Mbeki’s ruling African National Congress (ANC)-the party formerly headed by Nelson Mandela and revered as the revolutionary movement that fought South Africa’s white apartheid government for decades-is showing signs of slipping support and damaging divisions.
The most recent: Mbeki’s televised snub of Mandela’s still-popular former wife, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, and a growing scandal over a multi-million dollar payout to Coleman Andrew, a U.S. consultant who served as an economic adviser to Gerald Ford. “Taking together a number of events, one begins to note tensions in the ANC,” says political analyst Dumisani Hlophe, of the Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg.
Mbeki is unlikely to be voted out of his position as ANC leader anytime soon. “I think Mbeki would have to mess up a whole lot more than he has for there to be a challenge for his job,” one unnamed senior ANC member told Reuters earlier this week. “But the issue is being discussed in a way that is surprising and unusual”.
Nonetheless, the president’s image problem is making it harder for him to contain differences between the ANC and its partners in a tripartite political alliance-the labor union federation Cosatu and the South African Communist Party. “Mbeki is an intellectual, a visionary and an excellent technical manager,” says Hlophe. “But unlike Nelson Mandela, he is vulnerable to criticism and does not have the personal charisma to win over the Alliance’s many different constituencies”.
Mbeki, a British-trained economist, has had some foreign policy successes of late. A driving force behind the MAP, a pan-African “rescue plan” promoting development, democracy and peace for the continent, he won British and French support for the program during a recent trip to Europe. At the same time, the South African leader’s measured approach during that visit managed to deflect some of the international criticism for his controversial questioning of the link between HIV and AIDS and his reluctance to condemn publicly the Robert Mugabe-led government of neighboring Zimbabwe for its human rights abuses.
Analysts like Hlophe expect the polished Mbeki to make an equally good impression during his U.S. visit. Such achievements on the other side of the world, however, are unlikely to impress critics at home, who-much to the ANC’s irritation-include its Alliance partners and growing numbers within the party. Mbeki’s popularity among South Africans has also declined: recent opinion surveys show that his national support has slipped to below 50 percent.
Worse, a series of recent controversies have underlined differences within the ANC and Mbeki’s perceived vulnerability. Earlier this year, based on dubious evidence, three senior ANC members accused of plotting to oust Mbeki were investigated by the intelligence services. The accusation was strongly denied by the three, among them former trade union leader-turned-businessman Cyril Ramaphosa, who is seen as a strong presidential contender, and sparked an outcry about the use of an organ of the state for party-political investigations.
The plot saga was interpreted as a bid by Mbeki loyalists to discredit potential opponents ahead of next year’s internal party elections. But according to South Africa’s influential Financial Mail, it is likely have the opposite effect. “The tactic of tainting three popular party figures before any wrongdoing has been established has backfired,” wrote the magazine in an editorial. “Mbeki’s detractors in the ANC have ironically now been given the space either to mobilize a challenge to the President, or to contest key provincial and national executive committee positions occupied by Mbeki loyalists.”
The Coleman Andrews saga emerged out of an ongoing feud between Public Enterprises Minister Jeff Radebe and Saki Macozoma, the former head of South Africa’s huge transport parastatal Transnet, which includes the national airline, South African Airways (SAA).
Andrews was hired in 1998 as SAA’s chief executive officer to reverse the airline’s flagging fortunes. He walked out after 34 months-14 months before his contract was due to have expired-with a massive payment of $29 million. He said his job had been made impossible by the Radebe-Macozoma arguments over his hiring and salary package, but it is the ANC that suffered from the public arguments between its two officials.
According to the Financial Mail, the Andrews debacle had “turned into a crisis of confidence in government’s capacity to manage economic transformation.” The political crux, it added, was that it was highly inappropriate of minister Radebe to launch a “vitriolic attack on Andrews and Macozoma while President Thabo Mbeki and key Cabinet members were in Britain promoting the virtues of [South Africa] as an investment destination.”
The ANC’s latest embarrassment was seen by millions of South Africans on television, when Mbeki was caught on film recoiling from Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who heads the organization’s Women’s League and still enjoys significant support among party members. Madikizela-Mandela, who had arrived late at a ceremony honoring the 25th anniversary of the Soweto uprising against apartheid, leaned down behind Mbeki-either to greet him with a kiss or a whisper. Mbeki whipped his hand up to stop her, knocking off her hat. Mbeki may have been startled and made gesture accidentally, but the incident provoked a storm of debate in South Africa-especially as there has been animosity between the two since a letter she wrote accusing the president of “womanizing” was leaked to the press.
Tom Lodge, head of political studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, told the Cape Argus newspaper that the public slight to Madikizela-Mandela could damage Mbeki’s chances of an unopposed nomination for the ANC leadership at next year’s party congress. (While South Africa’s president officially is elected by Parliament, in practice the post goes to the leader of the ruling party.) Madikizela-Mandela, said Lodge, “sees herself as a kingmaker and Mbeki has lost an ally.”
Despite all of this, Mbeki is likely to be re-elected next year and there is little chance of either of the ANC’s Alliance partners abandoning government to form an opposition before the next election in 2004. Mbeki also has been making a concerted effort to soften his naturally aloof personality. However, given his clumsy juggling of an increasingly fractious party and a critical outside world, the president must be smarting at his inability to replicate the easy confidence with which Nelson Mandela held the foreign leaders-and South Africans-in the palm of his hand.
