DA needs to meet challenge posed by EFF’s antics

03 Sep 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

Malema actually stands for something, writes Tony Leon, who is not sure if the official opposition greatly supports any causes

YOU would need to be a very old South African — about 80 years old — to remember the last time the official opposition in Parliament won an election and went directly from the opposition side of the aisle to the seat of government.

Leaving aside the issue of the racial, restrictive franchise that pertained here until 1994, the last occasion when the largest opposition party in Parliament made this transition was 66 years ago, on May 26 1948. This was when DF Malan was elevated from leader of the official opposition to prime minister.


DA national spokesman Mmusi Maimane outside the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday

Of course, there was a change in both national and party power when Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress won the 1994 election and swept Malan’s successor movement, the National Party (NP), from its 46-year occupation of the government. But that required the entire previous system to be scrapped, via the so-called "negotiated revolution", before it could happen. This underlines the glacial nature of in-system electoral change here.

After the end of the first session of South Africa’s democratic parliament in December 1994, I led a small delegation of Democratic Party (DP) MPs to a lunch meeting with then president Nelson Mandela in Pretoria. On the agenda was our concern with various start-up problems affecting the workings of the National Assembly. Since Mandela famously had both an open door policy towards some of his democratic opponents and a lively regard for Parliament and its workings, he seemed the right person to address these concerns. No one at that meeting could have imagined the pit into which parliamentary proceedings would descend 20 years later.

But what I had not quite appreciated that day when the DP lunched with the president was what a close study Mandela had made of South Africa’s parliamentary history. As we listed ailments then affecting Parliament, trivial from the vantage point of today, Mandela brought the lunch to a stop. He disarmingly reminded us that the ANC had transitioned from struggle to power without the benefit of any preparation. As he put it that day: "The ANC went straight from the bush into power." By contrast, he recalled: "The NP served a long period in opposition in Parliament before assuming power."

How does this history lesson sit with the present leader of the opposition and the 15th holder of the post since Malan, Mmusi Maimane of the Democratic Alliance (DA)? He has some advantages and, perhaps, more disadvantages. While he had no parliamentary experience before his appointment, the party he leads has long experience in opposition and parliamentary tactics. He leads a team of 88 MPs in the National Assembly, slightly more than FW de Klerk’s National Party had in 1994.

But the NP in opposition, and two of its three predecessors as official opposition — the Conservative Party of Andries Treurnicht and the United Party of De Villiers Graaff — provided a salutary counterpoint to the illusory comfort the strength-in-opposition numbers seemingly provided. For different reasons, those parties disappeared entirely from the political scene when their political relevance became the dominant narrative. What lessons might Maimane and his lieutenants draw from their demise?

The first was offered to me by then NP secretary-general Roelf Meyer shortly after the lunch with Mandela. He confidently asserted that the NP supporters secured by his party in 1994 — just more than 20% of the electorate — would stick with the party "because they have nowhere else to go".

The DP had other ideas and, despite being 10 times smaller than the NP, would within five years eclipse it, take it over and effectively remove it from the political scene entirely. This was not due just to the more muscular approach to opposition politics that the DP adopted compared with the supine ambivalence of the NP of the time. It was essentially because, shorn of power and bereft of ideology, it had little to offer. Its central role in the system of apartheid also weighed it down.

Maimane and the DA’s dilemma — of having the largest number of opposition seats but being knocked off the front pages and social media spaces by the antics of the enfant terrible of the new politics, Julius Malema — is a question of asymmetry. Size does not always count in either life or politics. This was relayed to me the other day by a former colleague, herself a veteran of decades on the opposition benches and now retired.

She told me how she was listening on the radio to this "most articulate man … who perfectly captured my own thinking around (President) Jacob Zuma, Nkandla and the public protector". Then, she said, "to my horror the interviewer thanked Julius Malema for the interview".

So even those who would never dream of voting for him, bedrock DA supporters, find in Malema’s advocacy, and even perhaps some of his shocking tactics, points of agreement, even admiration. Malema will not poach from the DA’s voting pool, but if the party’s supporters perceive it to be ineffectual, some may simply drift away from political participation. But Malema’s advocacy will have a direct and negative effect on the DA’s ability to reach beyond its present base and tap into the growing pool of disaffected ANC supporters, precisely the group needed to ensure that the DA is not marooned forever, like Graaff and all his successors in title, on the opposition benches.

In Vladimir Lenin’s famous phrase, "What’s to be done?" the DA needs to reinvigorate Parliament. Its MPs need to "own issues". This is not about issuing press statements, but waking up every morning and determining how to find a credible issue, become the expert on it and spend time with other experts. They need to have the passion, the knowledge and the commitment to be the lead voice on the matters that matter.

The other asymmetrical problem Maimane faces is peculiar to his party set-up. He leads the opposition in Parliament but he does not lead his party outside of it. Whatever the merits of this arrangement originally, it is now way past its sell-by date.

