Mbeki got away with skipping question time and ministers routinely evaded censure

24 Feb 2015 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  Rand Daily Mail

YOU couldn‘t make it up. Peering at the world through chic European spectacles, shod in Italian shoes, chauffeured in a German car and the beneficiary of R25-million from a US-listed mining house, National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete assailed Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema — and for even worse than being a “cockroach”.

According to a report of her speech in North West last weekend, Mbete — the person mandated by the constitution to ensure his parliamentary rights — said proud anti-imperialist Malema was actually “working with some Western countries in their quest to take over South Africa”.



Malema, who sports an überexpensive Swiss Breitling watch and is hoofed in Gucci loafers, repaid this rhetoric in similarly debased currency in parliament on Tuesday. He accused President Jacob Zuma of referring a bill back to parliament because of pressure from Western companies.



Mbete‘s subsequent and welcome apology for her attack on Malema simply underpins the incompatibility of being, simultaneously, a top gun in the ANC leadership and the presumed protector of members‘ interests, including those in the opposition.



Thabo Mbeki

But in the midst of this inflammation of hypocrisy and rhetoric, spare a thought for the institution that these two polarising figures — and one-time allies — represent.

Before interrogating their roles in debasing parliament, we should in fact thank Malema and Mbete for highlighting two fundamental trends.

 Malema, more than any individual in the past dozen or more years, has reinvented parliament as the centre of the national discourse and attention. Mbete, in turn, has made blatant that which, before last Thursday‘s night of national shame, was done through back-door manoeuvring.

Certain signposts on parliament‘s downward road are illuminating.

First, under Thabo Mbeki the national legislature became, as I once described it, a “forum for non-debates and non-accountability”.

Mbeki got away with skipping question time and ministers routinely evaded censure for not answering questions because the executive amassed power outside of parliament and the opposition regarded itself as bound by the rules of the institution.

Respect for the office of the president was then absolute, and even I, the leader of the opposition to his administration, would stand up before and after Mbeki‘s speeches. He was the fortunate beneficiary of the mantle of his sainted predecessor, Nelson Mandela.

Also, despite his prickly personality, evasion of accountability, inflicting ruinous HIV/Aids policies on his people and green-lighting stolen elections in Zimbabwe, there was no stain on his personal conduct in matters of state.

Mbeki also helped to create, and presided over, a growing economy. Critical elements of civil society, from the press to the business community, therefore simply averted their gaze from the predations under way in parliament.

 

But it was during these post-Mandela years that parliament‘s rot began. Perhaps the greatest white-anting of the institution was hobbling parliament‘s quest to investigate the arms deal. In late 2001, the executive rewrote the damaging conclusions of the joint investigative task team into the affair, in the hand of the president‘s parliamentary enforcer, Essop Pahad.

 

This lessened its damning conclusions and protected the cabinet. But it damaged parliament. The infamous arms deal — the hard case that settled into bad parliamentary and political precedent — first detonated most of the institutional damage made plain in more recent times.

The first person who was convicted of corruption in this saga was Schabir Shaik, whose acts of corruption deeply implicated Mbeki‘s successor, Zuma. Zuma‘s escape from the coils of his own corruption charges, which haunt his presidency, hobbled parliament long before he assumed the highest office.

The 2001 strong-arming of parliamentary processes to protect the executive occurred, ironically, under the speakership of Dr Frene Ginwala. She otherwise provided a form of independence from the encroachment of the ruling party on the rights of opposition members and had, in the main, some regard for the rights and privileges of the institution over which she presided.

But even her impartiality and independence — rickety though they proved at that defining moment — were too much for the rampant presidency. After Mbeki‘s emphatic re-election in 2004, she was fired as speaker. Her replacement was Mbete, in her first of two terms as speaker.

By this time, the ANC no longer countenanced robust contestation by the opposition or even the occasional free-wheeling of its own members. During the Mandela era, frontline cabinet minister Joe Slovo had been able to question the necessity of the arms acquisition, and free-spirited ANC backbencher and singer Jennifer Ferguson could abstain on the abortion vote.

Now Mbete was joined in a quest for total control by the deeply militaristic Tony Yengeni, who was installed as the ANC‘s chief whip.

In this combination lay further seeds of decay. Question time was curtailed, follow-ups were limited and the speaker was accorded the right to “vet” questions to the president.

The speaker then defiled her office in 2006 by being at the front of the queue to wave Yengeni off to jail. He was the second political figure to be named, then convicted and imprisoned, for accepting an arms deal bribe. But the real stain on Mbete‘s office was that Yengeni had in fact been convicted of defrauding parliament, the very institution the speaker was entrusted to protect.

The next milepost on this slippery slope was “Travelgate”. In 2007, five years after the whistle was blown (and the whistle-blower victimised) 32 MPs received criminal convictions and sentences for cheating parliament, but the speaker allowed them to hold on to their parliamentary seats. The institution was now truly discredited.

Little surprise, then, that in 2007, when I vacated my parliamentary and political leadership, my successor, Helen Zille, declined to lead the main opposition party from parliament, choosing to do so from the City of Cape Town and later from the provincial legislature. Her decision both underlined and assisted the sidelining of the national legislature.

