tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/thabo-mbeki-17567/articlesThabo Mbeki – The Conversation2024-01-27T06:07:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2219002024-01-27T06:07:13Z2024-01-27T06:07:13ZJacob Zuma, the monster South Africa’s ruling ANC created, continues to haunt it<p>Former South African president Jacob Zuma is <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=23cde356c2361300JmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTI0Ng&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=uMhkonto&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2FiY25ld3MuY29tL3NhYmNuZXdzL3p1bWEtdXJnZXMtc291dGgtYWZyaWNhbnMtdG8tdm90ZS1mb3ItbmV3bHktZm9ybWVkLXVta2hvbnRvLXdlc2l6d2Uv&ntb=1">endorsing</a> the uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Party, the latest rival to the governing African National Congress (ANC) for the <a href="https://www.eisa.org/election-calendar/">upcoming national elections</a>. By doing so, he not only challenges the ANC politically, but also claims its heritage.</p>
<p>The new party – which media reports say is <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/news/politics/2024-01-07-zuma-exposed-as-brains-behind-establishment-of-mk-party/">Zuma’s brainchild</a> – uses the name of the ANC’s former military wing. The party’s launch coincided with the 62nd anniversary of the real <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK)</a>, formed on <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=04fd21d4aee3a8f1JmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTI3Mw&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=uMhkonto&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2FoaXN0b3J5Lm9yZy56YS9hcnRpY2xlL3Vta2hvbnRvLXdlc2l6d2UtbWs&ntb=1">16 December 1961</a> to fight the apartheid government. </p>
<p>Zuma could not have been more daring. Yet the ANC obfuscates, criticising him instead of acting decisively and expelling him. Meantime, he actively campaigns to unseat it. Why?</p>
<p>I have studied and written extensively about the politics of the ANC and its alliance partners – the Congress of South African Trade Unions (<a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/">Cosatu</a>) and the South African Communist Party (<a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">SACP</a>). I was also one of the editors of the <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/the-zuma-administration">book</a> The Zuma Administration: Critical Challenges. </p>
<p>In my view, the reason the ANC is cagey about taking him on, is because the party tied itself in knots <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0fc7bb4c-b027-11e3-b0d0-00144feab7de">defending Zuma’s bad behaviour</a> in the past. The ANC created the Zuma problem. The party and its <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03161.htm">alliance partners</a> abetted his kleptocracy and facilitated his <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">capture of the state</a>. They created Zuma as a <a href="https://www.rusi.org/publication/jacob-zuma-after-battle-polokwane">populist with a penchant for rabble-rousing</a>. Now they are paralysed and can’t act against him.</p>
<p>The ANC also <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=ce02ce879565061cJmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTE3NA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=support+for+zuma&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuY2l0aXplbi5jby56YS9uZXdzL3NvdXRoLWFmcmljYS9wb2xpdGljcy9hbmMtd29udC1hY3QtYWdhaW5zdC16dW1hLWZvci1ub3ctcmVwb3J0Lw&ntb=1">fears</a> that if it expelled him, he could portray himself as a victim.</p>
<p>Decisive action against him would require the party to face up to its own demons. It would be exposed as having enabled him. </p>
<p>The ANC’s reluctance to take him on or fire him is rooted in the events of 2005. Then South African president Thabo Mbeki <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/president-thabo-mbeki-sacks-deputy-president-jacob-zuma">fired Zuma as his deputy</a> after the latter was mired in corruption allegations. Zuma’s use of this to build a case that he was a victim still haunts the ANC. It fears a repeat so close to the 2024 elections. </p>
<p>Zuma’s political pursuits now depend on a new party whose electoral strength is yet to be tested. It pales in comparison with the support he got in the past. </p>
<p>My arguments is that the political cost of not expelling him – in terms of lost votes – is greater than the cost of expelling him. By not acting against him, the ANC is failing to “renew” itself as it has <a href="https://renewal.anc1912.org.za/">promised</a> to do. This makes the party look weak and may cost it electoral support.</p>
<h2>Zuma and the ANC</h2>
<p>The ANC knew Zuma was likely to turn out this way, from as early as 1997, when it elected him deputy president to Thabo Mbeki, paving his way to the highest office in the land.</p>
<p>South African author and journalist Mark Gevisser <a href="https://www.everand.com/book/641542878/Thabo-Mbeki-The-Dream-Deferred">writes</a>:</p>
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<p>Mbeki and those around him began to worry that Zuma possessed a dangerous combination of unhealthy ambition and poor judgment.</p>
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<p>They were right.</p>
<p>Because of this fear, he was at first not considered for the position of deputy president. Instead, Mbeki offered the position to Inkatha Freedom Party leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/mangosuthu-buthelezi-was-a-man-of-immense-political-talent-and-contradictions-181081">Mangosuthu Buthelezi</a>. However, through Zuma’s machination, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00344890902944387">this was foiled</a>. He eventually became the deputy president. But he was bitter that he had been initially overlooked for the position.</p>
<p>During <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/the-zuma-administration">Mbeki’s presidency</a>, relations between the ANC and its <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03161.htm">alliance partners</a> became frosty. </p>
<p>The contestation was around the Mbeki government’s free market economic policies, which Cosatu and the SACP <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/04d23130-a8dc-11dc-ad9e-0000779fd2ac">condemned</a> as a neo-liberal agenda that deviated from the ANC’s aim of <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02120/06lv02126.htm">socio-economic transformation and empowerment</a> of those previously marginalised when it came to power in 1994.</p>
<p>Zuma exploited this to position himself as the centre around which <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2010-09-03-coalition-of-the-wounded-turn-on-zuma/">those allegedly wounded by Mbeki</a> could coalesce.</p>
<h2>The rise of Zuma the populist</h2>
<p>In Zuma, the <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/the-zuma-administration">alliance</a> saw someone who could represent its ideological position in the country’s policy choices. Yet, he was part of the ANC leadership that adopted Mbeki’s economic strategy and was never known to espouse leftist politics. To their dismay, he proved not to be their <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-04-20-replacing-mbeki-with-zuma-did-not-solve-our-problems-nzimande/">ideological ally in office</a>.</p>
<p>Later the same year Zuma was <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-decade-on-a-new-book-on-zumas-rape-trial-has-finally-hit-home-85262">accused of raping</a> the daughter of a friend. He was acquitted but was tainted as immoral.</p>
<p>This alone should have disqualified him from any leadership position. But it did not matter to his allies, who ensured he became the president of the ANC <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president/">in 2007</a>, and that of the country <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/jacob-zuma-presidency-2009-2017-march">in 2009</a>. He was, to the alliance, an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232871908_Understanding_the_'Zuma_Tsunami'">unstoppable tsunami</a>.</p>
<p>The ANC bashed the judiciary as counter-revolutionary for unfavourable judgments against Zuma. The party claimed his prosecution was political persecution <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27756284?seq=2">at Mbeki’s behest</a>. Then ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema declared they were prepared to <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/we-will-kill-for-zuma-404646">kill and die for Zuma</a>. </p>
<h2>Leading with impunity</h2>
<p>Zuma’s eventual ascendancy to the presidency of the country in 2009 was <a href="https://www.alterinter.org/?Working-class-politics-or-populism-the-meaning-of-Zuma-for-the-left-in-SA">hailed,</a> by the alliance left – Cosatu and the SACP, as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a victory against the neo-liberal orthodoxy of Mbeki.</p>
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<p>Zuma did not deliver on this expectation. Yet he continued to enjoy the support of the tripartite alliance. </p>
<p>He went on to <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=905b9cd41887a59aJmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTE5NQ&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=betrayal+of+the+promise+report&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9wYXJpLm9yZy56YS93cC1jb250ZW50L3VwbG9hZHMvMjAxNy8wNS9CZXRyYXlhbC1vZi10aGUtUHJvbWlzZS0yNTA1MjAxNy5wZGY&ntb=1">subvert</a> the criminal justice system to avert prosecution for his corruption charges. </p>
<p>The judiciary <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-judges-in-south-africa-under-threat-or-do-they-complain-too-much-45459">pushed back</a> but earned the wrath of the ANC and its alliance partners.</p>
<p>They always closed ranks to shield Zuma from accountability. He survived numerous motions of no confidence in parliament for, among other things, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2012-11-08-parties-to-file-motion-of-no-confidence-against-zuma/%22">“dangerously flawed judgment”</a> relating to his <a href="https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/president-zuma-appoints-new-national-director-public-prosecutions-25-nov-2009">appointment of Menzi Simelani</a> as head of the National Prosecuting Authority, despite evidence that he had lied to a presidential commission of inquiry.</p>
<p>Among the notable no-confidence votes against which the ANC-dominated parliament shielded Zuma was over his use of public money to renovate his private homestead <a href="https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2016/11.pdf">at Nkandla</a>. </p>
<p>The stage was set for Zuma to wreak havoc with impunity. The alliance left only started to move away from him when it became obvious that he had outsourced the running of the country to his friends, <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/how-gupta-brothers-from-india-landed-south-africas-ruling-party-in-its-biggest-crisis-397138">the Gupta family</a>. It was too late.</p>
<p>In 2015, he <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0UO0KO/">sacked</a> the finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, only to replace him with an obscure Gupta-sanctioned appointee, with an eye on the national treasury.</p>
<p>The market tailspinned into and the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5c0da8b2-9eb5-11e5-b45d-4812f209f861">rand plummeted</a>. Yet the ANC still defended him in parliament.</p>
<p>Towards the end of 2016, the public protector released a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/state-capture-report-public-protector-14-october-2016">damning report</a> showing how the state had been captured at Zuma’s behest. Again, the ANC foiled attempts to remove him.</p>
<p>He only resigned on <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43066443?utm_source=Media+Review+for+February+15%2C+2018&utm_campaign=Media+Review+for+February+15%2C+2018&utm_medium=email">14 February 2018</a>. This was not so much for his misdemeanours but because he was no longer the president of the ANC.</p>
<h2>What needs to happen</h2>
<p>The ANC’s indecisiveness does it no good. Its claim that he has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuu_FEGQc0A">“walked away”</a> from the party and is therefore no longer a member is wishful thinking. He has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/zuma-says-he-will-not-vote-anc-south-africas-election-2023-12-16/">made it clear</a> he will remain an ANC member.</p>
<p>The only way to terminate his membership is to expel him. This should have happened much earlier, at least before the ANC’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-marks-its-112th-year-with-an-eye-on-national-elections-but-its-record-is-patchy-and-future-uncertain-221125">112th anniversary festivities </a> earlier this month. They could have used the platform to explain the decision to cleanse the party of those who debase it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from National Research Foundation(NRF). He is affiliated with the South African Association of Public Administration and Management(SAAPAM).</span></em></p>The ANC tied itself in knots defending Zuma’s destructive bad behaviour in the past. Acting against him now would require it to own up to its sins.Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2189662023-12-12T09:12:23Z2023-12-12T09:12:23ZSouth Africa’s foreign policy under Ramaphosa has seen diplomatic tools being used to provide leadership as global power relations shift<p>Leadership plays a critical role in diplomacy. What quality of leadership does South Africa need if it’s to secure its international interests?</p>
<p>This is a question my colleagues and I have had the opportunity to reflect on in researching and writing about foreign policy since the late 1980s.</p>
<p>Presidents <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a> and <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a> displayed <a href="https://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/85/Strategic%20Review/Vol36(2)/04-le-pere-pp-31-56.zp39575.pdf">assertive African and global south leadership</a>. Their successor, Jacob Zuma, did much to reverse the country’s international moral standing. </p>
<p>In our view, the current president, <a href="https://www.dpme.gov.za/about/Pages/President-Cyril-Ramaphosa.aspx">Cyril Ramaphosa</a>, is restoring the country’s standing and role as a global moral leader. He has done so in an environment in which seismic changes are taking place in the balance of power between the world’s largest nations.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa’s messages, and tone of delivery, suggest an assertive southern leader who understands how the world works. He’s not afraid to challenge the dominant narrative and is prepared to put global south demands on the table.</p>
<p>In his speech on Africa Day on 25 May 2023, Ramaphosa <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-cyril-ramaphosa-africa-day-celebrations#:%7E:text=There%20can%20be%20no%20better,are%20optimistic%20about%20our%20future.">said</a>:</p>
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<p>We are … witnessing Africa being dragged into conflicts far beyond our own borders. Some countries, including our own, are being threatened with penalties for pursuing an independent foreign policy and for adopting a position of non-alignment. South Africa has not been and will not be drawn into a contest between global powers. We will maintain our position on the peaceful resolution of conflict wherever those conflicts occur.</p>
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<p>In a similar assertive tone, at a Financing for Development Summit in New York in September 2023, he <a href="https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/reform-international-financial-architecture-president-ramaphosa">said</a>:</p>
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<p>… at a time when solidarity was needed most, agreed international commitments were not honoured. Principles such as common but differentiated responsibilities are not being respected. Four decades since the right to development was established by the United Nations as a human right, the failure to act on commitments to support development is deepening the divide between the global north and south.</p>
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<p>These statements reflect Ramaphosa’s shrewd reading of a fundamental shift in the global balance of forces. Over the past year it is this that has informed his assertiveness in foreign policy matters. As a result, we argue, he has used the tools of diplomacy to lead Africa and the global south to shape the architecture of a new world order currently being forged.</p>
<h2>Facing a complex world</h2>
<p>However, Ramaphosa and his administration’s ability to advance South Africa‘s interests globally has became much more complex because of rising geopolitical tensions. </p>
<p>In particular, Russia’s invasion of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/tag/russia-ukraine-war">Ukraine in February 2022</a> brought into sharp relief the longstanding tense relationship between Russia seeking recognition as a recovering superpower and the west’s pursuit of containment. </p>
<p>The conflagration has serious consequences for the world at large, including Africa, already struggling with food and energy insecurities. </p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-and-russia-president-cyril-ramaphosas-foreign-policy-explained-198430">South Africa and Russia: President Cyril Ramaphosa's foreign policy explained</a>
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<p>Under these conditions, Pretoria struggled to formulate a clear position. It initially condemned the Russian intervention in Ukraine. It later took a <a href="https://www.dirco.gov.za/south-african-government-calls-for-a-peaceful-resolution-of-the-escalating-conflict-between-the-russian-federation-and-ukraine/">more neutral position</a> – “<a href="https://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/2023/the-state-of-non-alignment-in-south-africas-foreign-policy/">non-alignment</a>”. </p>
<p>Yet it became clear that Ramaphosa was reading a fundamental shift in the global balance of forces. One of his responses was to <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/statement-president-cyril-ramaphosa-78th-session-united-nations-general-assembly-united-nations%2C-new-york">call for reform of the UN Security Council</a>. </p>
<p>He also led an eclectic assembly of African leaders on a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/africas-russia-ukraine-peace-mission-what-can-it-achieve-206201">peace mission</a>” to Ukraine and Russia. It was initially scorned by pro-western commentators. The benefits of the initiative for Africa are becoming apparent, particularly in <a href="https://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/foreign-and-security-policy/peace-african-style-6936/">enhancing food security</a>.</p>
<p>But the turning point in Ramaphosa’s increasingly assertive foreign policy conduct came with the hosting of the <a href="https://brics2023.gov.za/">15th Brics Summit</a> in South Africa in August. His government succeeded in hosting, chairing and steering the group to new levels of cooperation. Ramaphosa’s congenial personality played no small role in the successes.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/address-president-cyril-ramaphosa-outcomes-15th-brics-summit%2C-union-buildings%2C-tshwane">Achievements</a> include facilitating new trade relations between Africa and Brics, strengthening the <a href="https://www.ndb.int/">New Development Bank</a>, and forging an agreement to <a href="https://theconversation.com/brics-expansion-six-more-nations-are-set-to-join-what-theyre-buying-into-212200">expand membership</a> to make Brics more inclusive.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-foreign-policy-new-paper-sets-the-scene-but-falls-short-on-specifics-188253">South Africa's foreign policy: new paper sets the scene, but falls short on specifics</a>
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<p>These breakthroughs are not to be underestimated. Reshaping the global order opens the space for an emboldened global south to co-determine the future.</p>
<p>His seeming over-dependence on consultation, seen by many as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/ramaphosas-famous-negotiating-skills-have-failed-him-heres-why-130393">liability</a>, stands him in good stead. Because he is comfortable with exercising soft power, he speaks boldly at international meetings. It has also given him the ability to position South Africa prominently, and on the right side of history, on the tragedy in Gaza, <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/opening-remarks-president-cyril-ramaphosa-extraordinary-joint-meeting-brics-leaders-and-leaders-invited-brics-members-situation-middle-east">seeking peace, not war</a>. </p>
<h2>Criticism and scepticism</h2>
<p>Some foreign policy practitioners and scholars are sceptical of Ramaphosa as a foreign policy leader. An entire volume of the respectable <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/south-african-foreign-policy-review-volume-4">South African Foreign Policy Review</a> is dedicated to this theme – the decline of South Africa’s global moral standing. </p>
<p>Many commentators, including some from the <a href="https://www.thebrenthurstfoundation.org/">Brenthurst Foundation</a> think-tank, view South African foreign policy through domestic lenses, coloured by their aversion to the African National Congress which Ramaphosa leads and which runs the country. </p>
<p>From this perspective they are quick to denounce South African foreign policy decision-makers as <a href="https://bridgebooks.co.za/products/good-bad-ugly">lacking awareness of the objective of international relations and diplomacy</a>. The minister of foreign affairs, <a href="https://www.dirco.gov.za/dr-grace-naledi-mandisa-pandor/">Naledi Pandor</a>, in particular, <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-11-07-pandor-calls-for-immediate-ceasefire-in-gaza-and-an-end-to-israels-collective-punishment-on-all-palestinians/">has attracted scorn</a>. In her case, it could be as a result of her <a href="https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/minister-naledi-pandor-ongoing-israeli-palestinian-conflict-07-nov-2023">outspoken position</a> on the Israel-Palestine conflict.</p>
<p>To understand the tough judgments made of the government’s foreign policy it’s useful to look at them against the backdrop of domestic politics. Domestic politics and foreign affairs are interwoven. What happens at home affects a country’s global standing. </p>
<p>In African foreign policy analytical circles, there is a <a href="https://www.rienner.com/title/African_Foreign_Policies_Power_and_Process">belief</a> that a weak president embraces international crises as it redirects the attention from failures at home.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa is indeed embattled on the home front. He was meant to put a stop to <a href="https://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">years of abuse</a> and <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">high corruption</a> under his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, and <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2021-08-12-political-platitudes-unpacking-ramaphosas-real-battle-in-aftermath-of-zondo-commission-testimony/">repair the damage</a> he caused. </p>
<p>Euphoria and unreserved support for a “reformist” president turned into <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/7/22/ex-president-mbeki-rebukes-ramaphosa-predicts-sas-arab-spring">disappointment and cynicism</a> as his efforts at “house cleaning” got bogged down <a href="https://witspress.co.za/page/detail/State-Capture-in-South-Africa/?k=9781776148318">in the intricacies of power play</a> in the ANC.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/aziz-pahad-the-unassuming-south-african-diplomat-who-skilfully-mediated-crises-in-africa-and-beyond-214648">Aziz Pahad: the unassuming South African diplomat who skilfully mediated crises in Africa, and beyond</a>