Finally, there is the matter of ideology. What inspires the average DA MP? Is it job security for the next four years? A yearning to change things? A dislike of the ANC or the president? Perhaps all these things. But what great causes today does the DA stand for?

Malema, his theatrics aside, actually stands for something. It’s radical, impractical and ultimately ruinous. But it does resonate with many in the ranks of the dispossessed and the left-behind in South Africa.

The DA certainly is in opposition to the ANC but seems to have embraced large chunks of its philosophy, from transformation to the black economic empowerment scorecard. Though it wants the terms of trade changed, it is not confident enough to provide an entirely different world view. If you are in a 51-49 political outcome, such fudging of ideological barriers makes tactical sense. But given the 40 points separating the DA from the ANC, it does not.

There are many examples of this, but one will suffice — the crucial question of jobs. The ANC offers 5-million "job opportunities", while the DA promises the same number of "real jobs". This is a semantic distinction few understand. Better, as Clem Sunter suggested, to be the voice to create "1-million businesses" or become the champion of the market (not just business) to offer real economic liberation. That provides both a distinction and a difference.

A real alternative, to borrow a phrase, needs to offer a choice, not an echo.

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

 

 

Street Fighter Not Tweet Fighter: Ray Hartley Chats to Tony Leon About Opposite Mandela

Ray Harley | 25 August 2014 | Books Live

Opposite Mandela, Tony Leon (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

By Ray Hartley for the Sunday Times

This book represents another step in Tony Leon’s transformation from party partisan to dignified national eminence.

The first step was captured in his book Accidental Ambassador, about his time as Jacob Zuma’s man in Argentina. For the first time, Leon found himself representing the nation, and not a political party, and it was an adjustment he found surprisingly easy to make. When he returned to the country to launch his book, he had mellowed.

Now he has mellowed some more. Opposite Mandela goes back to the uneasy time he spent as leader of the opposition in a Parliament dominated by a man who had for all intents and purposes been canonized for his role in the transition to democracy.

When I meet Leon in the foyer of the Hyatt Hotel in Rosebank, Johannesburg, he has a ready anecdote to illustrate his new position above the buzz of party politics.

“Lindiwe Mazibuko, Helen Zille and Mmusi Maimane all attended my book launch in Cape Town,” he says. Mazibuko had resigned from the DA to take up a Harvard scholarship amidst talk that she was to be replaced as parliamentary leader by Maimane. Leon apparently offered all sides refuge from a party where the air was thick with intrigue and hurt.

But he can’t resist getting a mild dig in. “I would have just wished Lindiwe well and moved on,” he says of Zille’s decision to address her party caucus with a list of Mazibuko’s weaknesses.

Leon expresses relief that he was a leader “in a pre-Twitter age”, sparing him Zille’s sometimes ill-considered 140-character responses to some or other baiting on the social network.

 “I often felt deeply wronged,” he says. But he had senior party leaders who talked him down before he took the fight to the streets (or, in Zille’s case, the tweets).

 In Mandela, Leon found his toughest challenge. “He was the fiercest of ANC partisans and I don’t think any organisation came close to eclipsing it. On the other hand, he genuinely had strong democratic impulses. Mandela was a leader. He was quite prepared to go against the grain,” he says.

 Leon lists the events that illustrate this: The decision to begin negotiations with the apartheid government; the decision to wear the Springbok jersey at the 1995 World Cup; His reconciliatory response to the Chris Hani assassination; and his decision to abandon nationalization.

 It was, he says a different time. “When Mandela was president, the ANC was just starting out in government and not as surefooted as now. There were titans in the world then – Donny Gordon, Harry Oppenheimer, Anton Rupert. The business community was thought to be a very important stakeholder.”

The DA, which then had the reputation as the party with the ear of business, punched above its paltry 1,7 percent of the 1994 vote. It was, he says, “a small party with all the disadvantages of a large party”.

By the time Mandela’s term of office ended, this had all changed and Leon was the de facto leader of the opposition as the National Party began to disintegrate, caught between its role in the government of national unity and its place on the opposition benches.

The result was that Leon found himself courted by Mandela, who kept in close contact and even once offered him a cabinet position. There are few who would have turned down such an offer from the uber statesman, but Leon said no.

Far from breaking his relationship with Mandela, this had the effect of strengthening it. Mandela knew he was tempting Leon to abandon his principles in exchange for the proximity to power and when Leon turned it down, Mandela respected him more for his stance.

Leon and Mandela shared, it turned out, the desire to take the road less travelled. “Maybe constancy is for the dull,” he says.

Follow @hartleyr

Book details:

 

Opposite Mandela by Tony Leon
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EAN: 9781868426010
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Of Mickey and Goofy: standing opposite Madiba

AUCKLAND PARK – Madiba called him Mickey Mouse, and he called the iconic man ‘Goofy.’ Politicians, Tony Leon says, aren’t always mature.