Enter Malema and the EFF, stage left, after last year‘s elections. Alongside 399 other MPs, Malema swore to uphold the rules embedded in the functioning of the legislature — but had, from day one, no intention of being bound by them.

No longer dealing with a rule-bound opposition force, the ANC realised that the old approach of back-door manoeuvring and the emollient and inclusive approach of Mbete‘s successor as speaker, Max Sisulu, would not suffice. Time to recall Mbete, now also ANC chairwoman, to fly the party flag and enforce its diktat from the speaker‘s throne.

Then the Nkandla bomb exploded. It was the gift that kept on giving to what was now, on this issue at least, a united opposition.

From his minor perch of just over 20 seats, Malema, aided by a report of the public protector, seized the moment. With just four words — “pay back the money” — he branded Zuma as an unaccountable and self-enriching politician. Untroubled by the mayhem he unleashed, Malema had captured the national spotlight.

Last Thursday night, before the state of the nation chaos unfolded before a now enthralled, possibly horrified, nation, an opposition MP asked a cabinet minister what he expected to happen. This was in the light of Malema‘s threat to demand the missing answers to the question he had attempted to ask of an unresponsive and, later, absent president.

 “Whatever else, the speech will go ahead,” was the reply given.

And so it did. But in the process the naked use of force, the illegal jamming of cellphone signals and the sight of a president suffering an acute form of political autism were made plain. The security state made its unattractive reappearance 25 years after the enforced departure of securocrat-in-chief PW Botha.

But this time the pushback was different, more diverse and much stronger.

No longer could the executive trample constitutional rights underfoot. Two court applications immediately ensued and are ongoing. The press gallery, in an unprecedented display of revulsion, rose in protest. The leader of the official opposition, Mmusi Maimane, found his true voice, perhaps for the first time.

His “a broken man presiding over a broken society” mantra was aimed at Zuma. But it probably resonates way beyond the opposition constituency.

The speaker remains in office but, even post-apology, is bereft of authority and legitimacy.

In a constitutional democracy, might does not equate with right.

Authority has to be coupled with principled persuasion.

In the debate this week, it seemed that all parties had pulled back from the brink. The presiding officers were at pains to make even-handed rulings, and Malema read out a speech of thudding dullness, but left his wrecking ball at home.

And, for the first time in many years, both the nation and the state were entirely focused on parliament. In the wreckage of recent events lie, hopefully, the seeds of renewal.

 * Leon was a member of parliament from 1989 to 2009 and leader of the official opposition from 1999 to 2007

This article first appeared in the Sunday Times

 

Government indifference to business elite puts us in peril

10 Dec 2014 | Tony Leon | Business Day

While Jooste and Bekker are fairly quiet about their political opinions, Rupert and Wiese are less so, writes Tony Leon

IN 1936, in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, American Nobel literary laureate Ernest Hemingway mocked F Scott Fitzgerald’s apparent obsession with the super-rich. Fitzgerald had mused: "The very rich … are very different from you and me." Hemingway’s withering literary retort was: "Yes, they have more money."

Nearly 80 years later, over the past weekend, the Sunday Times published its own list of SA’s wealthiest billionaires. No doubt the names on it inspire similar sentiments among readers — from admiration to envy or, in the case of the revenue service facing diminishing returns, an itch to extract even more of their income for the needy fiscus.

I couldn’t help but muse that nearly 40 years ago, during military conscription, I shared a billet in Pretoria with the top name on the list, Ivan Glasenberg. But, alas, none of his later revealed business acumen rubbed off on his fellow conscripts.

The paucity of women and infrequency of black names on the list inspired a lot of necessary comment. But I rather thought that the response of one reader captured the essence of the issue: "What SA really needs is more billionaires", of whatever stripe.

The listing is inexact, but it does provide a snapshot of many of the local super rich and the companies they have built or in which they have huge holdings.

My second musing was about the town of Stellenbosch and its university. Doubtless there is a thesis waiting to be written about what it is about the waters there which incubated so many of the post-1994 business leadership success stories of this country. It was hardly written in the stars, that a quartet of Afrikaans-speaking men — Johann Rupert, Christo Wiese, Koos Bekker and Markus Jooste — would achieve such global, never mind South African, prominence within two decades. And each of them has some provenance with this small town.

Of course generalisations of this sort are also inexact. Other business achievers of recent note such as Stephen Saad, Patrice Motsepe and Adrian Gore, got their business smarts elsewhere. And of course, simply the fact that this foursome are Afrikaans-speaking residents of the Western Cape can be as misleading as bracketing together Jacob Zuma and Lindiwe Mazibuko on the basis that both are isiZulu-speaking.

But while Jooste and Bekker are fairly quiet about their political opinions, Rupert and Wiese are less so. In an interview in Rapport Wiese made a revealing disclosure. Recounting a conversation with Motsepe who expressed his dismay at the absence of most of "the rich list" at this year’s presidential inauguration, Wiese countered with the unanswerable: "Well, I wasn’t invited."

Since the past weekend also marked the first anniversary of the death of Nelson Mandela, Wiese’s omission from the current president’s guest list was striking given the enormous attention which Mandela lavished on the then business elite of SA, from invitations to everything, to constant rounds of telephone diplomacy with its leading members.