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<p>Nevertheless, we would argue that if Ramaphosa survives the forces of disruption at home as his ruling party <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-12-07-anc-veteran-of-60-years-mavuso-msimang-painfully-severs-ties-tenders-devastating-resignation/">decomposes</a>, he will surely be counted among those who read global events, understood that there was a need for a stronger voice from the global south, and acted to make it happen.</p>
<p>He should also be remembered for breathing new life into the <a href="https://au.int/en/about/vision">vision of the African Union</a>: an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthoni van Nieuwkerk is affiliated with Umlambo Foundation.</span></em></p>President Cyril Ramaphosa’s messages, and tone of delivery, suggest an assertive leader representing the interests of the global south.Anthoni van Nieuwkerk, Professor of International and Diplomacy Studies, Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2146482023-09-29T15:56:49Z2023-09-29T15:56:49ZAziz Pahad: the unassuming South African diplomat who skilfully mediated crises in Africa, and beyond<p><a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/funeral-category-2-honour-mr-aziz-pahad-29-sep-2023-0000">Aziz Goolam Pahad</a>, who has died at the age of 82, was a South African anti-apartheid activist, politician and deputy minister of foreign affairs in the post-1994 government. </p>
<p>Together with a small group of foreign policy analysts, I worked with Aziz over the span of 30 years, shaping the post-apartheid South African government’s approach to international relations and its foreign policy. We spent countless hours debating foreign affairs and the numerous crises and challenges government had to face as a relative “newcomer” in continental African and global affairs. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/aziz-goolam-pahad#:%7E:text=Aziz%20Pahad%20was%20born%20on,University%20of%20the%20Witwatersrand%2C%20Johannesburg.">Aziz</a> was generous with giving his time to formulate positions that would allow for the unlocking of a crisis. He remained open to intellectual challenges throughout his career. He was a keen participant in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10220461.2015.1090912">academic research projects</a> dealing with <a href="https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/items/eb0f44d3-a550-4740-8db1-6463330b0f82">foreign policy</a>.</p>
<p>He made a monumental contribution to the struggle against apartheid and colonial oppression in South Africa, the continent and the Middle East. And he contributed significantly to the development and execution of a progressive African-centred foreign policy doctrine. Sadly, towards the end of his career as a diplomat he witnessed the <a href="https://www.pulp.up.ac.za/images/pulp/books/edited_collections/foreign_policy/SA%20Foreign%20Policy%20Book%20Chapter%201.pdf">slow decline</a> of South Africa’s <a href="https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/suedafrika/18180.pdf">stature and influence</a> in global affairs. </p>
<h2>The Mandela and Mbeki years</h2>
<p>Under presidents <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/nelson-mandela-presidency-1994-1999">Nelson Mandela</a> (1994-1999) and <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a> (1999-2008), South African diplomats who’d sharpened their skills during many years of exile became sought-after as facilitators and mediators. Under their guidance Africa converted the Organisation of African Unity into the African Union, and reset relations with the international community via the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. </p>
<p>South African diplomats were articulate and visible in the corridors of the United Nations and in gatherings such as the Group of 7, Group of 20 and the Non-Aligned Movement. They were able to advance Africa’s quest for peace and development. In Africa, political and security crises, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Burundi, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3518768">were given attention</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-and-russia-president-cyril-ramaphosas-foreign-policy-explained-198430">South Africa and Russia: President Cyril Ramaphosa's foreign policy explained</a>
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<p>However this “golden era” of South Africa’s foreign policy, as fellow scholar Chris Landsberg calls it, was unable to withstand the corroding effects of foreign meddling in African affairs. Neither could it withstand the <a href="https://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">grand corruption</a> which reached its apogee in South Africa under former president <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">Jacob Zuma</a> (May 2009 - February 2018). </p>
<h2>Preparatory years</h2>
<p>Aziz was born <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/aziz-goolam-pahad">on 25 December 1940</a> in the former Transvaal, the current North West province in South Africa. His parents were <a href="https://theconversation.com/essop-pahad-a-diligent-communist-driven-by-an-optimistic-vision-of-a-non-racial-south-africa-210413">Amina and Goolam Pahad</a>, activists in the Transvaal Indian Congress, a political organisation established in the early 1900s by Mahatma Gandhi and others. The congress became involved in the broader anti-apartheid struggle in later years. His elder brother, Essop, also became an activist. Essop passed away <a href="https://theconversation.com/essop-pahad-a-diligent-communist-driven-by-an-optimistic-vision-of-a-non-racial-south-africa-210413">in July</a>.</p>
<p>In 1963, Aziz completed a degree in sociology and Afrikaans at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. As an activist, he was served with a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/aziz-goolam-pahad">banning order</a> and arrested on several occasions. After the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia Trial</a> from 1963 to 1964, in which ten leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) were tried for sabotage designed to overthrow the apartheid system of racial oppression, he and Essop left South Africa and went into exile.</p>
<p>Aziz spent some time in Angola and Zimbabwe but lived mostly in London. He completed a master’s degree in politics and international relations <a href="https://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/61351">at the University of Sussex</a>. He worked full-time for the exiled ANC and supported the development of the <a href="https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/anti-apartheid-struggle-south-africa-1912-1992/">Anti-Apartheid Movement</a>.</p>
<p>Even before his return to South Africa in 1990, he contributed to the transition from apartheid to democracy, a role well described in his book <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Insurgent_Diplomat_Civil_Talks_or_Civil.html?id=mbR9BAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">Insurgent Diplomat: Civil Talks or Civil War?</a>. </p>
<p>Aziz worked closely with Thabo Mbeki, at the time head of the exiled ANC’s international relations department, and a small team of academics in formulating the ANC’s position on foreign policy. The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/anc_foreign_policy_perspective_in_a_democratic_south_africa.pdf">paper</a> formed part of preparations by the ANC and its <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03161.htm">alliance partners</a>, the <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a> and the <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/">Congress of South African Trade Unions</a>, for governing the country. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-foreign-policy-new-paper-sets-the-scene-but-falls-short-on-specifics-188253">South Africa's foreign policy: new paper sets the scene, but falls short on specifics</a>
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<p>The foreign policy paper provided a broad roadmap for diplomats post-apartheid. It eventually shaped government’s more formal foreign policy of 2011, entitled Building a Better World: The Diplomacy of Ubuntu. In the mid-1990s, Aziz was instrumental in the establishment, with support from the German government, of an ANC-aligned think-tank called the <a href="http://www.globaldialoguefoundation.org/">Foundation of Global Dialogue</a>, run by foreign policy expert and academic <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/authors-editors/garth-le-pere">Garth le Pere</a> and myself. It lives on as the <a href="https://igd.org.za/">Institute of Global Dialogue</a>, based at the University of South Africa.</p>
<h2>Role in government</h2>
<p>Following the victory of the ANC in South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, Aziz was elected to parliament. From there, he was appointed by President Mandela as deputy minister of foreign affairs. He was re-elected to parliament in 1999 and 2004, and kept his position as <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/aziz-goolam-hoosein-pahad-mr-0">deputy minister of foreign affairs </a> throughout the Mandela and Mbeki presidencies. </p>
<p>Holding the post for 14 years meant that he was able to create and nurture a wide network of political, academic and diplomatic connections. This enabled him to play an unassuming but key mediating and facilitation role dealing with major crises on the continent and beyond.</p>
<p>But Aziz also showed his activist roots when he <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/war-can-be-averted-says-pahad-101327">spoke out against</a> the American-led <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Iraq-War">invasion of Iraq in 2003</a> and the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/everyone-says-the-libya-intervention-was-a-failure-theyre-wrong/">Nato-led invasion</a> of Libya and assassination of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. He supported the <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/president-mourns-passing-former-deputy-minister-foreign-affairs-aziz-pahad">Palestinian struggle</a> for recognition over many decades.</p>
<p>Aziz resigned from government and parliament in 2008, shortly after Mbeki was removed as president of the ANC <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president/">in 2007</a>.</p>
<h2>The ‘diplomat-scholar’</h2>
<p>In retirement, Aziz remained active as a “diplomat-scholar”. He played a prominent role, with his brother Essop, in a small but influential think-tank, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConcernedAfricansForum/">Concerned Africans Forum</a>. In 2015 he headed the short-lived South African Council on International Relations.</p>
<p>The council was established by the government as a body of experts and a sounding board for senior decision-makers. However, its semi-autonomous identity brought it into conflict with the ruling party’s foreign affairs structures. Politicians allowed it to wither away. </p>
<p>In 2018 the administration of President Cyril Ramaphosa asked Aziz to lead a commission of experts <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-04-17-pahad-panel-missteps-noted-but-no-overhaul-of-sa-foreign-policy-on-the-cards/">to review South Africa’s international relations</a>. In a sad repeat of the council’s demise, the commission was never given a proper hearing and its value remains untapped.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-time-south-africas-foreign-policy-was-driven-by-ideas-again-50407">Why it's time South Africa's foreign policy was driven by ideas (again)</a>
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<p>This is perhaps illustrative of the reality of policy-making in dynamic settings such as South Africa’s foreign affairs. The essence of Aziz’s contribution to a progressive African-oriented worldview was ultimately ignored by the foreign policy mandarins. </p>
<p>The country will miss having a “diplomat-scholar” of his calibre to turn to for sage advice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214648/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthoni van Nieuwkerk is affiliated with Umlambo Foundation.</span></em></p>South Africa will miss having a “diplomat-scholar” of his calibre to turn to for sage advice.Anthoni van Nieuwkerk, Professor of International and Diplomacy Studies, Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2104132023-07-26T14:31:46Z2023-07-26T14:31:46ZEssop Pahad: a diligent communist driven by an optimistic vision of a non-racial South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539332/original/file-20230725-17-w2ef8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Essop Pahad was a confidant of former president Thabo Mbeki.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bongani Mnguni/Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The death of South African freedom struggle stalwart <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/essop-goolam-pahad-mr">Essop Pahad</a> (84) <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2023-07-06-essop-pahad-close-confidant-of-thabo-mbeki-dies-aged-84/">on 6 July 2023</a> prompted <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/analysis/tribute-chirpy-and-thoughtful-essop-pahads-legacy-will-forever-be-remembered-in-sas-history-20230706">tributes</a> from his former comrades. There were also less respectful obituaries referring to him as Thabo Mbeki’s “<a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/obituaries/obituary-essop-pahad-mbekis-consigliere-would-fight-you-intellectually-too-20230707">consiglieri</a>”, because of his role as the former president’s “right-hand man”.</p>
<p>Any examination of Pahad’s full political record will take you back to the heroic phases of South Africa’s liberation history, when prospects for a democratic South African government seemed very remote. As a teenager in the 1950s he was busy in the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress. This was the equivalent of the youth league of the liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), for Indian South Africans. In those days, reflecting apartheid’s distinctions, even radical resistance to it was racially differentiated.</p>
<p>He was one of a small group of activists who, in the 1950s and early 1960s, made a decisive contribution in pulling the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03465.htm">Congress Alliance</a> – a front of organisations allied to the ANC – leftwards, and encouraging an optimistic vision of a future non-racial South Africa.</p>
<p>In my own <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/red-road-to-freedom/">research</a> on the South African Communist Party’s history, groups like the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress were game-changers. They were influential despite their small organised followings. Understanding Pahad’s political ascent helps to illuminate the history of the South African left and the wider liberation movement in which it immersed itself. He belonged to a political network constituted as much by friendships as shared ideas.</p>
<p>At the congress’s annual general meeting in 1958 he proposed a resolution on sport. Sadly, that is all the meeting’s agenda tells us. I’d like to think it was about cricket and its segregation, a key preoccupation for young Indian activists at that time, for Pahad was a lifelong cricket fan.</p>
<p>In old age he was a regular visitor to the Long Room at the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/wanderers-cricket-stadium-johannesburg">Wanderers Cricket Stadium</a> in Johannesburg, one reward for becoming a notable that he would enjoy. As a student at Sussex University between 1965 and 1970, he once organised a party for the visiting West Indian test side. Inheriting a family ethic of generous hospitality, he provided such a warm reception for the visitors that the following day they were <a href="http://cricmash.com/society-and-politics/mbeki-pahad-and-the-1966-west-indians">so badly hungover they lost their match</a>.</p>
<h2>The early years</h2>
<p>Pahad’s childhood was politically configured. His parents Goolam and Amina Pahad belonged to the group that directed the Indian congresses in the mid-1940s into confrontation with a government seeking to dispossess Indian landowners. Goolam was a successful businessman and he owned property in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/destruction-sophiatown">Sophiatown</a>. Pahad employed ANC leader <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/sisulu-walter-1912-2003/">Walter Sisulu</a>, supporting his efforts to become an estate agent.</p>
<p>Through Sisulu, the Pahads became friendly with the angry young men who would become ANC leaders in 1949, often providing them with food and a place to sleep so they could avoid late <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">night pass law</a> arrests for being in town after the curfew.</p>
<p>Even without guests, the Pahads’ apartment would have been crowded. Goolam and Amina Pahad had moved to the inner city of Johannesburg shortly after Essop’s birth in 1939 in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/essop-goolam-pahad">Schweitzer-Reneke</a>, in today’s North West province. They wanted good schooling for their five sons.</p>
<p>Both Essop and his younger brother <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/aziz-goolam-hoosein-pahad-mr-0">Aziz</a> did well enough to obtain entry to the University of the Witwatersrand. This was despite or perhaps because of their participation in one of the Congress Alliance-sponsored “Cultural Clubs” that were set to protest the introduction of the inferior <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/anc-protest-bantu-education-act/">Bantu Education</a> for the black majority.</p>
<p>The clandestine Communist Party’s key theoretician <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/michael-alan-harmel-posthumous">Michael Harmel</a> led the club that they joined. Perhaps through his agency, Pahad joined the party. The Transvaal Indian Youth Congress was led by party members and its political affiliations were very evident in its journal, New Youth. Pahad remained politically animated as a university student, joining the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress’ executive.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-communists-have-shaped-south-africas-history-over-100-years-165556">How communists have shaped South Africa's history over 100 years</a>
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<p>In mid-1962 <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safricas-once-exiled-anti-apartheid-veteran-essop-pahad-dies-84-2023-07-06/">he was arrested</a> for trying to organise a strike, a contribution to the ANC’s continuing effort to secure a national constitutional convention. By this time he had formed a friendship with <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki-mr-0">Thabo Mbeki</a>, whom he got to know after they met at the Rand Youth Club, a key assembly point for activists, sponsored by Sisulu. Mbeki was then staying in Johannesburg, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/thabo-mbeki-1942-timeline">completing his A-levels through correspondence</a> after expulsion from Lovedale College for leading a class boycott.</p>
<h2>Exile years</h2>
<p>Pahad’s friendship with Mbeki deepened when he joined him in Britain after his departure from South Africa in 1964, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safricas-once-exiled-anti-apartheid-veteran-essop-pahad-dies-84-2023-07-06/">prompted by a banning order</a>. Mbeki was enrolled at Sussex University and he persuaded Pahad to register. Pahad would complete <a href="https://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/61351">an MA and a doctorate at Sussex </a> between 1965 and 1971, producing a workmanlike dissertation about the South African Indian Congresses.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Essop Pahad addresses a protest meeting in Amsterdam in 1985.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sepia Times/Universal Images Group/Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>Mbeki also <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/columnists/guestcolumn/excerpt-while-thabo-mbeki-moved-quietly-essop-pahad-would-stand-up-and-shout-20230707">introduced him to Meg Shorrock</a>, whom he married in 1966. That year with Mbeki he helped establish a non-racial ANC Youth and Student Section. He was immersed in campus student politics as well as organising Vietnam solidarity events. He spent a year in 1973 at the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02426/05lv02626.htm">Institute of Social Sciences</a> in Moscow.</p>
<p>Pahad’s most conspicuous activity during his exile was his deployment in Prague at the <a href="https://www.servantleader.co.za/essop">World Marxist Review</a>; acknowledgement by the Communist Party of his status as a reliable theoretician. He and Meg lived in Prague between 1975 and 1985, and their two daughters were born there, attending Czech schools. I interviewed them in 2018 because I was exploring the South African Communist Party’s Czech connections.</p>
<p>The Pahads remembered a happy period of their life. They found plenty to admire in post-Prague Spring Czechoslovakia, though they both perceived that the Czech party had lost public support. Back in London, Pahad would work closely with Mbeki, acting as an intermediary in the discreet diplomacy that Mbeki was conducting with South African officials and businessmen.</p>
<h2>Right-hand man</h2>
<p>Pahad would return to South Africa in 1990 following the unbanning of the liberation movements, making a new home for his family in Johannesburg. Unlike Mbeki, Pahad remained a communist. One view of his continuing affiliation is that he remained in the party at Mbeki’s behest to watch over its internal affairs, but there is no reason to doubt his continuing commitment to communism. At that time Mbeki’s future succession to the presidency was uncertain and the party was one key constituency. But it is true that Pahad’s subsequent political career would be defined by his status as Mbeki’s trusted friend, his best man as it were, a function he actually performed at Mbeki’s wedding <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/pahad-gives-his-perspective-418057">in 1974</a>.</p>
<p>So, during the <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">presidency of Nelson Mandela</a> (10 May 1994-16 June 1999) he served as Mbeki’s “parliamentary counsellor”. He was essentially responsible for keeping the ANC House of Assembly caucus in order, and after Mbeki’s accession to the presidency, Pahad became a <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/essop-goolam-pahad-mr">minister in the president’s office</a>. </p>
<p>These were not posts that would define him as a policymaker. Rather his reputation as a member of government was as an “enforcer” quelling rebellion. “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/23/mbeki.southafrica">Who the fuck do you think you are, questioning the integrity of the government, the ministers and the president?</a>”,
he admonished the ANC members of the Select Committee on Public Accounts who wanted a full inquiry into the corrupt 1999 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4006895">multi-billion-rand arms contract</a>.</p>
<p>Subsequently he was a vigorous defender of Mbeki’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-mbekis-character-and-his-aids-denialism-are-intimately-linked-54766">positions on HIV and Aids</a>. Pahad himself believed that Mbeki was unfairly characterised as an Aids “denialist”.</p>
<h2>Diligent</h2>
<p>When Pahad was given a job, he did it efficiently. He surprised even his critics with the diligence with which he supported the offices placed under his authority as minister, for example urging municipalities to “mainstream” disability rights. </p>
<p>Characteristically loyal, he resigned when Mbeki was displaced <a href="https://www.gcis.gov.za/content/newsroom/events/pahad-briefs-media-cabinet-resignations-24-sep-08">in 2008</a>.</p>