Kirsten van Jaarsveld | 21 August 2014 12:00 | Northcliff Melville Times

If you think of the name Tony Leon you might think of Helen Zille’s predecessor – the man who led the Democratic Alliance from 1999 to 2002. You might think of the South African ambassador to Argentina. And you might think of the man who stood opposite Nelson Mandela during his time as president, as the leader of the opposition.

You’d be right on all counts.

Leon was at the University of Johannesburg to discuss his book Opposite Mandela: Encounters with South Africa’s icon on 19 August. What, Leon asked, made this book different from the legions of books about the great man?

“No one has written a book about Mandela, viewing him from the opposite side,” he explained.

“I had perhaps the most difficult job in the world, leading a party in opposition to Saint Madiba.”

An example of the man’s greatness, Leon said, happened during the elections in 1994.

“The reality on that day was that our freedom didn’t seem assured at all,” he said.

“There were bombs at the Johannesburg airport – then called Jan Smuts – and in downtown Johannesburg. The elections were marred by political violence and a break-down in the counting system. The outcome of the elections in Natal were on a knife’s edge, and so Mandela went to Natal to cast his ballot there at the grand age of 68. Political violence was the worst in that province.

“There were serious allegations of ballot tampering there, and the ANC (African National Congress) were convinced it was being robbed of a famous victory. The party called a meeting at Luthuli House, and insisted that a press conference should be called to tell the world of the injustice in the elections. Mandela was silent throughout the meeting. Then suddenly he spoke. He said: ‘We will say nothing that declares this election void. We will say this election is free and fair. Prepare our people in Natal to lose’. He realised sometimes that there were moments and acts that were more crucial than the interests of the party – and often put the country ahead of the party.”

Mandela, Leon said, was a combination of three people – the extraordinary man who put national interests before the regime; the humble man who took Hendrik Verwoerd’s wife Betsie for coffee and also a ruthless and shrewd politician.

“Mandela enjoyed discourse, he liked partaking in the Parliamentary Punch and Judy Show,” Leon said.

“He was so embracing and so inclusive, but he froze you out if you crossed certain lines. To run a political organisation you have to be able to bring out the knife and wheel it. He did that.”

Leon said that Madiba was mightily irritated when he criticised his administration, regardless of his embracing nature. “One day in Parliament he suddenly said, ‘This DP (Democratic Party), they’re just a Mickey Mouse organisation’.”

Leon returned the slur. “Well if that is so Mr President, you lead a Goofy government.”

A few weeks later Leon found himself at Milpark Hospital about to undergo coronary bypass surgery and there was a knock at the door. A famous voice said, ‘Hallo Mickey Mouse, this is Goofy.’ It was Mandela.

“The operation was very successful, speeded on by the extraordinary embrace of Nelson Mandela,” Leon said, smiling.

“We should look upon him and learn from the examples that he has left behind. He may very well have been the last of the great men.”

Excerpt from Opposite Mandela by Tony Leon: Madiba and De Klerk Wag Fingers at Each Other

Aerodrome has shared an excerpt from Tony Leon’s new book, Opposite Mandela, in which he remembers the story behind the controversial photographs of two joint Nobel Prize winners, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, “wagging fingers at each other” after an event during the final months of 1995.

“This was a further reminder to the country that the relationship at the summit of political power was neither peaceful nor happy. In fact, De Klerk and the National Party’s presence in government would end, by their own hand, less than a year after the showdown that evening,” writes Leon.

Read the excerpt to find out what led to this altercation:

'Brian Gilbertson, the angular, youthful-looking chief executive of the mining giant Gencor, was an unusual business titan in South Africa in the 1990s. More in desperation than expectation, I had visited him around September 1995, to request funding for my party’s very threadbare municipal election campaign. At the time, other than the Oppenheimer family, most of Johannesburg’s commercial community met such entreaties with big smiles and very small, if any, cheques. Gilbertson, however, completely understood the need for robust opposition and promptly wrote a cheque for R250 000. He also requested my presence at the imminent opening of his company’s corporate headquarters.'

Book details

• Opposite Mandela by Tony Leon
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781868426010

Insight into Madiba's reign - Pretoria News, 19 May 2014

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/

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”

 

Tony Leon Extols Madiba’s “True Leadership” at the Launch of Opposite Mandela

30 May 2014 | Jean | Original Publication:  Books Live


Tony Leon and Guest Speaker Tito Mboweni

Opposite Mandela, by Tony Leon, was launched recently at Hyde Park Exclusive Books, with Tito Mboweni as guest speaker.


The evening began with an opening address from former Reserve Bank governor and labour minister Mboweni, who was in the headlines for withdrawing from the ANC’s list for Parliament the day before. Mboweni was there as a personal friend of Leon’s, revealing in conversation that they are in fact quite close, and that he had
even been a guest at Leon’s wedding, where he was surprised to see a glass being broken as part of the ceremony. Mboweni recalled the Democratic Party, as it was then, being known as a “Mickey Mouse party”, but also related some witty banter that passed between Nelson Mandela and Leon on that subject.