Perhaps 20 years later the government no longer feels the needs for such interaction, or does not enjoy the "noises off" comment some might offer.

Perhaps the wise dictum of former US secretary of state Colin Powell that "no leader’s office should be an echo chamber" where the only conversation amounts to a chorus of approval, has been discarded.

Rupert underlined this point, and made a lot of the recent political weather. At the annual meeting of his Remgro Group, he opined: "The leadership of the country, quite frankly, is becoming very hard to defend abroad. The biggest insult is that they don’t seem to care what we think." And in a bow to populism he added that this dialogue of the deaf was not just confined to business but extended to "people in the townships".

The headline-treatment for Rupert was not that his comment was extraordinary; it was the rarity of such public expression by a certifiable leader of the corporate elite.

It is a matter of record rather than conjecture that on reading such a comment, Mandela would have been on the phone to Rupert within a hour or two. Different times then and now.

Perhaps the lack of response from the governing elite to the challenge of leading members of the business elite is at one level to be welcomed. It is a matter of more recent record just how easily stung our rulers and masters are when criticised. Far less harsh criticism than Rupert’s jeremiad led to a stream of invective from African National Congress secretary-general Gwede Mantashe in January last year.

The rather anodyne First National Bank advertising campaign "You Can Help" was pulled when the voluble Mantashe described the bank and various mining companies as, variously, "unpatriotic", "self-hating" and "treating the country like visitors". More darkly, business as a whole was accused of bidding to "control the state". Given the current electricity blackouts and a host of other ailments affecting the delivery of basic services, many might only wish that the latter was the case.

If, in fact, either Wiese or Rupert controlled Eskom, past form suggests they would hardly have lavished bonuses and salaries of R60m on its top executives for this year’s performance. They would have been shown the door.

But the absence of official comment on the Rupert speech did not prevent the "troll brigade" from commenting. One particularly bone-headed response in the comment section of BDlive was instructive, and perhaps widely held. Khayazonke opined: "The man’s amnesia is amazing, perhaps he has forgotten that his empire was built by the evil apartheid corruption." Indeed Rupert is the scion of one of the most prominent families of the past era. But famously his father began his empire in the back of a garage with £10.

They were doubtless assisted by proximity to the past regime, but the Ruperts were hardly its praise singers. Indeed, on the death of Anton Rupert back in 2006, then president Thabo Mbeki, also famously over-sensitive to any criticism from big business, struck an unusual pose in his encomium for Rupert the elder. He eulogised him as being "inspired by the spirit of righteousness and justice". He also noted approvingly that during the darkest night of apartheid, in 1985, Rupert had warned: "Do not embalm the corpse of apartheid, bury it."

In Wiese’s case, the facts also point to an early opposition-mindedness, long before it became fashionable. In 1977 he stood (and duly lost) as a candidate for the anti-apartheid Progressive Federal Party.

Anyway, the more recent corporate success stories of Rupert and Wiese have had a global dimension in the far tougher stream of international waters than the smaller, more protected shoals of the local economy.

Neither these nor other "inconvenient truths" will prevent the crude stereotyping and stigma-labelling which so characterises and debases the current discourse. But a little basic research might help it along.

There are many reasons why the mighty engine of the US economy has roared back to life, the recent extent of which has surprised even the closest market watchers.

But one of a host of differentiating facts between Americans and South Africans other than the striking similarity that we both live in countries with dysfunctional politics, is noteworthy.

It is the splendid disregard which American business has for political leaders it dislikes or whom they think harm their corporate, or even their cultural, interests.

• Follow Leon on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA

 

 

No Gupta-style reception for Clinton on SA visit

01 Jul 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

Giving the green light to the Guptas is apparently more easily accomplished than accommodating Clinton, who has an even-money chance of being the next leader of the free world, writes Tony Leon

HARRY Truman, the essentially self-educated, plain-spoken and hugely significant US president at the end of the Second World War and beginning of the Cold War, observed: "Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers."

He certainly practised what he preached and in his spare time, besides playing competitive poker, he read ferociously, both biographies and history. His opposite number at the Kremlin, Joseph Stalin, in between murderous purges and directing (or interfering) in the military defence of the Soviet Union was an autodidact of note. Even on the eve of the German invasion of his country, he was apparently reading military history, with his notes recorded in bold crayon.

Today’s leadership is cut from a different cloth and has to surf the age of instant communication, where blogging, Facebooking and tweeting, not to mention the "selfie", crowd out more contemplative pursuits.

And, in the words of another intellectual leader of note, Francois Mitterrand of France: "If you want history to remember you well, make sure that you write it yourself."

Recently retired US secretary of state Hillary Clinton practises both pursuits and, while her reading list is formidable, her autobiographies are driven by two impulses: money (she received more than $22m in advances for both her memoirs) and to advance her political career. She is today the favourite for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency in 2016. Her book Living History did not help secure her the nomination in 2008, but it certainly added to her bank balance. Her latest offering, Hard Choices, hit the shelves last month, to a less than ecstatic critical reception. The Financial Times, for example, sniffed: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that presidential hopefuls must show their earnestness by writing crushingly dull books. Anything interesting would jeopardise their prospects. Hillary Clinton’s memoir is no exception."