<p>In retirement he presided over the <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/">South African Democratic Education Trust</a>, the incubator of a remarkably non-partisan multi-volume history of the liberation struggle, founded his own journal, <a href="https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/The_Thinker/about/editorialTeam">The Thinker</a>, and remained actively engaged on the editorial board of <a href="https://print.media.co.za/new-age/">New Age</a>, the newspaper funded by the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22513410">Gupta family</a>, which stands accused of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-itll-take-for-the-guptas-to-face-corruption-charges-in-south-africa-184952">orchestrating industrial scale corruption</a> under former president Jacob Zuma.</p>
<p>He had <a href="https://amabhungane.org/stories/guptaleaks-how-ajay-gupta-was-trusted-with-crafting-sas-global-image/">invited Ajay Gupta</a> to join the International Marketing Council in 2000, an appointment that he subsequently regretted. He may have had other personal regrets but unlike many of his comrades, he rarely spoke about his own political journey. </p>
<p>His life had its own integrity, defined by fixed loyalties and enduring friendships; not such a bad epitaph.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Lodge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When Essop Pahad was given a job, he did it efficiently. He surprised even his critics with his diligence.Tom Lodge, Emeritus Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of LimerickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2039352023-05-24T05:47:18Z2023-05-24T05:47:18Z60 years of African unity: what’s failed and what’s succeeded<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528198/original/file-20230525-27-v5unbk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (C) and Ghana's founder and first President Kwame Nkrumah (L) during the formation of the Organisation of African Unity.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">STR/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Africa Day this year marks 60 years since the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/organisation-african-unity-oau">founding</a> of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The anniversary begs the question: How much of the vision of the OAU’s founding fathers has been realised 60 years on? What would not be there but for the efforts of the organisation and its successor the <a href="https://au.int/">African Union</a>?</p>
<p>There were two competing visions lobbying at the founding. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s president, in his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KKxpuxpVfc">Africa must Unite</a> speech, argued the pan-African case for continental federalism, for a Union of African States, with one continental diplomatic corps, one department of defence, and a common market.</p>
<p>He was hugely outvoted by other presidents refusing to give up their sovereignty. So the OAU, formed on 25 May 1963, was instead modelled on the Organisation of American States. It was an inter-governmental organisation whose charter pledged it to not interfere in the internal affairs of its member states – even in the event of massacres. This followed the precedents of the UN <a href="https://www.un.org/en/">United Nations</a>, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Arab-League">Arab League</a>, and the <a href="https://usoas.usmission.gov/our-relationship/about-oas/">Organisation of American States</a>, and would soon be followed by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).</p>
<p>The OAU was committed to decolonisation, including the end of apartheid in South Africa and the settler regime in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). It contributed herculean diplomatic lobbying and sanctions to achieve this. Its <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41394216">Liberation Committee</a>, based in Dar es Salaam (the Tanzanian commercial capital), donated weapons and funds to the insurgencies in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, and Mozambique.</p>
<p>The OAU was a state-centric realisation of pan-Africanism. It launched a variety of continental NGOs, which were allocated to one or other member state to host. Space allows for only one example: it supported the launch of the <a href="https://panafricanwritersassociation.com/">Pan-African Writers’ Association</a>. Ghana pledged to provide it with premises for headquarters.</p>
<p>One development not anticipated when the OAU was founded in 1963 was the subsequent establishment of regional economic communities. There are over a dozen of these. Out of the <a href="https://au.int/en/recs">eight officially recognised</a> by the AU, the most significant are the <a href="https://ecowas.int/">Economic Community of West African States</a> (ECOWAS), the <a href="https://www.sadc.int/">Southern African Development Community </a>(SADC), and the <a href="https://www.eac.int/">East African Community </a> (EAC). These three are each free trade areas and, on paper at least, the ECOWAS and EAC are custom unions. These each provide stepping-stones towards that continental common market that Nkrumah had lobbied for back in 1963.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-african-union-at-20-a-lot-has-been-achieved-despite-many-flaws-175932">The African Union at 20: a lot has been achieved despite many flaws</a>
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<p>As a political scientist who has <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt9qf58g">researched</a> the OAU and AU, I argue that it has performed far better than almost all of its global counterparts, though it has also experienced several shortcomings.</p>
<h2>The hits</h2>
<p>One success of the AU is its growing prestige. After its founding in 2002, Wikipedia did not consider it merited an entry until 2011. But today 50 non-African states <a href="https://www.usau.usmission.gov/our-relationship/policy-history/">accredit ambassadors to the AU</a>. The diaspora demanded inclusion during South African president <a href="https://au.int/en/cpau">Thabo Mbeki’s leadership</a>, and is now formally recognised as the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43526692">“sixth region”</a> of the AU <a href="https://diasporadigitalnews.com/sixth-region-of-africas-official-flag-launched/#:%7E:text=In%202003%2C%20the%20African%20Union,sixth%20region'%20of%20the%20continent.">since 2003</a>. Caribbean nations, members of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Caribbean-Community">CARRICOM</a>, recently started <a href="https://au.int/fr/node/19489">formal links</a> with the AU: these are African-descendant nations, abducted out of Africa during centuries of slave trade.</p>
<p>The AU architecture for peacekeeping and peacemaking has no peer in the Organisation of American States, Arab League, or ASEAN. While most AU organs meet only twice per year, the <a href="https://au.int/en/psc">Peace and Security Council</a> has met twice per month since its founding in 2004.</p>
<p>Dozens of its ad hoc military missions help governments with the suppression of terrorism everywhere from the Sahel to northern Mozambique. Various AU and regional economic community peacekeepers have served in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s numerous civil wars for decades.</p>
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<img alt="Soldiers carry the flags of the African Union and Uganda next to a plane." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522798/original/file-20230425-3274-p3ifr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522798/original/file-20230425-3274-p3ifr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522798/original/file-20230425-3274-p3ifr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522798/original/file-20230425-3274-p3ifr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522798/original/file-20230425-3274-p3ifr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522798/original/file-20230425-3274-p3ifr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522798/original/file-20230425-3274-p3ifr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Some of the first African Union peacekeepers arrive in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in March 2007.</span>
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<p>The AU seeks a role in global governance. It tries to negotiate that Africa speaks with one voice in the halls of international organisations. Since some of the most important economic decisions about Africa are made outside the continent, the urgency of this is self-explanatory. The AU has its own embryonic diplomatic corps, with permanent diplomatic missions <a href="https://au.int/en/commission/permanent-mission-european-union-and-acp-brussels-office">in Brussels</a> (to negotiate with the EU), <a href="https://lejournaldelafrique.com/en/african-union-opens-permanent-mission-in-china/?noamp=mobile">Beijing</a>,<a href="https://au.int/en/office/permanent-delegation-league-arab-states-cairo-office"> Cairo</a> (to negotiate with the Arab League) <a href="https://www.africanunion-un.org/">in New York</a> (at the United Nations), and <a href="https://au.int/en/mission-usa">in Washington</a> (to negotiate with the World Bank and IMF).</p>
<p>Kwame Nkrumah appealed for an African common market back in 1963. The <a href="https://au.int/en/treaties/treaty-establishing-african-economic-community">1991 Treaty of Abuja</a> proposed an elaborate 34-year schedule to achieve this. The first real step towards such economic integration is the <a href="https://au-afcfta.org/">African Continental Free Trade Area</a> - headed by a South African Secretary-General, <a href="https://au-afcfta.org/secretary-general/">Wamkele Mene</a>. Clearly, this will take at least a decade to substantially achieve. But the prize of <a href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/international-trade-can-help-africa-grow">“defragmenting Africa”</a>, as the World Bank calls it, will be worth the herculean lobbying and negotiating it will take. The <a href="https://au-afcfta.org/">African Continental Free Trade Area</a> is currently negotiating “rules of origin” and dispute-settling mechanisms as its opening steps.</p>
<p>The AU tries to be norms-making. The <a href="https://au.int/en/treaties/treaty-establishing-african-economic-community">1991 Treaty of Abuja</a> must surely be the world’s most ambitious attempt to import lock, stock, and barrel the institutions and norms of the EU into another continent, which was of course only partially successful.</p>
<p>Few AU members have implemented the <a href="https://au.int/en/treaties/african-charter-democracy-elections-and-governance">Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Good Governance</a>. But a majority of countries have one by one signed up to the <a href="https://www.aprm-au.org/page-about/">African Peer Review Mechanism</a> which, like the AU, has just celebrated its 20th anniversary. This is part of the peer pressure towards constitutionalism, and against autocrats.</p>
<h2>The misses</h2>
<p>One failure of the AU is in not preventing serial <a href="https://www.idea.int/blog/new-model-coups-d%C3%A9tat-africa-younger-less-violent-more-popular">coups-de-etat</a>. There have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-west-africa-has-had-so-many-coups-and-how-to-prevent-more-176577">more than 200 coups</a> following the era of independence in the 1960s. The obvious reason is that the continental body never sends a military intervention to suppress the putchists, to capture them and bring them to trial for treason. It limits itself to diplomatic pressures against them, such as suspending their membership.</p>
<p>In 2016 the AU launched a campaign to <a href="http://www.peaceau.org/en/article/au-retreat-to-elaborate-a-roadmap-on-practical-steps-to-silence-the-guns-in-africa-by-2020-concludes-in-lusaka-zambia">“silence the guns by 2020”</a>. Unhappily, it <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-african-union-has-failed-to-silence-the-guns-and-some-solutions-139567">proved powerless to prevent</a> both coups and terrorist insurgencies from continuing, so the slogan was repackaged as <a href="https://issafrica.org/pscreport/psc-insights/staying-on-target-to-silence-the-guns-by-2030">“silence the guns by 2030”</a>. It remains to be seen if wars can be suppressed throughout the African continent by 2030.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-african-unions-conflict-early-warning-system-is-no-more-what-now-183469">The African Union's conflict early warning system is no more. What now?</a>
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<p>Another failure is in getting member states to <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/african-union-set-to-sanction-countries-for-non-payment/1314757">pay their annual dues</a>. Clearly, the current penalties of suspension, which only fully come into effect when a state falls two years behind in payments, is not a deterrent. The AU surely needs to follow the universal practice by banks - that if a customer falls more than two months behind in repaying a mortgage bond, full sanctions are implemented.</p>
<p>The AU often dispatches election observers to countries to monitor voting, and hopefully to deter vote-rigging in its various forms. It has been <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/election-observation-in-africa-put-to-the-test">criticised</a> for reluctance to censure incumbent regimes that tilt the playing field in the electoral contest for power.</p>
<h2>Cornerstone</h2>
<p>In conclusion, the AU compares well with its peers in developing countries such as ASEAN, Organisation of American States, and Arab League. The AU accomplishes more than the <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/">Commonwealth</a>, or the <a href="https://www.francophonie.org/francophonie-brief-1763">Francophonie</a>. Only the EU is way ahead – because its budget is three orders of magnitude larger than that of the AU.</p>
<p>The AU has put cornerstones in place towards realising the goals of the founders. The end of coups and civil wars; working towards establishing an African common market; and getting Africa to speak with one voice in global governance are worthy goals to persist in pursuing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203935/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the African National Congress, but writes this article in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>The African Union compares well to other continental unions. It accomplishes more than the Commonwealth or the Francophonie.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2055842023-05-18T08:13:22Z2023-05-18T08:13:22ZThe Plot to Save South Africa: masterful account of an assassination that nearly derailed efforts to end apartheid<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526549/original/file-20230516-24-mt7dsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chris Hani (R) after being elected secretary general of the South African Communist Party in December 1991. To his left is the former secretary general Jo Slovo.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walter Dhladhla/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I was about to set off to the airport on the morning of 10 April 1993 to cover the great American boxer Muhammad Ali’s arrival in Johannesburg when the news came through: <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/chris-hani">Chris Hani</a> had been <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/news/2016-03-10-remember-how-the-sunday-times-covered-chris-hanis-assassination/">murdered</a>. </p>
<p>Of all the African National Congress (ANC) leaders I’d met during a decade of underground membership during the 1980s, the one who impressed me the most was Hani.</p>
<p>From 1987 to 1992 Hani was chief of staff of the movement’s military wing, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a>, and leader of the South African Communist Party <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/chris-hani">from 1991 to 1993</a>. Intelligent, brave, warm and witty, he exuded the kind of energetic charm that made him a hugely compelling revolutionary. I spent time with him in 1987 and 1989 and felt then, and later, that he would have made a far better successor to Mandela than the anointed dauphin, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thabo-Mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a>.</p>
<p>The news of his assassination outside his home in Dawn Park, Boksburg, came as a shock. I found it difficult to focus on the appearance of Ali, who’d been a kind of hero of mine for more than 20 years.</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.jonathanball.co.za/component/virtuemart/the-plot-to-save-south-africa">recently released book</a>, The Plot to Save South Africa, journalist and author Justice Malala does a masterful job of telling the tale of Hani’s murder and the precarious spell that followed before his funeral. He describes the nine days that followed, days that contained the potential to scupper fragile negotiations to end apartheid and prompt prolonged chaos or worse. </p>
<p>The subtitle of this book – “The week Mandela averted civil war and forged a new nation” – is appropriately chosen.</p>
<p>The book is a gripping read for anyone interested in late 20th century history, and in the end of apartheid more specifically. Malala has done a fine job in making this not just an impressively researched record, but also a compelling, fast-moving tale.</p>
<h2>Narrative balance</h2>
<p>Malala, who was a young reporter at The Star at the time of the killing, is a talented story-teller, adept at weaving the required facts into a page-turning narrative. Each anecdotal vignette comes with the kind of vivid descriptive detail that is only possible with exhaustive research. He interviewed scores of the key players from all sides in this drama. He also had access to a wealth of archival material, allowing him to delve into the minds of the protagonists and to recount their movements, what they were wearing and the words they shared with each other. </p>
<p>He draws on his experience, discipline and flair as a writer to maintain the momentum all the way through to the funeral at the end. </p>
<p>The key player in this enthralling story is <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1993/mandela/biographical/">Nelson Mandela</a> who had been released after 27 years in prison in February 1990. He adored Hani, treating the 50-year-old as his son. He was overwhelmed with sadness. But he retained the clarity of purpose to hold back ANC supporters from wrecking the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">negotiations to end apartheid</a> that had started soon after Mandela’s release, and had resumed shortly before Hani’s murder, after a spell of suspension.</p>
<p>The assassins wanted the talks derailed. They hoped Hani’s death would ignite a civil war that would unleash the apartheid security forces against the ANC and the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03480.htm">Mass Democratic Movement</a>, an alliance of anti-apartheid groups, as never before.</p>
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<p>There was indeed an outpouring of rage, grief and violence following the murder. In the areas around Johannesburg and Pretoria alone 80 people were killed and hundreds injured in violence directly related to Hani’s assassination, with many more casualties in the rest of the country.</p>
<p>Most of the injuries and fatalities were due to the actions of the apartheid security forces and right-wing vigilantes. </p>
<p>But the outcome of the assassination was the opposite to the killers’ intentions. The incendiary climate following the murder focused minds on both sides. Mandela, his lead negotiator <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/cyril-ramaphosa-1952">Cyril Ramaphosa</a>, and other ANC leaders successfully used the moment to press for an election date and a <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03162.htm">Transitional Executive Council</a> to run the country until the first democratic election. This was hugely significant. It meant that the then ruling <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Party-political-party-South-Africa">National Party</a>, the party of apartheid, could no longer call the shots before the election. </p>
<p>Without the urgency injected into the negotiations process by the assassination, it is possible that it would have dragged on, and many more would have died.</p>
<p>The outcome was the opposite to the killers’ intentions. Immediately afterwards, power leaked away from the state president, FW de Klerk, the National Party and the security establishment, and flowed to Mandela, the ANC and the Mass Democratic Movement.</p>
<p>In his accounts of these killings Malala retains narrative balance, giving space to all of the players. For example, he devotes several pages to the murder by ANC activists of the liberal anti-apartheid teacher and activist Ally Weakley, who was tragically mistaken for a right-wing vigilante.</p>
<h2>A far-right plot</h2>
<p>The book starts with Mandela receiving news of the murder and quickly segues to the movements of the two men who would be convicted, the Polish immigrant <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-63887332">Janusz Walus</a>, who pulled the trigger, and his mentor, the Conservative Party MP <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02167/04lv02264/05lv02267/06lv02268/07lv02273.htm">Clive Derby-Lewis</a>, and also those who assisted them, including Derby-Lewis’s wife, Gaye, and the journalist <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2007/white-supremacist-arthur-kemp-steps-leader-neo-nazi-group-national-alliance">Arthur Kemp</a>, who supplied Hani’s address (and subsequently emerged as a leading player in the international extreme-right). </p>
<p>Later, Malala raises the possibility that others within the apartheid security forces were aiding them. For example, the regular police investigating the murder were instructed by the Security Police not to probe into Walus’ links to his employer, the arms trader Peter Jackson. Jackson owned the car the killer used on the day, and Malala notes that the killer’s diary disappeared from the police docket, later reemerging with several pages missing.</p>
<p>He also points to the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> finding that Walus operated as a source for the National Intelligence Service (the apartheid state’s version of the CIA). The commission probed human rights abuses by the apartheid state and those who fought against it.</p>
<p>To maintain the hour-by-hour tension, Malala avoids reaching ahead, instead portraying the players in this drama as they were then. Perhaps inevitably, some of those who star in his account fared less well in the decades that followed – in particular the ANC spokesperson <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/carl-niehaus">Carl Niehaus</a>, who confessed to fraud and was eventually expelled from the ANC. </p>
<p>More generally, many of the devoted ANC leaders who played a central part in the build-up to Hani’s funeral went on to become multi-millionaires, more interested in self-enrichment than the common weal. </p>
<p>Appropriately, Malala resists the temptation to speculate about what would have happened if Hani had lived. Instead he closes with Mandela and De Klerk winning the Nobel Peace Prize and the launch of the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03162.htm">Transitional Executive Council</a> which ushered in the largely peaceful elections on April 27 1994.</p>