“I’ve known Tony Leon for a number of years now,” Mboweni said, “and when we were in Parliament I was minister of labour, and he was the leader of the Mickey Mouse party. In the book, you will read the story of how the ANC referred to the Democratic Party as a Mickey Mouse party, and Tony Leon’s reply was ‘Well, that comes from a Goofy party.’”

“When Tony was in hospital, Nelson Mandela went to visit him, and President Mandela knocked on the door and said: ‘Hi Mickey Mouse, it’s Goofy here!’”

“I think that summarises the spirit of the new South Africa. That we have opposing political views, but we are not enemies, and we can still have a sense of humour about our society and how it works.”

“Mickey Mouse was also allocated the position of labour spokesperson for the Democratic Party, meaning he was less opposite Mandela and more opposite me! And we had great fun, because I was determined as minister of labour to ensure that we ensure that we undo all the wrong things in the market that had been done unto us by the apartheid government. He wanted to undo the wrongs that the apartheid government had created, but from a different perspective. And that’s very important. People committed to the removal of the vestiges of apartheid, but from different perspectives. It makes for a very interesting dialogue in Parliament.”

Mboweni said he had some reservations about the title of Leon’s book, but believes it is definitely worth a read.

“Opposite Mandela. A little bit of an arrogant title. Because you really could not be opposite Madiba. But knowing Tony Leon he’s got that streak of arrogance, just like me. I’m told that I’ve got that hubris, which I deny. But I think during those early years we tried our best to weave together the different strands of politics, culture, religion and other beliefs into the rainbow nation. And I think reading the book one finds a lot of that reflected. And I think we’ll all enjoy reading Tony Leon’s book. I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying this is a great book. He’s a little bit too kind to me in the book, however.”

As he was stepping away from the podium, Mboweni seemed to recall that he was in the news, and made some short remarks about stepping down from Parliament: “Oh, by the way, you know I’m not going to Parliament [laughs]. I apologise to those who thought I was going to Parliament. I believe the task of the transformation of our country should be handled from different spheres in our society. Parliament is one of them. The private sector, academia, cultural institutions, and everywhere else. I think, when I look back, I dedicated my life since 1987 to public service. And I think I’ve done my bit. I think it’s time I found out what really makes the private sector tick.”

Leon then stepped up, talking about his relationship with Mboweni, which he says had some similarities to his relationship with Mandela, and explaining the title of the book.

“Tito Titus Mboweni has many titles, former titles, not-taken-up titles, most recently member of parliament, but as you’ve gathered from this we are actually friends, and it is in that capacity that we are both here tonight sharing a platform, as we did, and I don’t think Tito and I have ever agreed on a fundamental piece of legislation – ever. I opposed everything that he put before Parliament, but I was just a bit ahead of the game because Tito went straight from being minister of labour to being governor of the Reserve Bank, and then he suddenly discovered he had to use the interest rate to correct all the generosity he’d done through the labour legislation. And now in this third incarnation as a business mogul he has to wrestle with that unaddressed question that he raised so eloquently tonight, that of inequality.

“I’ll explain how we got to the title Opposite Mandela, apart from imbuing all that hubristic arrogance from my friend Tito over the years, but the one thing was that I discovered in my semi-retirement that I’m kind of a unifier. At my book launch in Cape Town, strange that it should be me, I found myself there with Helen Zille, Lindiwe Mazibuko and Mmusi Maimane, which was quite an interesting dynamic. I don’t know what their dynamics were like with each other, on that particular evening, but it was good to have them there.

“One of the factors that inspired my choice of speaker in the form of my friend Tito Mboweni is the relationship that I elaborate in the book with Mandela was very much the relationship I enjoyed with Tito Mboweni in his old capacity as minister of labour. I opposed every single piece of legislation he put before Parliament, not because I’m oppositional, although God knows I am I suppose, hence the title of the book, but because there was a different perspective from our side. The point about Tito was that you could have these very fundamental disagreements in Parliament, and he would invite you and the rest of the committee to his home in the Groote Schuur Estate afterwards for dinner. So you could be civil and friendly and disagree because you were involved in the same enterprise.”

Leon says he remembers the political scene as being very much concerned with taking South Africa forward, and says Mandela’s strong allegiance to the ANC never got in the way of his commitment to the country, something he regards as “true leadership”.

“We were genuinely a Mickey Mouse party in size, there were only seven of us in Parliament, out of 400. And I’m very pleased that two-sevenths is here today in the form of my very good friend and colleague Douglas Gibson. Today the Democratic Alliance has got 89 MPs in Parliament, which is pretty significant growth. There were about 57 when I departed.