The Economist was equally crushing in its review: "Earnest, dull and self-serving all at the same time … The memoir has the cautious, poll-tested feel of a campaign speech."

But there are some singular exceptions in this 656-page doorstopper and one of them relates to SA. To be sure, Clinton spends a few pages paying exemplary acknowledgement to her encounters with Nelson Mandela, not a difficult or diplomatic feat. But she opens up with far more candour when it comes to SA’s contemporary leadership.

Clinton, who has an even-money chance of being the next leader of the free world, writes: "In some instances, SA could be a frustrating partner … Presidents (Thabo) Mbeki and (Jacob) Zuma wanted to be taken seriously on the world stage. That’s what we wanted too … But respect comes from taking responsibility and sometimes it was difficult to interpret the reasons behind government actions."

She then relates an extraordinary and hitherto unrevealed back story of her last visit to SA in August 2012. Bear in mind that this was nine months before the Gupta wedding saga unfolded on the apron of Air Force Base Waterkloof — the difference in the reception for the wedding party and the then US secretary of state’s party is very telling.

In an incident which clearly still rankles, Clinton notes: "In August 2012, the South Africans refused at the last minute on my final visit to allow my diplomatic security team to bring the weapons and vehicles they needed into the country. My plane sat on the tarmac in Malawi, waiting to hear how the negotiations unfolded … the matter was resolved, and we were finally able to take off."

Clinton then, perhaps archly, notes: "I was leading a delegation of American business leaders from FedEx, Chevron, Boeing, General Electric and other companies, who were looking to expand their investments in SA." Indeed, at the time of the Clinton visit, trade between the two countries was valued at about R220bn, and while China had by then overtaken other countries as SA’s largest trading partner, the US was by far SA’s largest export destination.

It is unclear from her narrative how far up or down the chain of local diplomatic command the decision to keep Clinton grounded in Malawi went. In my own lesser diplomatic experience, these matters are often more cock-up than conspiracy. Still, I can imagine some official or group of them delighting in the idea of cocking a snook at the emblematic leader of the world’s remaining hyperpower, heedless of the reputational damage caused to our sovereign. Giving the green light to the Gupta wedding party’s unorthodox landing arrangements, at the same air force base, is apparently more easily accomplished.

Less than two weeks ago, Zuma advised Parliament and the nation that the government will "embark on various measures and interventions to jump-start the economy" and particularly render SA more attractive to investors. Perhaps it might be worth taking a leaf out of Clinton’s book, so to speak.

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

As in the UK, ‘nostalgia ain’t what it used to be’

08 Oct 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

Something that centres on a vanquished leader appears to be happening on the local election front that calls to mind humorist Peter de Vries’s words: ‘Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,’ writes Tony Leon

AT THE risk of incurring the displeasure of the proprietor of this newspaper, who — probably correctly — believes most readers are oversaturated with politics, permit an observation on next year’s elections. It starts with a nugget gleaned during a visit to London. There, a good friend who has spent decades representing the Conservative Party in parliament pointed out that the Tories took more than 20 years to recover from their brutal political assassination of their most successful modern leader, Margaret Thatcher.

The Conservative Party, which enjoys the distinction of being the most electorally successful political machine in the 20th-century democratic world, was in its own terms quite right to get rid of Thatcher in November 1990. Despite having won three general elections for her party and recast the mould of her country’s political economy, by then she had saddled her party with more negatives than positives. These included an unpopular policy (the poll tax), an increasingly divisive and imperious leadership style, which she viewed without end ("I plan to go on and on," she said), and a take-no-prisoners approach to any dissidents (whom she dismissed as "wets" or "spineless").

Her successor, John Major, stepped in and won an improbable fourth term of office for his party. But that was the high point of a premiership that pretty quickly unravelled.

But as the humorist Peter de Vries noted: "Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be." At last week’s Tory conference, Thatcher, in the form of a video titled Our Maggie, was portrayed in heroic terms to stir the party faithful. Something similar appears to be happening on the local election front, also centred on a vanquished leader.

In December 2007, when Thabo Mbeki was dumped as president of the African National Congress (ANC) and then, 10 months later, "recalled" as state president, an ANC colleague in Parliament made an interesting observation: "Just watch what happens. The genie is now out of the bottle and leading this party and country will never be the same again."

 Reflecting back on those twin acts of ANC regicide, it is quite striking how a party, which hitherto had been almost blinded by leader-worship, could act so decisively when vital interests were threatened. Like Thatcher, not an obvious comparison, Mbeki had delivered two major electoral victories (greater than achieved by Nelson Mandela) and had stared down some powerful interests to impose a degree of market-friendliness in some, crucially though not all, areas of economic policy. His eloquent "I am an African" speech was perhaps the defining moment in the country’s constitutional process.

But there was even more red ink on the negative side of his leadership ledger than on the scorecard of the "Iron Lady". Imperious leadership, pumping up racial division and an African Renaissance that morphed into trysts with tyrants come to mind. His HIV/AIDS policy, which cost hundreds and thousands of unnecessary lives, originated from an intellect detached from reality. But merited or not, his removal from office remains a defining feature of our politics.