<p>This book serves as a reminder of how close South Africa came to civil war in the countdown to democracy. Nearly three decades on, it is also a timely reminder of the selflessness and dedication of many of the main players of the time, qualities that seem in short supply today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The book is a gripping read for anyone interested in late 20th century history, and in the end of apartheid.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2023662023-03-28T15:28:33Z2023-03-28T15:28:33ZPaul Mashatile, South Africa’s new deputy president, has a critical task: to bring back a sense of stability<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517666/original/file-20230327-20-x9uext.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paul Mashatile, the deputy president of South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a recent <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/statement-president-cyril-ramaphosa-changes-national-executive">cabinet reshuffle</a> President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed Paul Mashatile, the deputy president of South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), as the country’s deputy president. The tradition in the ANC since democracy in 1994 has been for its elected deputy president to ascend first to the deputy presidency of the country, and eventually to become head of state. So Mashatile, an <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-a-new-deputy-president-in-paul-mashatile-what-he-brings-to-the-table-200089">experienced politician</a>, may also be destined for top office.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa’s cabinet reshuffle took place in a climate of growing <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-been-warned-that-it-faces-an-arab-spring-so-what-are-the-chances-187634">restlessness</a> across the nation about the many failures of the state, high levels of corruption and <a href="https://theconversation.com/link-between-crime-and-politics-in-south-africa-raises-concerns-about-criminal-gangs-taking-over-198160">organised crime</a>. </p>
<p>As a political scientist and researcher on security governance matters, I have been considering the role Mashatile could play in responding to the security crisis. </p>
<p>He will serve on two cabinet structures that are crucial to safety and security in the country. Through this he could contribute to rebuilding <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africans-have-low-trust-in-their-police-heres-why-178821">trust</a> that the public has lost in the law enforcement and criminal justice system. </p>
<h2>Justice, crime prevention and security</h2>
<p>One of Mashatile’s <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2023-03-14-ramaphosa-appoints-mashatile-to-chair-cabinet-security-cluster/">tasks</a> is to chair the <a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/resource_centre/publications/naidoo_makananisa_integrated_presentation.pdf">Justice, Crime Prevention and Security</a> cabinet committee. This committee coordinates the work of the ministers who are collectively charged with ensuring safety and stability in the country. During the devastating <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-deadly-july-2021-riots-may-recur-if-theres-no-change-186397">July 2021 unrest</a>, the ministers contradicted each other. They also failed to show a united front against the violence that engulfed several provinces, particularly KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.</p>
<p>With deft leadership, Mashatile can assist Ramaphosa to address the legacy of poorly coordinated security services. The former minister in the presidency, <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/politics/security-cluster-needs-unity-gungubele-20220730">Mondli Gungubele</a>, acknowledged this problem on the anniversary of the deadly July 2021 riots. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-a-new-deputy-president-in-paul-mashatile-what-he-brings-to-the-table-200089">South Africa has a new deputy president in Paul Mashatile: what he brings to the table</a>
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<p>The Justice, Crime Prevention and Security cluster was among several cabinet “clusters” established during former president Thabo Mbeki’s tenure. This has cemented a tradition of intergovernmental cooperation ever since. It oversees the work of the following core ministries and departments:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>police</p></li>
<li><p>state security</p></li>
<li><p>justice and correctional services </p></li>
<li><p>home affairs</p></li>
<li><p>defence and military veterans</p></li>
<li><p>finance.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Mashatile will have to contend with a labyrinth of structures responsible for safety. The operational work of the cluster is coordinated by the directors-general of these departments through the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (<a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/national-joint-operational-and-intelligence-structure-natjoints-0700-update-20-mar-2023">NATJOINTS</a>). </p>
<p>While the NATJOINTS operates at national level, its activities are decentralised to provincial structures (<a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/all-hands-on-deck-w-cape-saps-sandf-metro-police-on-high-alert-amid-planned-national-shutdown-20230319">PROVJOINTs</a>). They coordinate security operations at a provincial level. They work with municipal law enforcement and emergency services, and advise the provincial governments on measures they are taking to keep the public safe. </p>
<h2>The National Security Council</h2>
<p>Mashatile will also serve on the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/notices/2020/20200310-gg42482proc13-COnstitution-NSC.pdf">National Security Council</a>, which is chaired by the president.</p>
<p>The entity is mandated to coordinate a <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-03-01-sas-proposed-national-security-strategy-more-hot-air-or-a-potential-democratic-opening/">national security strategy</a>. It also oversees the annual formulation of a budget and priorities by the country’s <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-01-27-the-ssa-can-improve-but-misconceptions-about-the-role-of-intelligence-services-need-to-be-cleared-up/">intelligence services</a>. It is responsible for coordinating the work of the security services, law enforcement agencies and relevant organs of state to ensure national security. In addition, it receives coordinated, integrated intelligence assessments from the national security structures, and mandates these structures to attend to matters of national security as required.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-needs-strategic-leadership-to-weather-its-storms-its-presidents-have-not-been-up-to-the-task-194296">South Africa needs strategic leadership to weather its storms. Its presidents have not been up to the task</a>
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</p>
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<p>There is a significant <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/notices/2020/20200310-gg42482proc13-COnstitution-NSC.pdf">overlap of the membership</a> of the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security cluster of ministers, and the National Security Council. Besides the president and deputy president, the council includes all the ministers who are part of the Police, State Security and Justice cabinet committee, as well as the ministers of home affairs, defence and military veterans, international relations, and cooperative governance and traditional affairs. </p>
<h2>How Mashatile could bring stability</h2>
<p>Ramaphosa has entrusted important functions to his deputy. This suggests a level of confidence and cooperation between the two men, rather than a <a href="https://sundayworld.co.za/news/politics/block-mashatile-ramaphosa-warned/">rivalry</a>. Neither can afford to let the ANC fail in government, as this would augur badly for its <a href="https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2023/02/09/anc-crisis-polls-steep-loss-support-elections">prospects</a> in the 2024 general elections. </p>
<p>Mashatile should prioritise getting a few key systems in place. The visibility and effectiveness of the police in day-to-day policing must improve. He must oversee strategies to combat organised crime, which is strangling so many areas of public life. He must also work to secure the resources to implement the recommendations of the <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">Zondo Commission on state capture</a>. </p>
<p>With confidence in the state <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/migrated/files/publications/Dispatches/ad474-south_africans_trust_in_institutions_reaches_new_low-afrobarometer-20aug21.pdf">as low as it is</a>, and the public deeply traumatised by high levels of <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-02-09-sona-2023-sas-soaring-murder-rate-underscores-need-for-ramaphosa-to-ensure-better-leadership-in-policing/">violent crime</a>, Mashatile must put in extra effort to boost public confidence in the justice, crime prevention and security sector. </p>
<p>He can do this by listening to what key stakeholders have to say about the security of the country. Young people bear the brunt of the epidemic of violence – physical and structural. Attending to their security and <a href="https://theconversation.com/idle-and-frustrated-young-south-africans-speak-about-the-need-for-recreational-facilities-176921">wellbeing</a> is crucial for the country’s future.</p>
<p>He also needs to be more strategically visible than his predecessor, David Mabuza, who <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/politics/government/david-mabuza-the-man-from-mpumalanga-who-quit-as-deputy-president-before-some-argue-ever-starting-20230304">resigned</a> from the position. Mabuza’s job description was almost identical to that of Mashatile’s. Yet he <a href="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/ramaphosa-urged-to-appoint-a-competent-deputy-president/">left office with many questioning</a> if he had made any impact. </p>
<h2>New broom</h2>
<p>Mashatile could be the new broom that sweeps clean. Ramaphosa’s apparent confidence in him suggests that he has some latitude to do so. </p>
<p>It is said the job of a deputy president, in practically any country, is <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2021-01-20/what-does-the-vice-president-do">waiting</a> to replace the president. While Mashatile waits in the wings, he has the opportunity to make a difference and make South Africa a more secure place for the public.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandy Africa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mashatile could be the new broom that sweeps clean. Ramaphosa’s apparent confidence in him suggests that he has some latitude to do so.Sandy Africa, Associate Professor, Political Sciences, and Deputy Dean Teaching and Learning (Humanities), University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1993112023-02-15T08:38:29Z2023-02-15T08:38:29ZInvisible Trillions review: global capitalism operates beyond the rule of law and threatens democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508894/original/file-20230208-15-42994g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Achieving greater transparency and accountability in democratic governance and in capitalist economics must occur simultaneously. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Secrecy has become as important for corporations as transparent and taxable profits used to be, according to Raymond W. Baker in his new <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60978837-invisible-trillions">book</a> Invisible Trillions. Global capitalism, he argues, operates beyond the rule of law. This contributes to extreme inequality that threatens liberal democracy.</p>
<p>Deals in the financial secrecy system account for half of global economic operations. This is far beyond illicit transfers of funds through corporate under-pricing and overpricing of exports and imports, or the drug and other criminal networks 50 years ago. Tax havens, “shell companies”, anonymous trust accounts, fake foundations and new digitised money laundering technologies have proliferated. Add to that falsified trade. All of this is facilitated by international lawyers, accountants and financial strategists based mostly in rich countries. </p>
<p>The book’s timely contribution is how financial secrecy threatens both free enterprise and political freedoms. Both are critical to dealing with current inequalities afflicting humanity and to meeting challenges in public health, climate, and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Baker indicts the United States as the biggest user of the financial secrecy system, and the biggest recipient of dirty money from around the world. A key indication of the cost of this is that gaps between top and average wages in the US have shot up from 20 to 1 in 1960 to 350 to one today. Had this not occurred, Baker told me he estimates, the middle class would now be better off by US$50 trillion. </p>
<h2>Pioneering work</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Capitalisms-Achilles-Heel-Free-Market-System/dp/1119086612">pioneer</a> in exposing illicit financial flows, Baker is a member of the <a href="https://au.int/sites/default/files/documents/40545-doc-IFFs_REPORT.pdf">High-Level Panel</a> on the subject commissioned by the African Union (AU) and UN Economic Commission for Africa. It was chaired by former South African president Thabo Mbeki from 2011 to 2015. It is suspended pending further funding. Invisible Trillions should spur renewed work by the panel.</p>
<p>The panel’s <a href="https://au.int/sites/default/files/documents/40545-doc-IFFs_REPORT.pdf">2015 report</a> estimated that in the previous half-century, Africa lost over a US$ trillion in illicit money flows. This is about what Africa received in official development assistance over the same period. Baker made a similar finding in his <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Capitalisms-Achilles-Heel-Free-Market-System/dp/1119086612">2005 book</a>, Capitalism’s Achilles Heel. </p>
<p>He began his career as an entrepreneur in Nigeria after independence, applying his 1960 Harvard MBA to launch several successful local businesses in the 1960s and 1970s. After relocating to Washington, DC in the 1980s, he became a guest fellow at the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/">Brookings Institution</a>. He eventually founded <a href="https://gfintegrity.org/">Global Financial Integrity</a> in 2006. The research institute continues to produce seminal research and policy analysis on all aspects of the secretive world of illicit financial flows.</p>
<h2>Clean up must begin from above</h2>
<p>Baker is cogently critical not only of the complicity of the US and its corporations, but also law firms, auditors and consulting companies that abet tax avoidance, concentration of wealth, and corruption of government officials. He accuses the US and China, which together account <a href="https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-china-economy.php">for over 40% of the world’s nominal GNP</a>, of knowingly exploiting secrecy in global economic relations. </p>
<p>Little wonder that 193 members of the United Nations have pledged to halt illicit financial flows, but with little discernible effect. Meanwhile, the COVID pandemic, the war in Ukraine and climate change worsen inequality within and among nations.</p>
<p>Concise and accessible, Invisible Trillions has three parts:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Democratic Capitalism at Risk</p></li>
<li><p>Corroding the Commons</p></li>
<li><p>Renewing Democratic Capitalism.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Rogue capitalism</h2>
<p>I found Baker’s criticisms of capitalism in the US to be reasonable, his indictments of corruption and authoritarianism illuminating, and his emphasis on fairness, justice, equity and human rights hopeful. America’s leading democracy scholar, <a href="https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/people/larry-diamond">Larry Diamond of Stanford University</a>, wrote the book’s foreword. As he asserts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Only radical improvements across the globe in financial transparency and accountability and in regulatory capacity and integrity can break this cycle of political decay and despair. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Baker, however, carefully avoids analysis of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/06/united-states-isnt-democracy-and-was-never-intended-be/">structural deficiencies</a> of US democracy. He defers to others to build on his analysis of how secretive concentrations of wealth became possible with the complicity of banks, corporations and “complicit governments” in key chapters of Part II.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508892/original/file-20230208-26-mlr1kw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508892/original/file-20230208-26-mlr1kw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=669&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508892/original/file-20230208-26-mlr1kw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=669&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508892/original/file-20230208-26-mlr1kw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=669&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508892/original/file-20230208-26-mlr1kw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508892/original/file-20230208-26-mlr1kw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508892/original/file-20230208-26-mlr1kw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Although the book is mainly about the “rogue capitalism” of the US, it includes the impact of secrecy on economic behaviour further afield, using seven country case studies. Featured are the two dictatorships – Russia and China – plus a flawed pluralistic democracy, South Africa, an example of <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-state-capture-commission-nears-its-end-after-four-years-was-it-worth-it-182898">state capture</a>. Other examples of where secrecy serves autocrats are Guatemala, Venezuela, Myanmar and Iran.</p>
<p>The South African case shows well the role played by foreign corporations, international lawyers and public relations firms in corruption. Baker concludes Part II with a very short chapter, “Hiding in Silos”. It is critical of western attempts to spread the rule of law while ignoring</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the degree to which the capitalist system (is) operating increasingly beyond the rule of law.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This sets up Part III, in which he proposes ways and means for “Renewing Democratic Capitalism”.</p>
<h2>Renewing democratic capitalism</h2>
<p>In Baker’s view, democracy is self-correcting, but capitalism is not. His main message is: reform capitalism or forfeit democracy.</p>
<p>His suggestions focus on the US and its potential for either causing disaster or preventing it. This will depend, he argues, on the US government requiring greater transparency, accountability and governance reforms by corporations.</p>
<p>He advocates forcing banks and other financial institutions to once again separate lending and investing. And audit firms should not offer costly financial advice – another conflict of interest.</p>
<p>Baker recommends government action on increasing minimum wages to $15 an hour, ensuring universal healthcare, waiving student debt, and a reckoning with “race”. He also urges a reducing inequality among nations. In sum, an agenda much like that of the Biden administration.</p>
<p>Unless national Democratic majorities continue to grow and press effectively for <a href="https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/report">bi-partisan democratic reforms</a>, it is difficult to imagine the country playing the kind of constructive democratic role at home or abroad that Baker calls for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199311/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John J Stremlau does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Raymond W. Baker says the estimated hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden wealth a decade ago has skyrocketed to trillions today.John J Stremlau, Honorary Professor of International Relations, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1984302023-02-01T12:36:54Z2023-02-01T12:36:54ZSouth Africa and Russia: President Cyril Ramaphosa’s foreign policy explained<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507115/original/file-20230130-6879-11w5zo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa. </span> </figcaption></figure><p>January was a busy diplomatic month for South Africa. The country <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/russias-lavrov-visits-ally-south-africa-amid-western-rivalry-2023-01-23/">hosted</a> Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and US treasury secretary <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/us-treasury-secretary-yellen-meet-president-ramaphosa-south-africa-trip-2023-01-24/">Janet Yellen</a>. Josep Borrell, vice-president of the European Commission, was also <a href="https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/media-advisory-high-representative-josep-borrell-travels-south-africa-and-botswana_en">in town</a>.</p>
<p>The biggest talking point, though, has been Lavrov’s visit, which met with criticism in the west. Similarly, the South African-Russian-Chinese joint maritime exercise, <a href="https://www.defenceweb.co.za/sea/sea-sea/sandf-on-ex-mosi/">Operation Mosi</a>, scheduled for February off the South African Indian Ocean coast. Critics have slammed South Africa’s hosting of the war games in the light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-orders-military-operations-ukraine-demands-kyiv-forces-surrender-2022-02-24/">in February 2022</a>. </p>
<p>South Africa has been reticent to criticise Russia openly for invading Ukraine. The country <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-countries-showed-disunity-in-un-votes-on-russia-south-africas-role-was-pivotal-180799">abstained during each vote</a> criticising Russia at the United Nations. Some have read this as tacit support of Russia.</p>
<p>The visits and South Africa’s position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have put the spotlight on the country’s foreign policy.</p>
<p>I follow, study and have published extensively on South Africa’s foreign policy. In a recent publication, <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/south-african-foreign-policy-review-volume-4">Ramaphosa and a New Dawn for South African Foreign Policy</a>, my co-editors and I point out that South Africa’s voting pattern in these instances should be read in the context of its <a href="https://pmg.org.za/briefing/28596/">declared foreign policy</a> under the stewardship of President Cyril Ramaphosa. </p>
<p>Like his predecessors, Ramaphosa’s policy encompasses at least five principles:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>pan-Africanism </p></li>
<li><p>South-South solidarity </p></li>
<li><p>non-alignment </p></li>
<li><p>independence </p></li>
<li><p>progressive internationalism. The governing ANC <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/anc-npc-discussion-document-on-foreign-policy">defines</a> this as</p></li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<p>an approach to global relations anchored in the pursuit of global solidarity, social justice, common development and human security, etc. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Evolution of South Africa’s foreign policy</h2>
<p>In the era of Nelson Mandela, the first president of democratic South Africa, the country, once a pariah state, returned to the international community. Under him, the country saw a significant increase in its <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC88112">bilateral and multilateral relations</a>. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/history-may-explain-south-africas-refusal-to-condemn-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-178657">History may explain South Africa's refusal to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine</a>
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<p>It enjoyed global goodwill and Mandela was recognised for his <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-russian-visit-says-about-south-africas-commitment-to-human-rights-in-the-world-188993">outspoken views</a> on international human rights abuses. His involvement in conflict resolution efforts in, for example, <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/07/22/mandela-indonesia-and-liberation-timor-leste.html">Timor Leste</a> (East Timor) and Africa also received <a href="https://www.un.org/en/exhibits/page/building-legacy-nelson-mandela">international acclaim</a>. The UN declared 18 July <a href="https://www.un.org/en/events/mandeladay/">Nelson Mandela International Day</a>. </p>