“But it was never thought it was about the ANC and the DA, it was about what you could do for the country. And one of the things I reflect on in this book was that at critical moments Nelson Mandela put the country ahead of the party. The other thing is that Mandela was one of the most seriously partisan politicians. He wasn’t born ANC, because he was born in 1918 and the ANC was formed only six years or so before that, but he joined the ANC in his young adulthood and he died a sworn, true, loyal ANC member. But that didn’t mean he always did things that the ANC agreed with. And by going against that party brain he helped take this country forward. Of course sometimes going with the party also took it forward. I think that is the gift of true leadership.”

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

Fresh insights on Madiba

28 May 2014 | Martin Williams | Original Publication:  The Citizen

With an abundance of material on Madiba available, it’s handy to know whether any new book about the great man offers fresh insights.

Tony Leon’s latest memoir, Opposite Mandela, does so. Leon was perfectly positioned to have a unique perspective. Not only did he become the leader of the opposition when Mandela was president, he was also MP for Houghton, where Mandela moved shortly after his release in 1990. There are other coincidences weaved into this engaging story. These include family links that connected the two to noteworthy events and personalities.

With customary chutzpah, Leon capitalised on Madiba’s presence in Houghton by delivering a chocolate cake and a hand-written invitation to attend a DA constituency report-back meeting. Although Madiba declined, he reci-procated, asking Leon “and one or two other DP chaps” around for dinner. That’s where the young MP began to learn that his host had “an almost preternatural talent for reaching out to, and charming, those outside the circle of true believers”.

All Leon’s observations about Madiba are made within the context of admiration and respect for “a leader born with a special kind of grace, who seems to transcend the politics of his age”.

Yet Leon is not shy to point out flaws. For example, he did not hold back when Mandela defended the actions of ANC members who shot and killed IFP marchers in the 1994 Shell House massacre. When the matter was raised in Parliament, Leon quoted a leaked memo showing police had been unable to investigate, as they had been denied access to the building.

Mandela later said he had personally given ANC guards the order “shoot to kill”. And he got away with it. “In this and many other judgment lapses, as I viewed them, Mandela’s Teflon coating was ultra-resilient.”

There’s also a chapter on how Leon dealt with Mandela’s invitation to join the Cabinet. Harry Oppenheimer and Bobby Godsell thought the DP should “give it a go”, but former party leaders Helen Suzman and Frederik van Zyl Slabbert advised against it.

Leon sought advice from many quarters and pondered long over the issue. With the benefit of hindsight, he says: “South Africa, today, would be less likely to have been a robust, open democracy with government held to account by an independent opposition had (Madiba’s) proposal been realised.”

Leon offers insights into other key players. During the protracted talks that preceded SA’s historic political settlement, his initial antipathy to Joe Slovo “melted as I found his sharp and cynical humour made us, across the divide of age and ideology, actually quite kindred spirits”.

Indeed, at the Hyde Park book launch last week it was pointed out that Leon was wearing red socks – a Slovo trademark. I’m not sure what we were supposed to read into that.

Leon’s clashes with Madiba’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, are legendary. However, in this volume he explains how “the Mbeki of 1994 was a much nicer person, far more approachable and accommodating”.

Throughout the book there are examples of warm, personal exchanges between Leon and Mandela. In 2002, on the veranda of Madiba’s Houghton home in front of a phalanx of reporters and photographers, the elder statesman put his arm around the shoulder of the opposition leader, declaring: “Tony Leon is a proper democrat and there should be dialogue at all levels of our country.”

Another glimpse of what we are missing.

Opposite Mandela by Tony Leon is published by Jonathan Ball. (Paperback, 243 pages, R210).

 

 

Tony Leon on Nelson Mandela

15 May 2014 | Andrew Donaldson | Original Publication:  Politicsweb

Andrew Donaldson interviews the former DP leader about his new book "Opposite Mandela"

IN his new memoir, Opposite Mandela: Encounters with South Africa's Icon (Jonathan Ball), Tony Leon offers a behind-the-scenes insight into how the country's first democratically-elected president related to his political opponents (see Kindle edition here). Leon was, of course, leader of the then-minuscule Democratic Party and later the Democratic Alliance, and although the two men clashed, sometimes fiercely, on the issues of the day, the young white MP would enjoy an extraordinary accessibility to Nelson Mandela and his office.

Although this access ended abruptly when Thabo Mbeki took over, Leon's relationship with Mandela continued until 2006 - the time of their last conversation. Opposite Mandela is a chatty, personal account of those turbulent, "history-in-the-making" years. Leon engagingly explores such issues as race, reconciliation and corruption; these themes not only marked that period but continue to dominate as President Jacob Zuma enters his second term of office. The Mandela that emerges in Leon's account is a complex figure. There is the much-adored, warm, generous leader - and there is the Mandela the public seldom saw: Machiavellian, flawed, irrational and combative.

Our interview took place on Wednesday morning, at the Mount Nelson Hotel.

POLITICSWEB: The big surprise here, as you tell it, is the warmth of your relationship with Mandela. 

LEON: "It was an extraordinary feature. Not just of those times, but perhaps of what followed."

But there was also acrimony... 

"There were some pretty rough moments. But that's natural if you were on different political sides. That's why I wrote the book. There's a huge body of literature on Mandela - the authorised biography, the unauthorised biography, the book by the jailer, and so on. These people all had unique access to him. I had a different sort of access, based on the fact that I wasn't a supporter of his party. I was an opponent, and right from the beginning, when he moved into [Houghton], the area I represented [as an MP] back in 1992, he sought me out ... well, I sought him out - he was the most famous resident. But he responded to me so warmly and effusively from the very first moment, and that really persisted right until I left the leadership of the DA. That probably says a great deal about Mandela more than anything else. Richard Stengel, his ghostwriter, makes the point that Mandela was a great persuader and a great charmer. He was ... Stengel used the word ‘seductive'. In the political sense."

You write that FW de Klerk made that observation, that the charm was one of Mandela's two great faults, that he'd use it to smooth over problems without taking effective remedial action. The other was that he would sometimes fly off the handle without checking his facts beforehand.

"That was accurate in many ways. We had a big barney right at the beginning, in Parliament [in 1994], when I took the government on over the Shell House massacre. Mandela did not like to be crossed on certain issues. On other issues he was very relaxed. I also think Mandela did enjoy a robust discussion, a different viewpoint. It was almost useful for him to show me off - I was almost like a mascot at all these state dinners. [Leon gives a dubious impersonation of Mandela:] ‘This young man, he gives me all my trouble. Ha, ha, ha.' ‘Look here, we've got a functioning democracy here. If you have any doubt about that, just ask this young chap. He's the bloke giving me all my problems.' He would laugh about it."

There's a great anecdote about how, at one such function, to honour Queen Elizabeth II, this "democracy" spiel failed with Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. ["Why is your party called ‘Democratic'?" Philip demanded. "Aren't you all democrats now in South Africa? The problem with the word ‘democratic' is that all those republics in the Soviet Bock called themselves democratic and they weren't democratic at all, were they?"]

"Yes, he was not very impressed when Mandela gave him the normal ‘democratic' banter. ‘Oh what's so democratic about you.' He also went on to ask me, ‘What sort of democrat are you?' I said, ‘Well, we're liberals.' ‘Oh,' he said, ‘well, why don't you call yourselves liberals? We have plenty of liberals in England.' I said, ‘It's not really a very popular term in South Africa.' ‘Oh, I wonder why that is. . .' Well, one might wonder today as well."

The "rot", if we could call the intemperate and corrupt creep in our current public life, started on Mandela's watch.

"It's a mixed picture. Of the many things that happened on his watch, he got far more things right than he got wrong. But certainly the orange lights started to flash, as they would have, and now they've gone to bright red. I think the underestimated part of the Mandela years was that [ANC national] conference in Mafikeng [in December 1997]. Because the speech he made there really gave the green light for cadre deployment. It was the green light for turning on the press and civil society. It was the green light for deployment across the whole of society. Those were green-lighted at the end of the Mandela term, and he went along with it. He articulated it.

"And even corruption. I heard a radio commentator yesterday suggest that [former health minister, now chair of the African Union] Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is completely untainted by corruption. It's absolute rubbish. The biggest single corruption case at the start was over Sarafina II, which was the diversion of all that European Union Aids money into a play produced by her best friend, [playwright] Ngobeni Ngema. It was a complete waste of public expenditure, and it wasn't the amount involved, R14million [that was troublesome], it was the fact that Mandela closed ranks around her. [Mandela would do the same with scandals involving Stella Sigcau and Allan Boesak.] Rather than standing against the transgressor, he actually stood with the transgressor, he protected the transgressor and didn't stand against the sin. The arms deal was green-lighted on his watch, although we didn't know the extent of the corruption until he left office. It is fair to say that some early clues were salted to a problem that has become very embedded in South Africa."

Even so, he fought bitterly against his own party when it came to reconciliation.

"Yes. Mandela understood very well that you must actually be generous in victory and not mean-spirited. That is a very powerful lesson that he managed to get his way with. He did stand up against the ANC on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,, for example. Mbeki went to court [to stop the TRC interim report from being issued] and Mandela said, basically, publish and be damned. I think that Mandela's attachment was not just to the constitution, which was something after all that he helped negotiate and certainly signed into law, but the rule of law itself. I cite that Louis Luyt [SA Rugby] court case where [Mandela] was dragged to court, subpoenaed as a witness, and the court found against him. It didn't make a very complimentary finding on his credibility as a witness. He was deeply outraged that he was dragged there. But he [appeared before the court], he said, ‘because of my respect for the administration of justice'. That really did mark him out in comparison to that which followed. So I think on some of those very big things, he did set the right signal. But other things, less so."

What if he had he served a second term?