What a difference five years makes, though. The Mbeki years are now remembered through the lens of the troubled present far more warmly than could have been imagined. The ANC in Gauteng desires his presence in its campaign; and even though this has been slapped down from above, it is noteworthy that when he voted in the 2009 election, Mbeki famously refused to comment on-camera on whether he was even voting for the ANC. Doubtless the fact that his key lieutenants had formed a rival party, the Congress of the People, also on the ballot that day, weighed on his comment.

But the rediscovery of ANC leaders past is not confined to the ruling party. Hot on the heels of lashing the colours of the Democratic Alliance to the mast of Mandela, its Gauteng premier candidate, Mmusi Maimane, this week, more surprisingly, also joined the Mbeki revival club. Maimane is a highly personable and charismatic man whose origins are in the church. But he is also very politically ecumenical. His slogan "Believe in Gauteng" is borrowed, with local adaptation, from Mitt Romney, while his rhetoric is much inspired by Barack Obama. But this flexibility was extended last week when he announced that he had been an ANC-aligned Mbeki supporter and that his presidency instilled in him a sense of pride and that its high point was the policy of black economic empowerment.

Doubtless in order to score an immediate point against Mbeki’s successor, he chose to elide straight past the red ink in the past president’s ledger. But by casting politics in terms of a narrative — "the previous president was good, this one is bad" — suggests that the difference between the two largest parties in the country is a disagreement on the leadership choices of the ANC. Perhaps that was not the intention. But, then again, motive is less relevant than result.

 

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

Why the bad news is actually good news for South Africa

17 Sep 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

The impulse for some ‘obligatory optimism’ appears to have washed over these shores quite vehemently in recent days, writes Tony Leon

THE prize-winning Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare, once wrote balefully of the "obligatory optimism of socialist society". You get the idea when you view some of the extraordinary movie footage — replete with smiling and well-fed children — in North Korea, a country where most people outside the governing elite exist on starvation rations.

On a visit to China some years back, I bought a large coffee-table book titled Chinese Propaganda Posters. At least its title told the truth of its contents. The front cover shows the "great helmsman", Mao Zedong, suitably dwarfing his thronged supporters below him. On the back is an idealised portrait of a young girl harvesting an abundant crop of mealies, appropriately with the chairman’s little red book peeking out of the pocket of her lilac tunic.

The inconvenient truths of his rule and the reality of years of starvation do not feature in the 250 portraits. One has to read such works as Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, to learn of the 38-million people who perished during "the greatest famine in history", a consequence of the "great leap forward" he thrust on his country between 1958 and 1961.

South Africa is far removed, in every sense, from China and North Korea, but the impulse for some "obligatory optimism" appears to have washed over these shores quite vehemently in recent days.

The acting chief operating officer of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Hlaudi Motsoeneng, called last month for a quota of 70% of its news to be positive. As quotas have become de rigeur around here, doubtless applying this to news content might seem only logical. However, his own organisation’s bad news revealed in the latest annual report of the SABC might, on any objective basis, well exceed the proposed 30% allocation for negative news. This shows a R1.5bn hole blown in its own budget on "consultancy fees" that could not be accounted for; and the small matter of nearly R1bn of lost licence fees and R106bn in irregular expenditure. By the time the SABC has simply reported on its own impressive contribution to the bad news cycle, it would certainly crowd out other items jostling for national attention. Doubtless "GuptaTV" will take up the slack.

President Jacob Zuma recently added his voice to the "good news is best" chorus. He was reported, during a visit to media students in Cape Town last week, as saying that "whenever I travel abroad people have great things to say about SA, but when I am in SA, I feel like running away because of the media reports". It was famously claimed by insiders close to his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, that "he never read the newspapers". While Mbeki never confirmed the truth of this assertion, someone in power who did not read the reams of negative coverage about her was Margaret Thatcher. She relied, instead, on a daily "news digest" prepared by her ferociously loyal press secretary, Bernard Ingham. Presumably, all of the personal items about her hectoring style of leadership were shorn from these reports.

While the Chinese propaganda-poster style of media reporting might have confirmed Mao in his echo chamber of ruinous certainty, there is a striking paragraph in Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen’s 1987 lecture, Food and Freedom.

Of the great famine in China that devastated the country for over three years, he noted: "It is quite remarkable that a famine of this magnitude could continue unrecorded without bringing about a major policy shift, and this failure is certainly one connected closely with the absence of a relatively free press and the absence of opposition parties free to criticise and chastise the government in power.

"It may thus be argued that the massive deaths connected with starvation and famine during 1958-61 relate closely to the issue of freedom of information and criticism."

The good news in the bad-news diet against which some in the local power elite chafe is precisely the presence of so many feedback mechanisms in South Africa, which are so noticeably absent from authoritarian regimes, where the policies of plunder and ruin have rampaged unchecked.

The "Arab Spring"-turned-winter provides another example. The authoritarian lid was blown off an entire region where, as US journalist Thomas Friedman reported, there were just "frail institutions, scant civil society and virtually no democratic traditions or culture of innovation". Only the mosque or the army seemed on offer outside the strongman leader, and Egypt’s unhappy swap from the one to the other has left its democratic experiment stillborn.

Our "boisterous, rowdy, sometimes cacophonous and often angry polity", as Judge Edwin Cameron recently depicted South Africa, is one reason for being optimistic about the future. It certainly bears reporting on and beats the obligatory alternative.

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

Heed the message of Obama’s ‘universal bridge’

02 Jul 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

We should heed Obama’s message of the 'universal bridge' in the run-up to next year’s elections, writes Tony Leon

NOSTALGIA without memory is a common malady," warns David Remnick, whose biography of US President Barack Obama, The Bridge, is certainly one of the most thoughtful books that the rise to power of the 44th US president has inspired. The biography derives its title from the remark of US civil rights veteran and congressman John Lewis that "Barack Obama is what comes at the end of that bridge in Selma" — a reference to one of the fiercest crucibles of the struggle for racial equality and voting rights in segregationist Alabama, back in January 1965.

Fast-forward to Sunday and Obama in a masterful address at the University of Cape Town (UCT), which combined nostalgia and memory coupled with hopeful and warning shots on Africa’s future, reminded his audience that the bridge to his keynote address on his 36-hour whirlwind tour of South Africa was first constructed by slain US senator Bobby Kennedy.

From the same podium, 47 years ago, Kennedy — speaking when the dark night of apartheid seemed without end and the US civil rights struggle was still in its infancy — inspired his audience and the world with his soaring rhetoric about the hopefulness of individual agency in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Obama quoted from that famous speech: "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

My own bridge to memory, not nostalgia, of presidential visits past was constructed of more modest, but unforgettable, material. I recalled standing for more than two hours outside the presidential guesthouse in Pretoria in July 2003 in order to attend a luncheon in honour of then president George Bush. Other than the burdensome and endless security hoops guests were obliged to jump through, I remember little of the detail of the event, except for Bush’s rather curious description of then president Thabo Mbeki as his "point man" on Zimbabwe. A decade later and a new "point man" in Pretoria notwithstanding, the tyrant across the Limpopo remains enthroned; although as Obama reminded his audience, he is now hemmed in by a new constitution and, he did not add, by the ravages of time.

But my memory of queuing in the cold allowed me to pass on the kind invitation from the US consulate in Cape Town to attend the UCT shindig in person and this time, wiser and older, to watch it on TV from the comfort of home. Doubtless I denied myself engagement with a suitably enthralled crowd of the local good and the great. But it did allow the indulgence of channel-surfing while the audience awaited the speech. This provided a study in contrasts: at more or less the precise moment Obama entered the auditorium on the southern tip of Africa, tens of thousands of angry Egyptians were milling on the continent’s northern end in Tahrir Square, Cairo. They were demanding the resignation of the president. Mohamed Mursi, whom they had elected in hopeful and peaceful circumstances just one year ago, now in a remarkably short spell in office, seems to have offended just about every constituency in his vast nation, except for his shadowy band of true believers in the Muslim Brotherhood. The economy is flat on its back, the state is bankrupt, the army remains privileged and the opposition, fractured as it is, is excluded from the governing consensus. But it was, in fact, in Cairo in June 2009, also at a famous African university, Al Azhar, that Obama made another consequential speech. This was about 18 months before the "Arab Spring" lit the fires of resistance against tottering authoritarian rulers in North Africa and beyond. That speech offered his famous balance of hope and change for reset relations between the West and Muslims.

But it also came coupled with a less-remembered warning about democracy: "There are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others…. Government of the people by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party."

That’s the universal bridge that spans the divide between Africa, north and south, and all countries in between. We should heed its message in the run-up to next year’s elections here at home, and what comes afterwards.

 

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

 

Resolve opposition’s dilemma for the good of SA

23 Oct 2012 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: BDlive

When former president Thabo Mbeki decided the destruction of the DA was a political priority, he appointed Mosiuoa Lekota as his hit man, writes Tony Leon

WHEREVER in the world former Sasol and Anglo American CEOs Pieter Cox and Tony Trahar are these days, last week’s speech by erstwhile president Thabo Mbeki must have caused them to smile at the irony of it all.

In 2003, both men were at the receiving end of Mbeki’s invective when they said, respectively, that black economic empowerment was a "risk factor" and that the risk factor for South Africa was "starting to diminish, although I am not saying it has gone".

Mbeki accused Sasol of "bad-mouthing South Africa" and suggested that Trahar’s stance amounted to Anglo suggesting that "democratic South Africa presents the business world … with a higher political risk than apartheid South Africa".

What a difference nine years and loss of office makes. In his African National Congress (ANC) centenary lecture last week, Mbeki joined the doomsday chorus in far more direct and stark terms than these corporate titans ever did. He spoke of South Africa being afloat on a sea of troubles, characterised by "a dangerous and unacceptable situation of directionless and unguided national drift".

Mbeki is hardly alone as a latter-day canary-in-the-coal-mine warning of the noxious gases that threaten to engulf the country. The Economist, which recently upgraded Africa from "hopeless" to "hopeful", decided, also last week and after two sovereign credit downgrades, that South Africa was sliding downward toward "sad country" status. Embedded in the article is a central truth: South Africa — at the most recent general election, the spread between the governing party and the official opposition was more than 40 points — is "a de facto one-party state".