<p>Mandela’s tenure was followed by the aspirational era of President Thabo Mbeki’s <a href="https://journals.co.za/journal/aa.afren">African renaissance</a>. Mbeki’s foreign policy aspired to reposition Africa as a global force as well as to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330614094_Mbeki_on_African_Renaissance_a_vehicle_for_Africa_development">rekindle</a> pan-Africanism and African unity.</p>
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<img alt="A man wearing a suit and tie shakes hands with a woman wearing a dress." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507113/original/file-20230130-14-p18rp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507113/original/file-20230130-14-p18rp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507113/original/file-20230130-14-p18rp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507113/original/file-20230130-14-p18rp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507113/original/file-20230130-14-p18rp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507113/original/file-20230130-14-p18rp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507113/original/file-20230130-14-p18rp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, (left), with South African foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, in Pretoria on 23 January 23.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phill Magakoe/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>His successor <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26976626#metadata_info_tab_contents">Jacob Zuma’s era</a> could be described as indigenisation of South Africa’s foreign policy, driven by the values of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-archbishop-tutus-ubuntu-credo-teaches-the-world-about-justice-and-harmony-84730">ubuntu</a> (humanness). In giving effect to ubuntu – equality, peace and cooperation – as a foreign policy principle, South Africa gravitated towards the global south, rather than just Africa. Yet the continent remained a focus of South Africa’s foreign policy.</p>
<h2>Ramaphosa’s foreign policy</h2>
<p>South Africa’s <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/south-african-foreign-policy-review-volume-4">foreign policy</a> under President Cyril Ramaphosa has shifted to a strong emphasis on economic diplomacy. This is joined by a commitment to <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/National-Policy-Conference-2017-International-Relations.pdf">“progressive internationalism”</a>.</p>
<p>Progressive internationalism formed the basis for South Africa’s vocal position on UN reform, global equity and ending the dominance of the global north. The global north could view this as challenging to its hegemonic power and dominance in the UN. </p>
<p>This has challenged South Africa’s declared foreign policy principles. It maintains strong economic and political relations with the global north. But it also maintains strong relations with the global south (including Cuba, Venezuela and Russia). For this, it has been <a href="https://gga.org/south-africas-foreign-policy-decisions-ambiguous-or-misunderstood/#:%7E:text=South%20Africa%20has%20been%20criticised,means%20deployment%20is%20more%20rapid">criticised</a> by the west.</p>
<p>South Africa’s quest for global status in line with its declared foreign policy principles continues under Ramaphosa. It has adopted several roles to achieve this: balancer, spoiler and good international citizenship. </p>
<p>As a balancer, it has attempted to rationalise its relations with both the north and south in accordance with the principles of non-alignment and independence. As a spoiler, it has failed to condemn, for example, China for its poor human rights record, claiming it is an internal Chinese matter. This could be read as an expression of its south-south solidarity with China. Its role as a good international citizen has made it an approachable international actor. It has promoted the rule of international law and upholding international norms. This speaks to its progressive internationalism principle.</p>
<h2>At home and abroad</h2>
<p>The Ramaphosa era set off in 2018 with less emphasis on foreign policy. But by the time the COVID pandemic broke out <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30211-7/fulltext">in December 2019</a>, his foreign policy really came to the fore as he led both the South African and African pandemic responses.</p>
<p>South Africa has been attempting to capitalise on the geostrategic changes in the balance of forces on the world stage. Blatant realpolitik has returned. During the past year, for example, the country has conducted joint multilateral military exercises with several states, most notably with France (<a href="https://www.defenceweb.co.za/featured/ex-oxide-2022-will-be-west-coast-based/">Operation Oxide</a>), a permanent member of the UN Security Council.</p>
<p>South Africa’s soft diplomacy has <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-09-22-jerusalemadancechallenge-south-africas-display-of-soft-power-amid-covid-19/">made some inroads</a> at UN agencies and through its cultural diplomacy. But this has not necessarily resulted in material gains – such as more leadership in multilateral organisations.</p>
<p>Moreover, its gravitation towards strong non-western military powers such as Russia, China and India has met with western disappointment. Its foreign policy position of solidarity, independence, non-alignment and <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/remarks-president-cyril-ramaphosa-south-african-heads-mission-conference-7-apr-2022-0000">progressive internationalism</a> has not translated into material foreign policy benefits either, such as increased foreign direct investment as envisaged by Ramaphosa’s <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/remarks-president-cyril-ramaphosa-south-african-heads-mission-conference-7-apr-2022-0000">economic diplomacy</a>.</p>
<p>Trade with states such as China, Turkey, Russia and India has <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2022/06/20/cyril-ramaphosa-brics-partnership-has-great-value-for-south-africa">increased</a>. But it is not enough as the country requires massive investment to update infrastructure and start new development projects in line with Ramaphosa’s vision of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-new-dawn-should-be-built-on-evidence-based-policy-118129">“new dawn” </a> for South Africa.</p>
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<img alt="A man and a woman smile for the camera while sitting. Miniature South African and America flags are on the table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">South African finance minister, Enoch Godongwana, meets his American counterpart, Janet Yellen, in Pretoria on 26 January.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span>
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<p>The post-pandemic international political economy has also adversely affected the country. This has been amplified by the <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bloomberg/news/2022-08-05-donor-fatigue-could-mean-starvation-for-900000-in-west-africa/">economic impact of the Ukraine crisis </a>. Massive Western financial commitments are <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022/12/10/council-adopts-18-billion-assistance-to-ukraine/#:%7E:text=The%20Council%20reached%20agreement%20on,its%20possible%20adoption%20next%20week">directed towards Ukraine</a>. This leaves South Africa in a vulnerable economic position as it <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.CD?locations=ZA">needs foreign development assistance</a>.</p>
<h2>Looking forward</h2>
<p>As our South African Foreign Policy Review volume 4 has shown, Ramaphosa’s “new dawn” <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/south-african-foreign-policy-review-volume-4">has been deferred</a>. This as his party and government jump from crisis to crisis. This kind of instability often seeps into the diplomatic landscape. Investors are aware of the investment risks posed by <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">state capture</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-power-crisis-five-essential-reads-187111">power</a> crises.</p>
<p>Globally, the age of soft power has somewhat waned since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. South Africa needs to be proactive – not only reactive – to emerging international geostrategic conditions. </p>
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<p>Besides its current leadership of the <a href="https://infobrics.org/">BRICS bloc</a> (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the country needs to be bolder. It should, for example, campaign for a fourth term <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13533312.2022.2144250?journalCode=finp20">on the UN Security Council</a>, and for leadership in multilateral organisations. In these, it can actively achieve its foreign policy objectives in support of the country’s national interests.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jo-Ansie van Wyk has taught at the Diplomatic Academy of the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation. </span></em></p>South Africa’s foreign policy under Ramaphosa emphasises economic diplomacy and ‘progressive internationalism’, which promotes global equity and ending the dominance of the global north.Jo-Ansie van Wyk, Professor in International Politics, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1959492022-12-07T14:39:13Z2022-12-07T14:39:13ZWhat is RET and what does it want? The Radical Economic Transformation faction in South Africa explained<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499500/original/file-20221207-3544-nqjswm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Loyalists of the ANC's Radical Economic Transformation (RET) at the Olive Convention Centre in Durban. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been standard for some years, in any analysis of South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), to refer to the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2022-01-11-the-ret-faction-wants-total-control-of-everything-in-the-state-and-society-as-an-end-in-itself/">“radical economic transformation”</a> (RET) faction. Yet, there has been little serious analysis of what it is. </p>
<p>The RET is difficult to define. It has no clear shape, leadership, membership, rules or policies. It is rather an aggregation of the aggrieved and aspirant within the ANC, linked by a set of broadly shared attitudes towards the state and power. Nor, in conventional terms, is the faction particularly “radical”. The “economic transformation” it seeks is the displacement of white racial domination, rather than the overturn of capitalism.</p>
<p>Despite its vagueness, the RET has become central to the contemporary ANC. It is destined to remain a powerful bloc within the party, and under President Cyril Ramaphosa, a constant constraint on his leadership and any effort to reform the economy and promote clean governance. For that reason, it needs to be understood.</p>
<h2>Growth and composition</h2>
<p>Its origins lie in the <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/zuma-like-a-tsunami-wave-20050307">“tsunami wave”</a> which led to the defeat of Thabo Mbeki as ANC president <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president/">in 2007 by Jacob Zuma</a>, followed by Zuma’s elevation as state president in 2009. During Zuma’s presidency (<a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/jacob-gedleyihlekisa-zuma-mr">9 May 2009 – 14 February 2018</a>), the RET faction overlapped heavily with his support base, which was drawn heavily from KwaZulu-Natal, his home province. Yet it was also closely aligned to ANC heavyweights in the other provinces, notably those dominated by the then <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/anc-suspensions-death-of-the-premier-league-9492a864-f3f0-4792-a94a-7c6a9080a0e6">“premier league”</a> – provincial premiers in three mainly rural provinces Mpumalanga, Free State and North West. Simultaneously it drew heavily on the support of black business lobbies doing business with the state, notably at provincial and local government levels. </p>
<p>By implication, the RET faction was often implicated in the corrupt practices referred to as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/state-capture-report-public-protector-14-october-2016">“state capture”</a>. Yet there was more to it than that. While various “Indian” business people who were tied to Zuma, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, were on the periphery of the RET, the faction itself was largely Africanist politically, protesting a continuation of white power under a veil of democracy.</p>
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<p>The faction also drew energy from black professionals fighting against what they depicted as white domination of their professional spheres, and the radical black student lobbies which emerged during the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvmd84n8?turn_away=true">“RhodesMustFall”</a> and <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/south-africa-student-protests-explained/">“Fees must fall”</a> protest waves of the late Zuma period. </p>
<p>By the time of the <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/anc54-breaking-ramaphosa-elected-anc-president-12453127">December 2017 ANC elective conference</a>, the RET faction was strongly anti-Cyril Ramaphosa and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-ramaphosas-victory-mean-for-south-africas-economy-89420">pro-Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma</a> in the race for the ANC presidency. The narrowness of Dlamini-Zuma’s defeat has provided it with a strong oppositional presence within the ANC during the Ramaphosa presidency, hampering his efforts at reform. </p>
<h2>Understanding the RET faction</h2>
<p>If it is difficult to pin down who belongs to the RET, it is equally difficult to define what they want. Nonetheless, four broad themes emerge.</p>
<p>First, the motive behind the faction seems to be black economic empowerment, but not the empowerment originally envisaged by Thabo Mbeki with its carefully regulated industrial charters <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40283176#metadata_info_tab_contents">and targets</a>. The RET version was a generalised insistence that the state machinery (government departments, provincial and local administrations, and state-owned enterprises) be leveraged to allocate contracts to black businesses. </p>
<p>This is justified by attacks upon <a href="https://theconversation.com/white-monopoly-capital-good-politics-bad-sociology-worse-economics-77338">“white monopoly capital”</a>, arguing that the South African economy has changed very little since democracy in 1994, and that white business is covertly determined upon maintaining white power. </p>
<p>The second thrust, closely related to the first, is a generalised attack on the constitutional settlement of 1994-96. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-wrong-to-blame-south-africas-woes-on-mandelas-compromises-96062">“Mandela compromise”</a> is criticised as having done little to ease the poverty and unemployment of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/economic-policy-remains-hotly-contested-in-south-africa-this-detailed-history-shows-why-138378">black population</a>.</p>
<p>The RET is highly ambivalent about the constitution’s defence of property rights but has little respect for the other laws, rules and regulations which the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a> puts in place. By implication, the judiciary is regarded as suspect, as its function is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/rule-of-law-in-south-africa-protects-even-those-who-scorn-it-175533">see that the constitution is enforced</a>. </p>
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<p>Third, an overlap with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which depicts itself as <a href="https://blackopinion.co.za/2019/12/30/the-effs-%EF%BB%BFmarxist-leninist-fanonist-thought-as-founded-by-mngxitama/">Marxist-Leninist-Fanonist</a>, sees the RET faction driving the call for the state to extend its right to the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-05-31-expropriation-without-compensation-anc-eff-toenadering-on-state-land-custodianship-its-all-about-the-politics/">compulsory expropriation of land</a>. The impetus comes from the fact that, despite the government’s programme of land reform, a hugely disproportionate amount of land suitable for agriculture remains in <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201802/landauditreport13feb2018.pdf">white hands</a>. The faction, like the EFF, appears to admire the Zimbabwean land reforms of the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14725843.2022.2032591?journalCode=cafi20">early 2000s</a>, which saw mass expropriation of white farms, but rarely advocates this openly.</p>
<p>Fourth, the RET faction is a strong supporter of state enterprises. Although the faction would not object to the transfer of state enterprises into black hands, privatisation is feared as likely to result in acquisition of state businesses by white companies. </p>
<p>In any case, the RET faction is heavily embedded within the state owned enterprises. Their operatives allocate valuable contracts to black <a href="https://www.gov.za/tenderpreneurship-stuff-crooked-cadres-fighters">“tenderpreneurs”</a> – business people who feed on government contracts. By implication, it is opposed to all versions of “structural reform” touted by the Ramaphosa government and lobbies attached to “big business”.</p>
<h2>What the RET faction wants</h2>
<p>Trying to work out precisely what the RET faction wants is difficult because it has <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/the-ret-manifesto">no agreed manifesto</a>. However, three problems stand out:</p>
<p>First, it remains unclear what the RET faction would put in place of the existing constitution. </p>
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<p>Should the constitution be reworked, and if so, how? What are the specific flaws in the constitution as it stands? For the moment, all we are left with are generalised attacks on the judiciary for individual judgements the RET dislikes, demands for changes of the expropriation clause in the constitution, and so on.</p>
<p>Second, the RET faction has no general plan for land reform. Crucially, it ignores the increasing domination of agriculture by <a href="https://theconversation.com/land-reform-in-south-africa-is-failing-ignoring-the-realities-of-rural-life-plays-a-part-190452">huge agri-businesses</a>.</p>
<p>These mega-firms are hugely complex operations. It is one thing to expropriate small white farms; quite another to engage in a battle with huge corporations which probably incorporate foreign as well as local ownership. And what would happen to food production if the state were to take them over?</p>
<p>Third, it is common knowledge that South Africa’s parastatals are failing. <a href="https://mybroadband.co.za/news/investing/461772-eskoms-failure-in-four-charts.html">Eskom</a>, the power utility, can’t deliver enough electricity and is burdened by <a href="https://mg.co.za/business/2022-10-26-mtbs-government-to-take-a-chunk-of-eskoms-debt/">unpayable debt</a>. <a href="https://www.news24.com/fin24/companies/transnet-decline-inside-business-big-battle-for-private-rail-20221129">Transnet</a>, the transport parastatal, is in chaos, unable to maintain infrastructure needed for business to operate efficiently. The public railway system is a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-60202570">shambles</a>.</p>
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<p>South African Airways, the national airline, has collapsed financially and is being propped up by <a href="https://www.news24.com/fin24/companies/the-days-of-bailouts-are-gone-saa-to-start-flying-ahead-of-takatso-deal-20210922">state funding</a>. The Post Office is <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2022-10-05-ag-highlights-sapo-mess-as-it-faces-collapse/">unable to deliver the post</a>. The reasons for these failures are many, ranging from the ANC’s systematic undervaluation of technical ability to run complex operations, its <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321223498_The_African_National_Congress_ANC_and_the_Cadre_Deployment_Policy_in_the_Postapartheid_South_Africa_A_Product_of_Democratic_Centralisation_or_a_Recipe_for_a_Constitutional_Crisis">political deployment strategy</a>, and the mass looting of state bodies that took place <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-state-capture-commission-nears-its-end-after-four-years-was-it-worth-it-182898">under Zuma</a>. </p>
<p>Turnaround strategies have failed. The difficult question for the RET (and the ANC at large) is: if not privatisation, then what?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195949/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite its vagueness, the RET has become central to the contemporary ANC. It is destined to remain a powerful bloc within the party, and a constant constraint on Ramaphosa leadership.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1942962022-11-17T14:11:11Z2022-11-17T14:11:11ZSouth Africa needs strategic leadership to weather its storms. Its presidents have not been up to the task<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495594/original/file-20221116-22-xqzgnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C37%2C1778%2C1197&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's democratic era presidents, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Random House South Africa</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is in a state of crisis. Its current reality is necessarily shaped by historical events, not least the outcomes of the political settlement process that led to the end of apartheid <a href="https://www.britannica.com/question/How-did-apartheid-end">in 1994</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike other countries in southern Africa, where political independence came after gruesome liberation wars, the leaders of the African National Congress (<a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/">ANC</a>), which led the liberation struggle and has been the governing party since 1994 – alongside other political and social movements – managed to negotiate a transition to democracy. There were many “wins”, including assent to the election of a majority-led government and the enactment of policies that would ensure broad-based <a href="http://www.thedtic.gov.za/financial-and-non-financial-support/b-bbee/broad-based-black-economic-empowerment/">economic transformation</a>.</p>
<p>This transition may be seen as a point in history where the nation navigated one of its greatest crises. But its current leadership is confronted with multiple challenges. These range from <a href="https://databankfiles.worldbank.org/data/download/poverty/33EF03BB-9722-4AE2-ABC7-AA2972D68AFE/Global_POVEQ_ZAF.pdf">extreme poverty</a> and high <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/Media%20release%20QLFS%20Q2%202022.pdf">unemployment</a> to the severe undermining of democratic institutions by <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">corruption and state capture</a>. </p>
<p>These “wicked problems” are so difficult and complex that there is no single, silver-bullet answer. There is only a range of clumsy solutions, all of which are imperfect. The policy-making puzzle, therefore, is as much about recognising the nature of the problem as seeking to mitigate risks. </p>