That is the very great question. Well, the point to me about Mandela - as a person, a politician and everything else - was that he was deeply adaptive and flexible so he didn't stick to the hidebound positions because he'd once articulated them and the party held them. He demonstrated that with our first get-together way back in 1992 when he was telling [DP stalwarts] Ken Andrew and Zach de Beer and me how he'd been to Davos, the World Economic Forum, and he'd been bashed over the head by all these business people. As he put it, ‘They all want to be photographed with me, but they wouldn't donate a cent to South Africa because of [the ANC's] policies of nationalisation so I came back and said, Listen boys, we must change our policy.' 

"So I think Mandela did take lessons from the real world. He wasn't in that bubble, strangely enough, that so many politicians and business leaders find themselves in, which is an echo chamber. You know, ‘Yes sir, how high must I jump?' He did on many issues show a flexibility. HIV/Aids was perhaps the best example of that because, although the ignoring of the pandemic happened on his watch and he did nothing about it, the moment he stepped down as president, he listened and saw what was going - his own son had died of an Aids-related illness - and he changed. And then he tried to get the ANC to change, and that ended very unhappily for him. [In his book, Leon points to biographer Martin Meredith's ‘painful' account of an NEC meeting where Mandela tried in vain to get Mbeki and his supporters to revise their stance on HIV/Aids. Mandela was torn apart by ‘wild, aggressive and merciless' NEC members. ‘After his mauling,' one witness said, ‘Madiba looked twice his age, old and ashen.']

"But he then went out to proselytise for anti-retrovirals and against denialism. So you can't help but think that if he served a second term that South Africa would not have had that calamitous policy. I also think that Mandela's instincts - and you saw that with the Sani Abacha incident when [the Nigerian despot] executed [activist] Ken Saro-Wiwa - were, with certain qualifications, in favour of human rights."

He had no qualms, though, about who he took money from?

"No, he didn't. Basically he had an enormous attachment to countries or organisations that were pro-ANC during the struggle and he tended to allow that to be a blind spot. I mean, look at [former Indonesian dictator, President] Suharto. The irony is that Suharto was the one who gave Mandela those batik-styled shirts. But he did a lot of damage besides... In some ways it was purely mercenary so, for example, Suharto got [SA's highest honour, the Order of Good Hope, in exchange for contributions to the ANC's 1994 election fund]. It was a cash for an award offer. Ideologically, Suharto was vehemently anti-Communist. [Suharto's brutal anti-Communist purge of 1965-66 left at least 500 000 dead and about three times as many imprisoned.] And, don't forget, the ANC was busy fighting on behalf of independence in East Timor at the same time they were bestowing this honour on the very people [the Suharto regime] who had massacred the people in East Timor.

"We got into an argument, early one morning in January 1997 [shortly after Leon was offered a cabinet position by Mandela] because we were about to sell tank firing systems to the Syrian defence force. I mentioned to him that I didn't exactly have a pro-Syrian constituency in my little party, and he starts going into a thing about, ‘You know, America was against us, and Syria was in favour of us and therefore the regime of Hafez al-Assad [father of Bashar al-Assad], they were on the side of right and America was on the side of wrong.' 

"But he was prepared to speak up on behalf... I mean, look at [Robert] Mugabe! When he was rampaging through Zimbabwe in the 2000-2005 period I don't think that Mandela would have given him the kind of succour that Mbeki did. But you know, this is speculative."

At about that time, in January 1997 Mandela offered you a cabinet position, an appointment many DP members felt you should accept. Yet you refused because although Mandela had claimed there were often vehement disagreements in cabinet meetings and members were free to state their viewpoints, they would not be permitted to express their dissent in public. As he put it, "We must go out and face the world with one voice, just as Mugabe and [Joshua] Nkomo do."

"That sealed it for me. That's when I realised that this was a bridge too far. That is true, he did say that [Zimbabwe] was an example of a government of reconciliation, and I thought, ‘Ja, but at what price?' I don't think Mandela had a high regard at all for Mugabe. He told me once, ‘You know, we were in Addis Ababa, at a meeting of the Organisation of African Unity, and I came into the room and all the people, the dignitaries and the media, that were surrounding Mugabe left him and they came to talk to me.' And he said, ‘I think that he was very angry that day and I'm not sure that his anger has recovered.'"

Which brings us to Mandela's anger towards FW de Klerk, and his treatment of the  National Party leader. You quote a source as saying, "In Mandela's eyes, De Klerk became the proxy for much of the anger he felt and managed so masterfully to mask from view, towards the group and community FW came from." Who was this insider?

"I can't identify him because he was a person of consequence in Mandela's cabinet, and I suspect he will be a person of consequence in the future of this country, so let me not be more indiscreet than I already have been in this book. There was a very bad chemistry between De Klerk and Mandela - to the extent that Mandela would say that, look, it was easier to deal with PW Botha. But I put that down to the fact that they were both on the same stage at the same time. It's easier to look on a predecessor with more fondness than your contemporary. But I was struck by that ‘proxy' comment, because Mandela masked his true feelings very well in the national interest, and that De Klerk really was the proxy for what Mandela thought. We saw that at Codesa, back in December 1991. Wow, that fury came out there! That first meeting, there was a misunderstanding about who would speak last, and then De Klerk said something, and Mandela just lost it, just ripped into him, and said, ‘You have no idea what democracy means!' There was a lot of anger."

