Rights Act in the teeth of the fiercest resistance from his native South.

Of course, the play also alludes to the beginning of the US’s deepening involvement and commitments in Vietnam. And so the master of domestic politics was to witness his presidency implode in the paddy fields of Southeast Asia. Perhaps another reason for Obama’s caution in the world.

• Leon is the author of Opposite Mandela (Jonathan Ball) Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA