In following the remarkable Nelson Mandela as leader of his country, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki took on one of the most difficult jobs in the world. By any measure, from moral authority to great statesmanship honed in long captivity, President Mbeki could never hope to be his predecessor’s equal. It has therefore been easy to criticize him.
The new president’s first mistake was to ignore the rising serpent of AIDS. AIDS of course, did not suddenly come about after Mbeki had taken power. But it was President Mbeki’s misfortune to be in office when the tide of protest at South Africa’s growing AIDS epidemic finally broke surface. It was also his still unexplained misjudgment, which initially chose to brush the protests aside and refuse to devote further government time and money to the condition. This was a serious and worrying error of judgment. It was later mitigated by the legal success of the South African authorities in forcing the international pharmaceutical companies to abandon their high price-fixing policies and blocks on cheaper copycat medicines from producers such as India and Brazil.
Mbeki emerged however with a reputation for being stubborn and refusing to listen to advisers. The first part of this charge is surely no bad thing and the second would seem to be plain wrong, because in the end the president clearly did change his mind. A vacillating, indecisive leader is surely the last person that a country in the delicate evolutionary position of South Africa needs.
But now President Mbeki faces perhaps his biggest challenge. His administration stands accused of accepting payola and bribes over a $6 billion arms deal, which was itself widely questioned in the first place. While there is absolutely no suggestion that Mbeki himself has benefited, some of the most senior figures within his party, the African National Congress, have been implicated. So great has been the outcry over the allegations that the government has been forced to set up a public inquiry which has just begun its investigation. However there are already cries that the whole process is a whitewash. It has been pointed out that the investigative unit supporting the inquiry is relatively low grade and it is alleged that officials vetoed the deployment of an elite team of detectives.
President Mbeki is also criticized for his public support for his ANC colleagues and his absolute refusal to admit that there has been any wrongdoing. While this stubbornness may also demonstrate admirable loyalty to party members, the fact is that the president would have been wiser, as the head of state, to have distanced himself from the inquiry and not passed an opinion one way or the other. It is the way that Nelson Mandela would have handled the affair, indeed precisely the way in which he stood back from the investigation into his ex-wife’s implication in murder and thuggery. By denouncing the charges from the outset Mbeki has placed himself in a no-win situation. If the inquiry finds that there has been no wrongdoing, then he and his administration will be accused of mounting a cover up. If the inquiry however decides that there has been corruption, then the president will have allowed himself personally to walk into the shadow of suspicion.
What is really at stake here is not the reputation of Thabo Mbeki, but the reputation of South Africa’s presidency. In a country of such ethnic, cultural, political and economic diversities, the head of state should offer the single, stable, trustworthy reference point in good times and bad. Nelson Mandela gave the South African presidency immense status and credibility. That is what Thabo Mbeki should be protecting; not the reputations of ANC colleagues, rightly or wrongly accused of corruption.