I recently noted that it is difficult to establish a real and competitive democracy (and the first adjective is conditioned by the second) on the back of such a huge deficit, especially since our much admired constitution is noticeably weak in its checks and curbs on a super-majority government. Thus the motivating spirit and finer detail of the constitution can be ignored and bypassed by the government for the simplest of reasons: because they can be.

In this context, the recent call by Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille for a realigned and larger opposition is both politically and constitutionally necessary. But as someone who still bears the scars from the last large-scale opposition merger a decade ago, I can attest that it will not be easy.

The only party with which the DA appears to be engaged in serious discussion toward this end is the much diminished Congress of the People, which, because of the 2009 election results and despite its self-destructiveness since then, remains the second-largest opposition force in Parliament, led by Mosiuoa Lekota.

There is deep irony at play here too. Mbeki decided the destruction of the DA was a political priority, he appointed as his hit man the national chairman of the ANC — Lekota. Thus it was that Lekota, with the carrot of floor-crossing and the promise of the Western Cape premiership, tempted Marthinus van Schalkwyk to lead his New National Party rump out of the DA and into the fatal embrace of the ANC.

Four years later, when parliamentary floor-crossing, which probably did more injury to democratic deepening than many other constitutional predations before or since, was at its height, the same Lekota set about personally luring DA members across the parliamentary aisle. In one case, he even offered DA MP Rafeek Shah a "deputy ministry". When I exposed the offer, which Shah informed me of and commendably declined, Lekota telephoned me to tell me "it was only a joke". Presumably, these days Lekota is more seriously engaged in helping to broaden an opposition he once so assiduously attempted to destroy.

From the’s DA perspective, demographics represents political destiny. In last year’s municipal elections, the party’s improved performance in reaching about 24% of the vote was hailed as scaling new electoral heights and proof that the party had, at last, established a small base among black voters. Actually, only the latter but crucially important fact was new. In 2000, shortly after the formation of the DA, the party notched up more than 23% of the national municipal vote. The reason for the standstill in its total over the past decade has not been because of a failure to obtain black votes but because of the rapid decline, demographically, in its core minority — especially its white — base.

Increasing its size remains the vital and unfinished task for opposition leadership. This is a proposition about numbers. But there is another equally compelling dilemma: how to do so and retain ideological and policy coherence and not reduce the clear blue water that separates, or should divide, the opposition and the government.

On squaring this circle, not just the fortunes of the opposition but the constitutional good health of the country depends.

• Follow Leon on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA

State religion does not have all the answers to jobs crisis

OUR state religion appears to be the worship of the state. Heaven knows, to sustain the analogy, there now appear to be no shortage of new and unlikely adherents to this belief. Barack Obama’s administration is now effectively the controlling shareholder of General Motors and Gordon Brown’s government owns 70% of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The deep global recession has created some unlikely converts from unfettered market capitalism to more state directed economic leadership.
But, back home in SA, as I surveyed the jobs massacre contained in the figures for the first quarter released this week, which show that 179000 jobs were lost and that the “distressed labour market” could yet shed another 200000 jobs before year-end, it occurred to me that what we need now is a healthy dose of local agnosticism in order to innovate and create new work. In other words, less ideology and more realism.
Last Friday, Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel appeared to make an important concession: he said that government’s policy of promoting “decent work” would not exclude “the creation of temporary, low-paid jobs in the short term”. He made the further concession that the 500000 jobs to be created under the expanded public works programme “would not, in themselves, be proper, permanent, well-paid jobs”, but they could create a bridge into the labour market.
This dose of realism seemed to be in line with the candour of Trevor Manuel , who in his previous incarnation as finance minister said, after presenting his last budget in Parliament, that the problem with “decent work” in a time of crisis was that “all jobs are hard to come by, and the more adjectives you add, the harder they will be”. Or, as the old adage expressed it, the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited at all.
Whether these statements represent shafts of light or a false dawn on the gloomy debate around job creation is difficult to assess. This becomes even more apparent when the assault launched by Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on labour brokers and the casualisation of work is taken into account. Last month, he told the congress of the National Union of Mineworkers , “the reality is labour broking is a form of human trafficking. These companies sell the labour of workers to the highest bidder and then pay them the lowest wage ... it allows workers to be traded for profit just as if they were meat and vegetables.”
When I visited the headquarters of the largest private employment agency in SA, Adcorp , this week, I expected after the minister’s pronouncement to find a Dickensian pit of human misery. Instead, the ultramodern office block in Bryanston houses a go-ahead company where I had an interesting discussion with the splendidly named Loane Sharp, who serves as the company’s labour market analyst.
He made the point that the much-maligned labour brokers represent a R23bn industry, which since 2000 has introduced about 3,5- million temporary, part-time and contract employees into the labour force, approximately 2- million of whom are first-time jobseekers, 92% of whom are African, and 85% of whom are aged 18-35. Of even more significance was his analysis that a third of these employees secured traditional permanent jobs within a year and 47% did so within three years.
In other words, far from being reprehensible and “human traffickers”, the brokers are, in fact, SA’s principal entry point into the labour market for unemployed African youth.
Sharp’s analysis runs counter to the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu’s) blunt instrument: they are calling for a ban on labour broking, which could lead to the loss of, perhaps, a million jobs. The labour minister is advocating the quasi or de facto nationalisation of private employment agencies. But the agenda behind this agenda is, simply, that the bulk of these temporary or casual workers are nonunionised. They, therefore, compound Cosatu’s crisis of relevance and its shrinking membership and revenue base.
Another voice, which deserves to be heard is the estimably sensible one provided by Ann Bernstein and the Centre for Development and Enterprise/Business Leadership SA’s “5- million jobs initiative”. They offer a welter of practical initiatives to resolve the exquisite Catch 22 in which the vast pool of young, unskilled jobseekers find themselves. As Bernstein put it: “They can’t get a job because they have no work experience and they can’t get work experience because they can’t get a job”.
The most persuasive statistic the centre provides to bolster this assertion is the fact that more than 70% of 15-30 year olds who want a job have never been able to find one.
To quote the vanquished Thabo Mbeki , the crisis on the job front calls for a “business unusual” approach. And that means that adherents to the old gospel of the state religion need to listen to a few agnostic voices.