<p>Our new <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/presidents-mandela-ramaphosa-leadership-age-crisis/9781776095940">book</a>, The Presidents: From Mandela to Ramaphosa, Leadership in an Age of Crisis, assessed the leadership of South Africa’s five post-apartheid presidents – <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/souoverview8.htm">Nelson Mandela</a>, <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a>, <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/node/111">Kgalema Motlanthe</a>, <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">Jacob Zuma</a> and <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-cyril-ramaphosa%3A-profile">Cyril Ramaphosa</a>. We wanted to see what lessons can be learned, especially in relation to their strategic abilities. Strategy is one of the critical leadership attributes necessary to cope with the strong headwinds that leaders often encounter.</p>
<p>We concluded that there has been a shortage of truly strategic leadership in South Africa in this period, with a few exceptions. Thus, the country has been unable to grapple with the underlying structural problems that are the fundamental cause of its socio-economic precarity. </p>
<h2>Strategic thinking</h2>
<p>What do we mean by “strategy”? Here we defer to former UK member of parliament and now (UK) Times columnist <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/profile/matthew-parris?page=1">Matthew Parris</a>. He says,</p>
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<p>although the meaning has become diluted through promiscuous and often inappropriate use … strategy remains the best word we have for expressing attempts to think about actions in advance, in the light of our goals and capacities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many leaders, governments and organisations confuse planning with strategy. So this is an apt consideration to keep in mind: have South Africa’s post-1994 presidents addressed the fundamental question of what is wrong with the society and its economy, in a strategic way? </p>
<p>Here’s how the country’s five post-apartheid presidents have fared on strategy.</p>
<h2>Five different styles</h2>
<p>Mandela, the first president of a democratic South Africa, made big strategic choices – not necessarily the right ones, but certainly ones that were befitting of the times. </p>
<p>A primary strategy choice faced Mandela at the very advent of the democratic era. He opted for national reconciliation as his political motif. It was strategic in the sense that the alternative was to drive a strong transformational agenda without seeking to get the powerful and privileged white minority on board. </p>
<p>Crudely put, he could have opted for redemption and even revenge, rather than reconciliation. </p>
<p>This was accompanied by a deep personal commitment to the rule of law and constitutionalism. He used his presidential power to drive that message and execute that strategy, leaving the detail of management of policy and government to his number two, Thabo Mbeki.</p>
<p>The transition from his government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (<a href="https://www.gov.za/faq/finance-business/where-do-i-get-copy-reconstruction-and-development-programme-rdp">RDP</a>) to the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (<a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/growth-employment-and-redistribution-macroeconomic-strategy-south-africa-gear">GEAR</a>) macroeconomic strategy is another debatable case in point. </p>
<p>The RDP was the ANC government-in-waiting’s flagship programme for socio-economic transformation. It was an essentially Keynesian public investment-focused plan for improving public services such as housing, healthcare and electricity to the black majority. The shift to GEAR was deeply contested. Left-of-centre commentators and players within the broader ANC-led alliance saw it as a neo-liberal approach to fiscal and monetary policy that would constrain the government’s ability to drive redistribution of wealth and opportunity. </p>
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<p>When his turn came as president (1999-2008), Mbeki strove to step up to the strategic standards that Mandela had set. His <a href="https://theconversation.com/mbekis-dream-of-africas-renaissance-belied-south-africas-schizophrenia-58311">vision for Africa</a>, in which Africans would take control of their destiny, was strategic. So was his determination to confront the <a href="http://www.dirco.gov.za/docs/speeches/1998/mbek0529.htm">“two nations”</a> problem – one prosperous and white, the other poor and black. </p>
<p>The shift to GEAR was executed with strategic purpose and an iron fist. There were negative consequences, especially in the long term. But few, if any, big strategic choices can be win-win; there will invariably be a downside. The question is whether the leader understands and then confronts the dilemma, and in doing so can articulate the upside and recognise its intrinsic value, one that justifies the downside. </p>
<p>Mbeki was a flawed visionary. His legacy is scarred by his inexplicable <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-mbekis-character-and-his-aids-denialism-are-intimately-linked-54766">lack of judgment on HIV/AIDS</a>, and his stubborn refusal to accept that his government should provide antiretroviral treatment. </p>
<p>Motlanthe, who succeeded him, in his modest way, also recognised the strategic imperative of his short, caretaker time as president – (<a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-kgalema-motlanthe">25 September 2008 to 9 May 2009</a>): to consolidate authority in democratic government and to stabilise an unstable body politic in the context of the palace coup that had taken place within the ANC. </p>
<p>Even Zuma, his successor, in his own mendacious and deviously self-serving way, had strategic intent: to <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">capture the state</a> for venal personal gain. He executed it with a ruthless sense of purpose.</p>
<p>Current president Cyril Ramaphosa appears to be the least strategic of them all. His failure to grasp the strategic nettles inhibits his presidency. On issues such as the transition away from coal, the government stake in state-owned enterprises or the need for a basic income grant, Ramaphosa has dithered, seeking to wait until sufficient consensus has formed or putting in place cumbersome consultation processes, before reaching a clear decision. </p>
<p>He gets things done; he gets there in the end, but his design and use of process is that of a master tactician, not a strategist. He has not risen to the leadership heights required by the gravity of the historical moment. This requires leadership that would unshackle government from the congealing embrace of the ruling ANC and its fractious factions. A leader who would rise above the daily throng to inspire ordinary citizens with a compelling narrative of hope and change, underpinned by iron determination to take brave decisions and to execute them with a sense of purpose and urgent expedition. </p>
<h2>Circling the problem</h2>
<p>The crises that confronted these five presidents have been very different, with varying levels of intensity and composition. Each has faced big challenges, that could inevitably not be resolved only by their executive office. Undoubtedly, part of strategic and visionary leadership is the ability to identify existing and potential allies who are willing to invest what is required to drive a transformative agenda. </p>
<p>All have responded to “what went wrong”. But, because of limitations to their strategic leadership, none has fully met the challenge of confronting “what is wrong” head-on. Their ability to address the question of “what is wrong” has been constrained by the very real demands to put out fires, and keeping the boat afloat without an eye on the navigation system. And where they have focused on navigating the rough seas to get to the destination of a more equal, inclusive South Africa, the vessels of governance with a mandate to steward these transitions have not always delivered.</p>
<p>Mandela, Mbeki and now Ramaphosa have circled the problem (while Zuma weakened the state’s capability). But perhaps because it is such a wicked problem, and the structural difficulties run so deep, they have failed to define a strategic course that would confront the underlying structural conditions, consigning South Africa to an uncertain and worrisome future. </p>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from the authors’ <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/presidents-mandela-ramaphosa-leadership-age-crisis/9781776095940">new book</a> The Presidents: From Mandela to Ramaphosa, Leadership in an Age of Crisis</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Calland is employed by the University of Cape Town, is a Fellow of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, is a partner of political risk consultancy The Paternoster Group, and serves as a member of the Advisory Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC).
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mabel Dzinouya Sithole is employed by the University of Cape Town, contributes regularly to policy advocacy with the Southern African Liaison Office, and other civil society organisations in the region. She advises organisations such as the Ford Foundation on the design of leadership development programmes in Africa and across the globe. </span></em></p>Mandela, the first president of a democratic South Africa, made big strategic choices – not necessarily the right ones, but certainly ones that were befitting of the times.Richard Calland, Associate Professor in Public Law, University of Cape TownMabel Dzinouya Sithole, Programme Officer - Building Bridges, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1911942022-09-25T05:12:09Z2022-09-25T05:12:09Z5 xenophobic myths about immigrants in South Africa debunked by researchers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486093/original/file-20220922-33275-u0nvyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters and police clash during a march against illegal immigrants in South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alet Pretorius/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In South Africa, immigrants are often scapegoated as the root of socio-economic problems. In the post-apartheid landscape, Black African immigrants, mainly, from other African countries have <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-92114-9_14">been negatively stereotyped</a> as “illegal” and “job stealers” who are “criminal” as well as “diseased”.</p>
<p>This attitudinal orientation of hostility against non-nationals in a given population is <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201903/national-action-plan.pdf">xenophobia</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.xenowatch.ac.za/statistics-dashboard/">Since 1994,</a> more than 900 violent xenophobic incidents have been recorded in South Africa, resulting in at least 630 deaths, displacement of 123,700 people, and looting of about 4,850 shops. The eruption of xenophobic violence undermines social stability and cohesion, tolerance, the constitution of South Africa, and the social fabric on which the country’s democracy is founded.</p>
<p>Misstatements by public officials and politicians have time and again fanned the flames of xenophobia and violence associated with it. United Nations experts <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/07/south-africa-un-experts-condemn-xenophobic-violence-and-racial">recently warned</a> that “the country is on the precipice of explosive violence”. </p>
<p>Almost three decades after the county’s first democratic election, South Africa faces what <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/southafrica/publication/developing-an-inclusive-equal-south-africa">commentators have dubbed</a> the triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality.</p>
<p>More than half of the country’s population lives in poverty, with <a href="https://www.lifecoursehealthresearch.org/post/food-crisis-2-5-million-south-africans-experience-hunger-every-day">close to 12 million people hungry and 2.5 million experiencing hunger daily</a>. The country has a Gini coefficient of <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=12930">0.65</a>, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world.</p>
<p>A<a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/wealth/510822/new-data-shows-what-it-takes-to-be-in-south-africas-richest-10/"> meagre 10%</a> of the population owns more than 80% of the wealth. South Africa is still “a country of two nations”, as former president Thabo Mbeki <a href="http://www.dirco.gov.za/docs/speeches/1998/mbek0529.htm">once described it</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=15407">Youth unemployment is a huge problem.</a> Of the more than 10 million people aged 15-24 years, only 2.5 million are active in the labour force, either working or searching for work. Over 75% of this group is out of the labour force.</p>
<p>The significance of negative stereotyping and scapegoating in relation to the “triple challenge” is that immigrants are portrayed as the cause and a threat to national sovereignty. Inflammatory remarks about migrants by public officials and <a href="http://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/sar-53.pdf">politicians harden mythologies</a>.</p>
<p>In a recent <a href="http://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/sar-53.pdf">research paper</a> we set out to debunk negative immigrant myths. We provided evidence demonstrating the influence of myths on the citizenry’s perceptions, as well as contradictions. </p>
<p>The research drew from authoritative and credible sources of data and information. </p>
<p>Beyond debunking the myths, this research sets a baseline of what facts exist regarding immigrants in South Africa.</p>
<h2>Myth 1: South Africa is swamped with immigrants</h2>
<p>It is widely believed that the country is flooded with immigrants. The 2021 South African Social Attitudes Survey indicates that almost half the sample believed the country had between 17-40 million immigrants. This belief is incorrect. <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=14569">Statistics South Africa (StatsSA)</a> estimates the number to be about 3.95 million, accounting for 6.5% of the country’s population. This is not unique to South Africa.</p>
<p>This figure includes regular and irregular immigrants</p>
<h2>Myth 2: Immigrants steal jobs and employment opportunities from locals</h2>
<p>While there is anecdotal evidence that migrants are “job stealers”, in general, migrants do not appear to take employment opportunities from locals. In South Africa, <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/southafrica/publication/new-study-finds-immigrants-in-south-africa-generate-jobs-for-locals">“one {regular} immigrant worker generates approximately two jobs for locals.”</a>.</p>
<p>Migrants are also more likely to be self-employed and employ South Africans.</p>
<h2>Myth 3: Immigrants contribute to, or are responsible for, high levels of crime</h2>
<p><a href="http://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/sar-53.pdf">Our report cites</a> 2008 South African Social Attitudes Survey data which showed that 62% of the sample believed that immigrants were responsible for crime in the country. By 2016 it had gone up to 66% . Paradoxically, when asked who commits crime in their communities, most people say it is locals. For example, between 2011 and 2017, the national Victims of Crime surveys showed that 5.7%–6.7% of households stated that crime in their areas was caused by “people from outside South Africa”.</p>
<p>Statistically, <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-29-iss-today-do-foreigners-really-commit-sas-most-violent-crimes/">there is no relationship between international migration in South Africa and crime.</a> There is no evidence that most foreign-born nationals commit crime, or that they are responsible for most crime in the country.</p>
<h2>Myth 4: Most immigrants are in the country illegally</h2>
<p>Often, immigrants enter South Africa with a regular status but fall into irregular status due to poor immigration policy management. The Department of Home Affairs <a href="http://www.dha.gov.za/index.php/notices/1544-temporary-measures-in-respect-of-foreign-nationals-in-light-of-a-backlog-being-experienced-in-processing-outcomes-on-waiver-applications-and-visa-applications">is struggling</a> with a visa backlog partly due to departmental dysfunction and corruption. In addition to the department’s backlogs, the cost of applying for visas is exorbitant.</p>
<h2>Myth 5: Migrants are flooding public healthcare services</h2>
<p>The Limpopo health MEC, Dr Phophi Ramathuba, recently came under the spotlight for berating an immigrant woman. The moment was caught on video which then went viral. Her remarks seemed to <a href="https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/blog/analysis-are-south-africas-public-hospitals-overburdened-foreign-patients">reinforce the myth</a> that immigrants are overburdening the country’s public healthcare system. At about 6.5% of the population, it is statistically impossible for immigrants to be responsible for the national healthcare system’s failings.</p>
<h2>Futility in scapegoating</h2>
<p>Scapegoating immigrants will not result in significantly improved healthcare service provision, reduced crime or less unemployment. </p>
<p><em>The research was conducted by Anthony Kaziboni and three colleagues from the Institute for Security Studies: Lizette Lancaster, Thato Machabaphala and Godfrey Mulaudzi.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191194/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Kaziboni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Scapegoating immigrants will not result in significantly improved healthcare service provision, reduced crime or less unemployment.Anthony Kaziboni, Head of Research, Institute for the Future of Knowledge (IFK), University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1895672022-08-30T13:44:25Z2022-08-30T13:44:25ZCorruption in South Africa: new book sets out how ruling ANC lost the battle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481758/original/file-20220830-8742-ye9g6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">ANC supporters show support for corruption accused and suspended party secretary general Ace Magashule outside court in Bleomfontein.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Conrad Bornman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the greatest benefits of South Africa’s democracy is freedom of speech and publication. Mpumelelo Mkhabela’s book, <a href="https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780624091226">The Enemy Within</a>, is the latest in a cascade of publications over the last decade that record corruption and theft by leading politicians in the country’s ruling party.</p>
<p>In all too many countries in Africa and Asia a book like this would result in its author’s detention, censorship of the book, persecution of the publishers and printers, and harassment of bookshops that sold it. </p>
<p>South Africa is among a select group of democracies that permit such exposés. Books that have explored the deepening levels of corruption in the country include <a href="https://www.scribd.com/book/377308470/How-to-Steal-a-City-The-Battle-for-Nelson-Mandela-Bay-an-Inside-Account">How to Steal a City</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Steal-Country-Capture-Future/dp/1785903616">How to Steal a Country</a>, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/gangster-state-unravelling-ace-magashule%E2%80%99s-web-capture/9781776093748">Gangster State</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-Party-Corruption-Africas-Uncertain/dp/1844676277">After the Party</a>. </p>
<p>The Enemy Within takes readers through a series of well-publicised corruption scandals. It argues that the African National Congress (ANC) lost the fight against corruption by tolerating corrupt practices, failing to hold the corrupt to account, and going as far as to shield them. The ANC has governed South Africa since the formal end of apartheid in 1994.</p>
<h2>Corruption scandals</h2>
<p>Mkhabela, a former newspaper editor, considers the ANC’s first big test of ethics – which it failed – was in 1996 when it expelled cabinet minister <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02426/05lv02516.htm">Bantu Holomisa</a> from the party. The reason was that he’d stated publicly that ANC cabinet minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stella-margaret-nomzamo-sigcau">Stella Sigcau</a> had earlier in her career accepted a bribe.</p>
<p>The book then goes through other prominent cases of corruption. The scandals include the looting of VBS mutual bank, which involved “theft, abuse of power, robbing of the elderly, and even murder” (four members of the South African Municipal Workers’ Union were killed). (p.41)</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whistleblowers-in-south-africa-have-some-protection-but-gaps-need-fixing-183992">Whistleblowers in South Africa have some protection but gaps need fixing</a>
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<p>There was the rare imprisonment of an ANC MP – Tony Yengeni, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/20/rorycarroll">in 2003</a>, for fraud and corruption. There was also the theft of public funds intended for a memorial service for Nelson Mandela. Then came the procurement by transport parastatal Transnet of locomotives that were too tall to be used on most of the country’s railway lines.</p>
<p>Jacob Zuma, then president, dismantled the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301275880_Countering_corruption_in_South_Africa_The_rise_and_fall_of_the_Scorpions_and_Hawks">Scorpions</a> police unit, which specialised in priority crimes. Public funds were misused for his private residence. The company <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bosasa-group">Bosasa</a> allegedly greased the palms of ANC politicians in return for huge contracts with the prisons department. After a wave of Zuma appointments to the <a href="https://www.npa.gov.za/">National Prosecuting Authority</a>, the book says, the authority</p>
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<p>was clearly dancing to the tune of top ANC politicians. (p.123) </p>
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<p>The case of Jackie Selebi, the erstwhile head of police, shows two ANC failings. Mkhabela reminds readers of the lack of condemnation from the ANC when Selebi was convicted of corruption <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/africa/jackie-selebi-south-african-police-head-convicted-in-corruption-case-dies-at-64.html">in 2010</a>.</p>
<p>To this I would add a second point about cadre deployment: Selebi had no training or on the job experience in policing. Had he been kept in diplomatic postings, scandals would almost certainly never had occurred. </p>
<p>The ANC appears blind to this obvious point.</p>
<p>The robbing of funds for a Mandela memorial service reveals another surprising truth. These municipal funds had initially been earmarked to subsidise poor families (p.74) who could not afford municipal services such as water and electricity. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481757/original/file-20220830-18781-109am8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481757/original/file-20220830-18781-109am8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481757/original/file-20220830-18781-109am8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481757/original/file-20220830-18781-109am8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481757/original/file-20220830-18781-109am8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481757/original/file-20220830-18781-109am8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481757/original/file-20220830-18781-109am8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Most politicians would consider that invaluable for their subsequent electioneering. But politicians diverted or stole the funds. In short, so extreme was their personal greed that it even undermined their efficacy as politicians.</p>
<p>In summarising widespread corporate collusion with corruption, Mkhabela notes that companies hide bribes under the “cost of business” item in their balance sheets. (p.63) </p>
<p>Then there is the pattern of assassinations. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Anyone who threatens to expose tender corruption risks being eliminated by hired hitmen. In some instances, once caught and convicted, the hitmen are even looked after in prison (p.67)</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>ANC leaders</h2>