But they made up afterwards? There was, for want of a better term, a "gentlemanliness" to it all?

"There was - but there was no repair of the structural rift. Which was inherent in that government of national unity."

And Mandela could play the race card?

"He certainly played it on occasion, as I recall. But usually when he felt cornered. It wasn't done as a matter of course. The reflexive use of it now has almost discounted its efficacy but it was used by him to defend, I felt, the indefensible. Corruption, and so on. He had this wonderful attitude towards me until I crossed him on Shell House and then he just lost his temper, and said, ‘Well, you know, I know who you are, you're just a young man who wants to make a good impression, your party's all white.' What the hell, I thought, has that got to do with the price of eggs? He was very angry with this probe I was conducting into the massacre. It didn't start off like that but eventually when he couldn't convince me to back down he kind of used that tactic. But I would say that was more the exception than the rule with him."

Then there was the John Dugard affair. In March 1995 Mandela told your that there was a problem with the DP's nomination of Dugard - a professor in international law and a respected human rights champion - to the soon-to-be-established Human Rights Commission, and that Dugard should be dropped in favour of veteran MP Helen Suzman. There was no reason why, as you suggested, both of them couldn't be on the HRC, but Dugard had to be dropped?

"That was a strange one. [Leon writes in his book, ‘It suggested, and this later became the iron rule in the new South Africa, just as it had pervaded the old republic, that individual merit merit would be placed second to racial and political preferment. That the liberal community would, almost by definition, have more rights activists in its camp as a proportion of its overall numerical strength was passed over in this early signal that political and racial representivity would trump other considerations.' ] 

"That happened [at a time when it seemed the HRC] would have a huge role to play. Immediately afterwards there was controversy about the appointments with [then HRC chair] Barney Pityana getting into a row with [Judge] Dennis Davis, who hasn't a racist bone in his body and [who] criticised some rightwing conservative being there instead of Dugard. But then Pityana said, ‘If you criticise us you're criticising a black president and ipso facto you're a racist.' 

"It was such a thought-blocking response but that almost became the terms of trade for everything afterwards. I think that was a moment when we were having our maximum glasnost in South Africa and everything seemed open and Brave New World when - boom! Public appointments are now being made, you're being critical of them? You're going to be blocked with the racist card. And it doesn't matter who does it. For example, there's Joe Slovo's widow, Helena Dolny, being elbowed out of her position [as managing director] at the Land Bank by some apparatchik who was a homeland trustee who happened to be black. But she's white, so she can go to hell? The fact that she's Joe Slovo's widow and had impeccable credentials didn't matter. 

"I think if you're to look back at that you've got to say, ‘Well, there was a big paradox, and South Africa's filled with paradoxes and contradictions - because Mandela was in many ways the great non-racialist, the great rainbow warrior, but at the same time, very quickly, racialisation was reasserting itself across the board in South Africa. A lot of people didn't want to speak about that. ‘No, no, no, you can't say that,' and so on, but it was so. It's now entrenched, that re-racialistaion. It's not a question of affirmative action, it's a question of racial quotas. And racial quotas are very far from what the constitution had in mind and very far from that more hopeful vision of Mandela's."

Can we talk of deconstitionalisation? 

"I think there are a lot of threats to the constitution. I quote [Deputy Minister of Correctional Services Ngoako] Ramathlodi in my book, and he says there is a body of opinion inside the ANC that regards the constitutional transition as a bit of a hoax. [Leon reads:] ‘In 2011, [Ramathlodi] stated that the constitutional transition was a victory for "apartheid forces" who wanted to "retain white domination under a black government". This was achieved "by emptying the legislature and executive of real power" and giving it to "the other constitutional institutions and civil society movements".' There are many others in the ANC who share this opinion."

You end your book with a quote from JM Coetzee, on Mandela: "He was, and by the time of his death was universally held to be, a great man; he may well be the last of the great men, as the concept of greatness retires into the shadows."

"Mandela wasn't just a great man, which he was, he was also dealing with great times. When you're dealing with this drama, the end of an era, the beginning of a new one, it's..." 

Cometh the hour, cometh the man?

"Absolutely. Now it's the day-to-day stuff, which he didn't give that much attention to. That becomes the preoccupation of his successors. And that is probably true of every political succession where you have a new era and a great leader and by definition successors who have to deal with that. I think that was part of Mbeki's frustration, that he was the guy who had to deal with the rubbish and clean out the lavatories as it were. There was Mandela, basking in the adulation of the world, and there he was going around having to sort out everything."

This article was published with the assistance of the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF). The views presented in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FNF.