*Published 26 June 2009 in Business Day

Operatic Politics

LAST week’s election was the grand opera of our democracy. It was dramatic and sung through: outcast-turned-folk hero Jacob Zuma hit the high notes with Awulethu Mshini Wam. It was received with acclaim from most parts of the auditorium, especially the poorer seats.
Meanwhile, democratic diva Helen Zille’s aria, Koekie Loekie, delighted a growing minority in the gallery. Several reputations — such as that of fading prima donna Patricia de Lille, died a thousand deaths. Even the toppled regent, King Thabo, made a brief — and typically elusive — appearance in the grand finale: the breakaway jig of his camp following drew less audience support than expected.
On a 77% poll, it was a near sellout at the box office. But if the election was one of high drama and soaring scores, let’s hope that, when the action shifts next week to parliament, it doesn’t descend to the low farce and disappointing reviews the national assembly has generated since the end of the Mandela era in 1999.
Since then, parliament has, in many areas — from stifling the arms deal inquiry, to feather-bedding ethically-challenged MPs and drowning out opposing voices — “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity”, to borrow the famous phrase of Abba Eban.
When parliament convenes on Tuesday, it will be almost 13 years to the day since it enacted our new constitution which, in its majestic reach and detailed prose, promised accountable government and legislative oversight, and formalised the role of the opposition.
A North Korean-like veneration of the presidency, ritualised name-calling and defanging the bite of question time were not part of the package — but, in essence, under Thabo Mbeki’s baton this is a fair working description of the previous two parliaments.
His soaring and inclusive “I am an African” invocation of a humane tolerance as deputy president was never followed through as president. On the contrary, his sneering indifference to opponents — both external and internal — became in the end almost a parody. He brought to mind Linus, the Peanuts cartoon character, expostulating: “Humanity? I love humanity — it’s people I can’t stand.”
The relationship between government and opposition is crucial to our democratic health. But it’s not about love or mutual admiration — it’s about respect for institutions and choice. Under Mandela it was a little like Fatal Attraction. He enjoyed and revered parliament and its institutions, and would, countless times, phone me for a chat or, flatteringly, “to seek advice”. He even once, during a particularly brutal spat with Mangosuthu Buthelezi, asked me to forego my speaking turn in a debate so he could explain his position in private. When I declined the suggestion (as I did his offer of a cabinet seat), it didn’t affect the relationship one jot.
I also led the opposition for nine-tenths of the Mbeki presidency. Like the derivative assets of a bad bank, the relationship was — to put it mildly — fairly toxic.
However, after the 2004 election, which Mbeki won decisively I, literally, reached across the aisle, stepping down from the podium to shake Mbeki’s hand and pledging to behave as an “opponent, not an enemy”. My attempt at glasnost proved unsuccessful; he seemed warm enough, but a few days later his confidant, Sydney Mufamadi, repaid the compliment in a swaggering currency: “The contract between us and the masses cannot be supplanted by a handshake. Thank you very much, Mr Leon, your hand must not cross the floor,” he told parliament.
This parliament is likely to be very different.
For example, Jacob Zuma appears already to “have reached across the aisle”. His post-election remarks at the Independent Electoral Commission suggested respect for non-ANC voters and their choices. He also faces a somewhat larger opposition force, with 30 former comrades in the COPE ranks.
The front-running candidate to lead the DA, and the official opposition in parliament, Ryan Coetzee, has a quick brain and sharp elbows. He is impatient with the flummery of ritual, which has often substituted for real debate. Athol Trollip, the other major contender, speaks perfect Xhosa (when he assisted my housekeeper with a problem, telephonically, she refused to believe he was a “white man”).
Crucially, however, the tenor of government/opposition relations is set by the president. And as for the “Big Man” (as The Economist dubbed Zuma), he has a track record as a conciliator. But I also recall the words of a senior official in George W Bush’s administration, intimately involved with Zuma in his peace-broking efforts in Burundi. He told my study group at Harvard how he had witnessed first-hand the brutal (and in his view entirely necessary) manner in which Zuma threatened the recalcitrant parties there. “There’s nothing sweet and cuddly about him when the chips are down,” he said.
Perhaps, then, the spark of engaging debate — less of a danse macabre between the government and its opponents — and some lively drama will return to the stage. It’s past time for the long-suffering South African audience.

* Published 3 May in the Sunday Times.