<p>South Africa had</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a toxic mix of old money, businessmen eager to win favours from politicians, and political leaders ready to tackle anyone who dared make corruption claims against the party. (p.21)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>None of the ANC’s leaders have behaved well. Even Nelson Mandela, who pressed for the dismissal of Holomisa and asked the leader of the South African Communist Party, Jeremy Cronin, to write a leaflet denigrating him. </p>
<p>Mkhabela notes that Thabo Mbeki, as president, was conflicted: he deplored corruption. But he regarded every exposé as a white racist attack. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-corruption-in-south-africa-is-deeply-rooted-in-the-countrys-past-and-why-that-matters-144973">How corruption in South Africa is deeply rooted in the country’s past and why that matters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Mbeki signed up South Africa to the <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA18172733_182">Southern African Development Community Protocol against Corruption</a>, the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/brussels/UN_Convention_Against_Corruption.pdf">UN Convention against Corruption</a>, and the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/corruption/oecdantibriberyconvention.htm">OECD Anti-Bribery Convention</a>. </p>
<p>Also to his credit, Mbeki set up autonomous institutions against corruption that survived his own efforts to undermine them. It would require major exertions on the part of Zuma, who succeeded Mbeki as president, to dismantle them. (p.55)</p>
<p>Zuma had to emasculate the prosecution authority to avoid being prosecuted himself; he had to undermine the South African Revenue Service to prevent being sued for unpaid tax. These allowed a host of the corrupt to capture the state.</p>
<p>The rebuilding of these institutions has taken the whole of Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency to date.</p>
<p>But Mkhabela misses one pertinent point. Mbeki oversaw massive pay rises for the top posts in politics, the bureaucracy including the municipalities, and the parastatals. This hugely raised the stakes in ANC political battles. Mbeki never reproached Smuts Ngonyama, then the ANC’s spokesperson, for his widely quoted comment</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I did not struggle (in the liberation movement) to be poor.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In his conclusions Mkhabela says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The incentives and rewards for being corrupt for the politically connected far outweigh the risks of being caught in the act. (p.198) </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But he ends by noting that corruption generates pushback from the public.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the African National Congress,. but writes this review in his professional capacity as political scientist.</span></em></p>To his credit, former South African president Thabo Mbeki set up anti-corruption institutions that survived his own efforts to erode them.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1879682022-08-24T12:25:42Z2022-08-24T12:25:42ZMisinformation is a common thread between the COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS pandemics – with deadly consequences<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480653/original/file-20220823-13-9i4k47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3000%2C1998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Disinformation can derail public health measures vital to controlling the spread of infectious disease.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreakStubbornMisinformation/6fa082481b454a1d8fc381840890d2ee">AP Photo/Jeff Chiu</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since health officials confirmed the first COVID-19 cases, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-misinformation-health-433991ea434e12ccfdf97b5db415310d">misinformation</a> has spread just as quickly as the virus. <a href="https://theconversation.com/big-tech-has-a-vaccine-misinformation-problem-heres-what-a-social-media-expert-recommends-164987">Social media</a> may have made the amount, variety and speed of misinformation seem unprecedented, but COVID-19 isn’t the first pandemic where false and harmful information has set back public health. </p>
<p>Misinformation altered how people trusted their governments and doctors during the <a href="https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/laura-spinney/pale-rider/9781610397681/">1918 influenza pandemic</a>. It fueled the <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-anti-vaxxers-use-the-same-arguments-from-135-years-ago-145592">19th century smallpox anti-vaccine movements</a> through some of the same arguments as those currently used against the COVID-19 vaccine.</p>
<p>What sets the COVID-19 pandemic apart, however, is the sheer magnitude of damaging disinformation put in circulation around the world. Data shows that regions and countries where disinformation thrived experienced more lethal pandemic waves despite vaccine availability. In the U.S., for example, <a href="https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/2020-44/">viewership of a Fox News program</a> that downplayed the pandemic is associated with increased COVID-19 cases and deaths. Similarly <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389%2Ffpubh.2021.813941">in Romania</a>, disinformation is a contributing factor to the country’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/22/europe/romania-covid-19-vaccine-skepticism-intl-cmd/index.html">disastrous fourth wave</a> of COVID-19.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The COVID-19 infodemic began as soon as the first few cases of infections were confirmed.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The problem of misinformation has been so widespread that it has its own word: “<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-were-watching-infodemic-meaning">infodemic</a>,” a portmanteau of “information” and “epidemic.” Coined by journalist David Rothkopf during the <a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/279705520">2003 SARS outbreak</a>, it describes a situation where “a few facts, mixed with fear, speculation and rumor, are amplified and relayed swiftly worldwide by modern information technologies.” </p>
<p>Infodemics can affect economies, politics, national security and public health. The COVID-19 infodemic became such a problem that <a href="https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/set-c/set-c-vaccine-deployment.pdf">the Royal Society and the British Academy</a> released an October 2020 report noting its significant impact on vaccine deployment, endorsing legislation that prosecutes those who spread misinformation.</p>
<p>As a <a href="http://www.pmi.pitt.edu/person/cristian-apetrei-md-phd">researcher who studies HIV</a> and lived through the AIDS pandemic, I felt a sense of déjà vu as COVID-19 disinformation spread. In the 40 years since the emergence of AIDS, society has learned how to cope with the disease with more effective <a href="https://doi.org/10.1128/CVI.00053-16">diagnostics</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-405880-4.00003-2">treatments</a> and <a href="https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/pre-exposure-prophylaxis-prep">preventive strategies</a>, transforming AIDS from a lethal condition to a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61809-7">chronic disease</a>. </p>
<p>However, there are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2022.07.004">striking parallels between the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics</a> that show the dire consequences disinformation can have on both patients and society as a whole. </p>
<h2>Denying the existence of a virus or a pandemic</h2>
<p>There are people who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/18/its-bizarre-to-see-a-covid-patient-deny-covid-exists-while-gasping-for-breath">deny the</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/08/health/us-coronavirus-tuesday/index.html">existence of COVID-19</a>. There are <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid-rna/fact-check-sars-cov-2-has-been-isolated-and-its-complete-genome-has-been-sequenced-idUSL1N2LS27P">abundant claims</a> on social media that the virus that causes COVID-19 has never been isolated, or it is insufficiently characterized. Others do not contest the existence of COVID-19, but <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-coronavirus-common-cold-idUSKBN2142MC">ignore the severe consequences of infection</a>. </p>
<p>In general, these groups tend to also <a href="https://theconversation.com/germ-theory-denialism-is-alive-and-well-and-taking-the-nuance-out-of-scientific-debate-163408">deny germ theory</a>, claiming that infectious diseases are not caused by pathogens like viruses and bacteria. Instead, they <a href="https://www.popsci.com/health/germ-theory-terrain-theory/">promote the idea</a> that pathogens don’t cause disease, but rather are a consequence of it.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Misinformation is just one common theme between the COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS pandemics.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Likewise, some denied the role of the HIV virus in AIDS infection. AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg was one person who disseminated this misinformation, which had been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.7992043">refuted by the scientific community at large</a>. But his erroneous claim still reached the then president of the Republic of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, who banned the use of lifesaving antiretrovirals in public hospitals. This decision resulted in the <a href="https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/spr09aids/">deaths of over 330,000 people from HIV/AIDS</a> between 2000 and 2005. </p>
<p>Mbeki’s decision was considered so damaging that scientists and physicians worldwide signed the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/35017662">Durban Declaration</a>, reiterating that HIV indeed causes AIDS and urging Mbeki to reconsider his decision. While the government did <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/oct/28/southafrica.aids">reverse the ban</a> after strong international political pressure, the damage had been done.</p>
<h2>Gain of function claims</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-gain-of-function-research-matters-162493">Gain of function experiments</a> involve manipulating a pathogen to understand what contributes to its ability to cause disease. At the same time, such experiments can give pathogens new abilities, such as making viruses more transmissible or more dangerous to humans. Conspiracy theorists have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02903-x">made claims</a> that the COVID-19 virus resulted from alterations to a bat version of the virus that gave it the ability to replicate in human cells. </p>
<p>But these claims ignore several <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.cell.2021.08.017">key facts about the COVID-19 virus</a>, including that all coronaviruses from bats can infect humans without additional adaptation. The mutations that increased the transmissibility of COVID-19 occurred after it started circulating in people, resulting in even more infectious variants. </p>
<p>HIV also saw <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097%2F01.qai.0000209897.59384.52">conspiracy theories</a> claiming that it was created in a lab for genocide. But research has shown that HIV also naturally evolved from an animals. African non-human primates are natural hosts to a vast group of viruses collectively called <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11904-009-0034-8">simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIV)</a>. Despite their high rates of SIV infection in the wild, these primate hosts typically don’t experience symptoms or progress to AIDS. Throughout the evolutionary history of SIV, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1080657">jumping to a new host species</a> involved naturally occurring genetic changes over the course of thousands of years.</p>
<h2>Miracle cures</h2>
<p>During a public health crisis, researchers and health officials are learning about a disease in real time. While missteps are expected, these can be perceived by the public as hesitation, incompetence or failure.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">There are some steps you can take to identify misinformation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As researchers looked for possible COVID-19 treatments, others were offering their own unproven drugs. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa2023184">Multiple treatments</a> for COVID-19, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.cmi.2022.01.008">tested and abandoned</a>. But not before large amounts of time, effort and money were spent on disproving claims that these were supposed miracle treatments. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM200106073442306">Similarly for HIV</a>, frustration and anxiety from a continued lack of available treatments amid rising deaths led to fraudulent cures, with price tags of tens of thousands of dollars.</p>
<p>Even though treatment delays and changing guidelines are a natural process of learning about a new diseases as it unfolds, they can open the door to disinformation and generate <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-01-20/unvaccinated-covid-patients-healthcare-workers-turnover-burnout">distrust in doctors</a> even as they care for infected patients.</p>
<h2>Preventing misinfodemics</h2>
<p>The next pandemic is not a question of if but when and where it will occur. Just as important as devising ways to detect emerging viruses is developing strategies to address the misinfodemics that will follow them. The recent <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/08/05/1115859376/clearing-up-some-of-the-myths-that-have-popped-up-about-monkeypox">monkeypox outbreak</a> has already seen similar spread of mis- and disinformation about its source and spread.</p>
<p>As author <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/autumn-of-the-patriarch/oclc/878792383">Gabriel Garcia Marquez</a> once said, “A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.” Countering misinformation is difficult, because there are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-021-00006-y">reasons other than ignorance</a> for why someone believes in a falsehood. In those cases, presenting the facts may not be enough, and may sometimes even result in someone doubling down on a false belief. But focusing on urgent scientific and medical needs to the exclusion of rapidly addressing misinformation can derail pandemic control. Strategies that take misinformation into account can help other pandemic control measures be more successful.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187968/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cristian Apetrei receives funding from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: R01 DK113919, R01 DK119936, R01 DK131476, R01 AI119346. </span></em></p>The spread of misinformation in many pandemics, including the smallpox and 1918 influenza outbreaks, have undermined efforts to contain infections and prevent deaths.Cristian Apetrei, Professor of Immunology, Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1889932022-08-23T11:17:35Z2022-08-23T11:17:35ZWhat Russian visit says about South Africa’s commitment to human rights in the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480391/original/file-20220822-73022-52sowx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thandi Modise, South Africa's defence minister.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michal Fludra/NurPhoto via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s foreign policy is aimed at contributing to democracy, human rights and <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/final-draft-white-paper-sa-foreign-policy.pdf">justice in the world</a>. Yet its conduct often suits autocrats and despots. This is why defence minister Thandi Modise’s recent attendance at the <a href="https://eng.mil.ru/en/mcis/index.htm">10th Moscow Conference on International Security</a> has sparked criticism. </p>
<p>The basic objectives of the conference are to share practical ideas and explore solutions on matters of global security. But Russian president Vladimir Putin’s swipe at the US and the <a href="https://www.nato.int/">North Atlantic Treaty Organisation</a> in his <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69166">welcoming address</a> revealed an ideological underpinning. He accused them of “creating aggressive military-political unions” to maintain western hegemony.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Their hegemony means stagnation for the rest of the world and for the entire civilisation; it means obscurantism, cancellation of culture, and neoliberal totalitarianism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>South Africa’s stance towards Russia <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-08-15-thandi-modise-at-russian-security-conference-shows-solidarity-with-occupiers-and-aggressors/">in recent months</a> has come under severe criticism. Pretoria initially supported calls for Russia to <a href="http://www.dirco.gov.za/docs/2022/ukra0224.htm">withdraw from Ukraine</a>, only to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2022/08/02/how-do-global-south-politics-of-non-alignment-and-solidarity-explain-south-africas-position-on-ukraine/">retract</a> shortly thereafter. </p>
<p>Some critics object to the mere act of South Africa attending a military conference organised by <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-08-15-flying-circus-thandi-modises-shocking-trip-to-russian-security-conference/?fbclid=IwAR3ywPnPzFWaBO2uIpj1NGpYTWQJXX8dd9eNL3Ts79Ym95y_Qv2%203-dLG2-8">an aggressive, imperialist Russia</a>. </p>
<p>Some feel Pretoria is – as in the past – <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-08-15-flying-circus-thandi-modises-shocking-trip-to-russian-security-conference/?fbclid=IwAR3ywPnPzFWaBO2uIpj1NGpYTWQJXX8dd9eNL3Ts79Ym95y_Qv2%203-dLG2-8">flip-flopping</a> on its official commitment to promoting human rights globally.</p>
<p>Modise <a href="https://www.defenceweb.co.za/featured/thandi-modise-visits-russia-for-moscow-conference-on-international-security/?fbclid=IwAR2Ryqc22UKqKnqNMbtVTz13V1G0T66POwAYoIEvmT8WTNS9tX_9pdbqJAI">defended her participation</a> as part of “an international peace crusade”. She said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>we will emerge from this conference stronger and more united in our determination to continue building a peaceful world. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The question is whether South Africa is once again turning a blind eye – even giving legitimacy – to a great injustice, for political expediency. </p>
<p>The country’s official foreign policy is explicitly guided by <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/final-draft-white-paper-sa-foreign-policy.pdf">ubuntu</a> (humanness) –</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the idea that we affirm our humanity when we affirm the humanity of others.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Inconsistency and ambiguity</h2>
<p>Since 1994 during the Mandela and Mbeki eras, the country has contributed to the reform of continental institutions. It has mediated for peace and stability, and promoted democracy in conflict-ridden countries. </p>
<p>For example, in 1995, former president Nelson Mandela issued a <a href="https://archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/za-com-mr-s-1576">hard-hitting statement</a> after the Nigerian government executed environmental activist and writer <a href="https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/ken-saro-wiwa/">Ken Saro-Wiwa</a>. This underscored a foreign policy informed by human rights.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-foreign-policy-new-paper-sets-the-scene-but-falls-short-on-specifics-188253">South Africa's foreign policy: new paper sets the scene, but falls short on specifics</a>
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<p>In fact, South Africa’s contributions to the development of Africa’s foreign policy realm earned it the status of a <a href="https://issafrica.org/research/policy-brief/is-south-africa-a-norm-entrepreneur-in-africa">“norm entrepreneur”</a>. That means it set the norms for moral and principled international engagement and interventions on the continent.</p>
<p>But in the second term of the Mbeki era, foreign policy analysts posed serious questions about the country’s willingness to uphold the values of democracy and human rights in its foreign policy. The country has become less principled in its approach to world affairs. There have been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10220461.2012.670381">inconsistencies and ambiguities</a>, specifically when it is expected to stand up for human rights. </p>
<p>An example was former president Thabo Mbeki’s <a href="https://www.saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/16-Dlamini.pdf">quiet diplomacy towards Zimbabwe</a> since 2000. His refusal to speak out against atrocities during the Robert Mugabe era in favour of fruitless secret meetings was one such example. For many observers this was puzzling, coming from the continent’s most celebrated democracy. It became a source of domestic concern, global scepticism and outspoken criticism.</p>
<p>Later, under Mbeki’s successor, Jacob Zuma, the Libya conundrum in 2011 stood out. South Africa, then <a href="http://www.dirco.gov.za/department/unsc/index.html">a non-permanent member</a> of the UN Security Council, voted for a <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2011/sc10200.doc.htm">ban</a> on all flights over Libya to protect civilians from attacks by the Libyan air force. </p>
<p>Yet, soon after it was the implemented, Pretoria <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10220461.2012.670381">backtracked</a>. It appealed to international role-players to respect the territorial integrity of Libya. This dented South Africa’s credibility.</p>
<p>The country had to be goaded into <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10220461.2012.670381">accepting a no-fly zone</a>, based on <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/about-responsibility-to-protect.shtml">The Responsibility to Protect principle</a>, to stop the Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi from bombing his own population from the air. </p>
<p>Another controversy was sparked when, in 2015, Zuma hosted the <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/25th-african-union-summit-7-15-jun">African Union summit in Johannesburg</a>. It was attended by then Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir, who had been declared a “wanted war criminal” by the International Criminal Court for <a href="https://hmh.org/library/research/genocide-in-darfur-guide/">genocide in Darfur</a>. Zuma’s government failed to arrest him <a href="https://theconversation.com/al-bashir-what-the-law-says-about-south-africas-duties-43498">despite a court order</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-foreign-policy-has-been-at-sixes-and-sevens-heres-why-70089">South Africa's foreign policy has been at sixes and sevens – here's why</a>
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<p>Zuma even accepted Al-Bashir’s invitation for him to visit Sudan. It was a clear indication that the Zuma government was willing to ignore gross <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2015-09-04-zuma-shows-disdain-for-human-rights-by-meeting-al-bashir-da/">human rights violations</a>.</p>
<p>Currently, the South African government is <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-countries-showed-disunity-in-un-votes-on-russia-south-africas-role-was-pivotal-180799">not prepared to condemn</a> Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.</p>
<h2>New hope for norm entrepreneurship</h2>
<p>The Mbeki and Zuma eras were characterised by an unwillingness to confront authoritarian regimes and human rights abuses. Be it in Sudan, Zimbabwe and Eswatini, or further afield in Myanmar, Syria, China and North Korea. </p>
<p>When Cyril Ramaphosa became president <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/5/22/south-africas-parliament-elects-cyril-ramaphosa-as-president">in 2018</a>, it was hoped he would restore South Africa’s status as a champion for peace and democracy globally. He came to office with good international relations credentials, having helped <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-president-cyril-ramaphosa-can-help-resolve-the-gaza-crisis-97871">craft the UN’s Responsibility to Protect principle</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, countries in the global south cannot be expected to automatically <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2022/08/02/how-do-global-south-politics-of-non-alignment-and-solidarity-explain-south-africas-position-on-ukraine/">fall in line with western expectations</a> on world issues.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-human-rights-should-guide-responses-to-the-global-pandemic-147225">Why human rights should guide responses to the global pandemic</a>
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<p>But, South Africa’s refusal to condemn Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, and Modise’s visit to Moscow, make one thing clear once again. It is that South Africa’s foreign policy behaviour is not what was <a href="https://www.defenceweb.co.za/featured/thandi-modise-visits-russia-for-moscow-conference-on-international-security/?fbclid=IwAR2Ryqc22UKqKnqNMbtVTz13V1G0T66POwAYoIEvmT8WTNS9tX_9pd%20bqJAI">expected of the country</a> as an international and regional norm entrepreneur.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188993/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Theo Neethling receives funding from the National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>South Africa’s foreign policy is supposed to be guided by the principle of ubuntu (humanness), so a visit to an aggressor is hard to explain.Theo Neethling, Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Studies and Governance, University of the Free StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1876602022-08-04T07:26:04Z2022-08-04T07:26:04ZRacism in South Africa: why the ANC has failed to dismantle patterns of white privilege<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476919/original/file-20220801-77700-t3rcsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">ANC leaders led by Cyril Ramaphosa cut a giant cake to mark the ANC's 110th birthday in January.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phill Magakoe/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the sources of social discontent in post-apartheid South Africa is the legacy of white racism. This toxic legacy is evident in racialised poverty and inequality. </p>
<p>It is a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/719876">historical fact</a> that the economic prosperity of whites in South Africa is based on the racist exploitation and impoverishment of blacks. </p>
<p>The long <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/719876">history</a> of racism enabled white South Africans to enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world by the 1970s. In his new book, titled <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=31759">Can We Unlearn Racism?</a>, Jacob R Boersema, a New York University academic, shows that by the 21st century white South Africans’ “lifetime work-related earnings on average are four times higher than for Africans”. </p>
<p>Add to this <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">corruption</a>, rampant <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-bheki-cele-release-quarter-four-crime-statistics-202122-3-jun-2022-0000">crime</a>, frightening levels of <a href="https://theconversation.com/change-what-south-african-men-think-of-women-to-combat-their-violent-behaviour-167921">gender based violence</a> and <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-08-18-south-africas-profound-institutional-failure/">failing political institutions</a>: the outcome is a social horror show that produces misery for millions of black people. This is what former president Thabo Mbeki was referring to in his <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-07-22-thabo-mbeki-slams-anc-for-failing-on-unemployment-poverty-inequality/">recent scathing critique</a> of the governing African National Congress (ANC).</p>
<p>Mbeki also criticised the party for not being able to organise a racially diverse audience for the memorial service of the late ANC deputy secretary general <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jessie-yasmin-duarte">Jessie Duarte</a>. That, he said, showed that the ANC had failed to embody its fundamental value of <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10566/5829/Non%20racialism%20and%20the%20African%20National%20Congress%20views%20from%20the%20branch.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">non-racialism</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pandemic-underscores-gross-inequalities-in-south-africa-and-the-need-to-fix-them-135070">Pandemic underscores gross inequalities in South Africa, and the need to fix them</a>
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<p>Mbeki’s thinking reveals deep confusion about “race”, racism, diversity and non-racialism. He falsely assumes that diversity means harmony. </p>
<p>Non-racialism is one of the unexamined dogmas of the ANC. It has its roots in the politics of Christian humanism that inspired the formation of the party in 1912. That humanism regarded Christianity as transcending race by offering <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-African-Nationalism-South-Africa/dp/0520018109">“an ultimate goal of inter-racial harmony based on the brotherhood of man”</a>. </p>
<p>Whatever solidarity there was between different racial groups in political structures like the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/significance-congress-people-and-freedom-charter">Congress Alliance</a> – which drew up the ANC’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-south-africas-freedom-charter-60-years-later-43647">“Freedom Charter”</a> in 1955 – did not translate to the social world outside politics. </p>
<p>The world outside politics was defined by racial segregation. That has not changed much. Apart from the workplace and in schools, ordinary blacks and whites continue to live <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-johannesburgs-suburban-elites-maintain-apartheid-inequities-169295">racially segregated lives</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-south-africas-white-liberals-dodge-honest-debates-about-race-127846">How South Africa's white liberals dodge honest debates about race</a>
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<p>The ANC, since its formation, has been ideologically trapped in the 19th century black Cape politics of Victorian liberalism – which advocated for loyalty to the British Crown. This resulted in blacks making moral appeals to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/274742">white benevolence</a> for justice and freedom, instead of making political demands. The ANC has never fully understood how white racism functions.</p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>The ANC’s establishment in 1912 was driven by an ideological blending of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-African-Nationalism-South-Africa/dp/0520018109">British liberalism and a Christian vision of non-racialism</a>. This equipped it poorly to respond to and make sense of racism and modern South Africa. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Men and women give the thumbs up sign from inside a train coach reserved for whites only in 1952, during apartheid. A sign on the train says 'Europeans only'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C528%2C390&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Black commuters defiantly board a train reserved for whites during apartheid in 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bettman via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>For most of the early 20th century, the ANC thought it could defeat racism by appealing to Britain’s sense of common justice. In his presidential address to the South African Native Congress (now ANC) in 1912 – which was published in the Christian Express, the Christian missionary journal published by the Lovedale Press – <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/john-langalibalele-dube">Reverend John Dube</a> <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1arfjVg421EBuXh6iMRiWwC7e1-ouGFcn/view?usp=sharing">encouraged</a> black people to show “deep and dutiful respect for the rulers whom God has placed over us” because the</p>
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<p>sense of common justice and love of freedom so innate in the British character (would) ultimately triumph over all other baser tendencies to colour prejudice and class tyranny.</p>
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<p>Consequently, from its formation to the 1950s, when its leaders were subjected to government bans, the ANC failed to win a single political victory over white racism, as <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520039339/black-power-in-south-africa">historians</a> have pointed out.</p>
<p>From the 1950s, it moved away from <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24738360">“black Victorianism”</a> and incorporated a Pan-Africanist worldview, as well as Das Kapital – Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism. The Marxists in the ANC argued that the aim of the struggle was to overthrow capitalism, which they saw <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520039339/black-power-in-south-africa">in terms of class rather than race</a>.</p>
<p>Black people thus focused their hostility on the apartheid government, and <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520039339/black-power-in-south-africa">“never on whites as such”</a>. Black people who dared to use race as an analytical category were eventually purged from the ANC. </p>
<p>By the turn of this century the ANC had rid itself of British liberalism and Christian politics. But it remained committed to the idea of non-racialism.
And it has <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237800101_The_ANC_black_capitalism_in_South_Africa">embraced capitalism </a> – in particular the capitalism entrenched in South Africa by white people.</p>
<p>There are three consequences.</p>
<p>Firstly, the ANC is an intellectually impoverished organisation that rewards incompetence and greed, and encourages individuals to strive to be the king of the rubbish pile. </p>
<p>Secondly, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gangster-State-Unravelling-Magashules-Pieter-Louis/dp/1776093747">corruption</a> and blatant disregard for the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-06-03-crime-crisis-continues-in-first-quarter-of-2022-with-women-and-children-worst-affected/">law</a> have achieved ambient levels. </p>
<p>Thirdly, South Africa is dysfunctional and <a href="https://www.opensaldru.uct.ac.za/handle/11090/900">social cohesion</a> has broken down.</p>
<h2>Failure of non-racialism</h2>
<p>Mbeki is one of the few ANC politicians <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PpZlvfSP_A">to admit publicly</a> that non-racialism has failed to unite South Africans. The black intellectual ecosystem has yet to develop a compelling analysis of the relationship between white wealth and black poverty. </p>
<p>The white narrative that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2021.1878251?src=recsys">blames the black elite</a> for the persistence of <a href="https://www.da.org.za/2018/08/das-position-on-economic-empowerment">racialised inequality</a> erases white racism from post-apartheid South Africa. </p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/Report-03-10-19/Report-03-10-192017.pdf?_ga=2.14935350.1863706996.1659349869-103406588.1655989340#page=59">Statistics South Africa</a>: </p>
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<p>The labour market experiences of different population groups in South Africa continue to diverge substantially, and still reflect the strongly persistent legacies of apartheid policies … Thus, black African unemployment rates are between four and five times as high as they are amongst whites.</p>
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<p>The black middle class remains largely an academic construct. It consists of a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1750481317745750">mere 4.2 million</a> people whereas blacks make up 80% of the population of <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=15601">60 million</a>. <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/scis/publications/working-papers/">Research</a> shows no sign of a decrease in racialised wealth inequality since apartheid.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-pro-poor-policies-on-their-own-wont-shift-inequality-in-south-africa-117430">Why 'pro-poor' policies on their own won't shift inequality in South Africa</a>
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<p>The ANC’s failures mean that the vast majority of black people are trapped in poverty, with few prospects of escaping.</p>
<p>Thabo Mbeki is right to be worried. And it is not only the ANC that does not have the solution to the country’s problems. </p>
<p>Until black people break from the ideological capture of non-racialism, the legacy of white racism will never be dislodged.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mandisi Majavu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Non-racialism is one of the unexamined dogmas of the governing ANC, which has never fully understood how white racism functions.Mandisi Majavu, Senior Lecturer, Department of Political and International Studies, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1877042022-07-31T06:48:34Z2022-07-31T06:48:34ZSouth Africa is trapped again: what kind of leaders can set the country free<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476080/original/file-20220726-20-d0tew9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African president Thabo Mbeki.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ebrahim Hamid/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Former South African president <a href="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/to-honour-duarte-anc-has-to-tackle-issues-of-corruption-mbeki/">Thabo Mbeki</a> recently painted a gloomy picture of the country and its prospects. He said the governing African National Congress (ANC), led by <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-cyril-ramaphosa%3A-profile">President Cyril Ramaphosa</a>, did not have a national plan to address the country’s many socio-economic problems. These include high and growing unemployment, inequality, poverty and crime. </p>
<p>The official national unemployment rate is <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=15407#:%7E:text=According%20to%20the%20Quarterly%20Labour,stands%20at%2034%2C5%25">34.5%</a>. The country is also the <a href="https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099125303072236903/pdf/P1649270c02a1f06b0a3ae02e57eadd7a82.pdf">most unequal in the world</a>, and about 55.5% (30.3 million people) of the population <a href="https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/poverty/33EF03BB-9722-4AE2-ABC7-AA2972D68AFE/Global_POVEQ_ZAF.pdf">live in poverty</a>.</p>
<p>Mbeki served two terms as ANC president, <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/former-leaders-2/">from 1997 to 2007</a>, and national president, <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki-mr-0">from 1999 to 2008</a>. South Africa enjoyed <a href="https://www.southafricanmi.com/thabo-mbeki-sa-economy-6sep2018.html">an average GDP growth rate of 4.2%</a> during his tenure, making him and finance minister <a href="https://www.weforum.org/people/trevor-manuel">Trevor Manuel</a> the most successful economic combination in South Africa’s young democracy. Yet the country’s socio-economic problems, inherited from apartheid, persisted during his tenure. </p>
<p>Mbeki expressed concern about ANC politicians who did not serve the people of South Africa, but who were rather focused on self-enrichment. He also lamented the absence of a <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2022-07-22-ramaphosa-has-failed-to-deliver-on-promises-made-during-sona-says-thabo-mbeki/">social compact</a> – the collaboration between government, civil society organisations, communities, business and labour. And he pointed out the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africans-are-revolting-against-inept-local-government-why-it-matters-155483">dire straits of local governments</a>, especially those led by the ANC.</p>
<p>Mbeki lamented the <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-bheki-cele-release-quarter-four-crime-statistics-202122-3-jun-2022-0000">high crime rate</a>. He said South Africa was not well governed by the ANC, which has been in power since 1994. He warned that the country was ripe for its own <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-07-22-thabo-mbeki-slams-anc-for-failing-on-unemployment-poverty-inequality/">Arab Spring</a> – the uprisings that brought down the Tunisian government in 2011 and spread across the Arab world.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-needs-moral-leaders-not-those-in-pursuit-of-selfish-gain-76244">South Africa needs moral leaders, not those in pursuit of selfish gain</a>
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<p>South Africa is indeed threatened by all these issues – especially by unemployment, inequality, poverty and a lack of cohesion. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-vibrant-civil-society-is-central-to-democratic-consolidation-in-tunisia-55525">Tunisian</a> revolution was caused by high unemployment, inequality, food inflation, corruption, a lack of political freedoms and poor living conditions.</p>
<p>In my view, the country needs <a href="https://online.stu.edu/degrees/education/what-is-transformational-leadership/">transformational leaders</a> – who can inspire positive change in individuals and social systems – to fix its problems. Such leaders must be concerned about the country’s problems and be involved in helping to fix them. They must help every member of society succeed. Only transformational leadership can help bring about South Africa’s renewal.</p>
<h2>The quest for renewal</h2>
<p>Every South African who cares about the future of the country and its people will agree with Mbeki that, to avert disaster, something must be done urgently about the socio-economic problems he outlined.</p>
<p>However, people – including economists, political commentators, politicians, business people and policymakers – differ on what the objectives and methods of such a renewal effort should be. For example, some believe that the country’s wealth is based on natural resources, capital, prestigious jobs and job creation. To them, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03768359408439742?needAccess=true">redistribution of wealth</a>, affirmative action, job creation and higher wages are the answer to the country’s ills.</p>
<p>Others argue that South Africa is a poor country. So, wealth redistribution will at best make everyone poor. Therefore, economic growth is essential <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03768359408439742?needAccess=true">to grow the “cake” to be redistributed</a>. To that end, the economy must be freed from state control so that entrepreneurs and businesses are motivated to make good money, invest more and thereby create jobs to make the country prosperous.</p>
<p>Of course, both these views have merit, but there are also blind spots that can severely damage development. We no longer live in the industrial age of the 20th century when the struggle between capital and labour reached its peak as a zero-sum game.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-toxic-leaders-destroy-people-as-well-as-organisations-51951">How toxic leaders destroy people as well as organisations</a>
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<p>Although there is still a battle between capital and labour, in today’s economy, knowledge, skill development and pioneering innovation are the primary drivers of a country’s prosperity.</p>
<p>This requires that all South Africans join hands and participate. And this construction work must be undertaken with great patience, adaptability, respect, humility and a lot of hope and courage. For this to happen, the country needs <a href="https://online.stu.edu/degrees/education/what-is-transformational-leadership/">transformational leadership</a>.</p>
<h2>Transformational leadership</h2>
<p>Transformational leadership is a process in which leaders and followers help each other to constantly advance to a higher level of morale and motivation. </p>
<p>The best form of transformational leadership was displayed by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/nelson-mandela-presidency-1994-1999">Nelson Mandela</a>, the late first president of a democratic South Africa. He envisioned the country as a “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23493573#metadata_info_tab_contents">rainbow nation</a>” and rallied almost the entire nation – black and white – behind the realisation of his vision. But it <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-rainbow-nation-is-a-myth-that-students-need-to-unlearn-66872">faded</a> over the years.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-142826">Mandela was a flawed icon. But without him South Africa would be a sadder place</a>
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<p>The futurist <a href="https://www.graffitibooks.co.za/af/362380/Boeke">Philip Spies</a>, however, describes the new South Africa as a ship that started sailing in 1994 with very good hope and direction, but froze in a pack of ice 28 years later, bringing the country’s development to a standstill. This is the product of, among other things, class, race and ethnic polarisation and alienation of communities and greed, elitist governance and corruption by privileged and <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/14636681111138785/full/pdf">favoured public servants and politicians</a>.</p>
<p>Sadly, the current political leaders – and this applies to most political parties – are not very good “icebreakers”. Too many politicians are <a href="https://www.polity.org.za/article/treasury-warns-self-enrichment-culture-eroding-state-2022-03-03">self-serving and interested in self-enrichment</a>. They are often far removed – literally and metaphorically – from the citizens.</p>
<p>The large group of poor people in the country <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-11-22-south-africa-has-been-betrayed-we-need-a-new-generation-of-leaders/">feel betrayed by democracy</a>. Political liberation did not produce economic liberation.</p>
<p>While politicians defend their positions and privileges, the poor want to survive. These are two contrasting motives by people who experience reality completely differently.</p>
<p>The incompetence and <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/07/05/corruption-african-national-congress-south-africa-243297">corruption</a> of so many officials and politicians <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/political-incompetence-revolutionary-reactions-and-present-danger">force people to revolt</a>. This in turn creates opportunities for criminal elements. This kind of leadership sucks humanity out of people. It incites emotion and hatred that leads to upheavals that have no respect for anything and anyone, as seen in the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/investigations/july-unrest-one-year-later-sa-still-doesnt-know-who-masterminded-the-chaos-20220707-2">in July 2021</a>.</p>
<p>But transformational, moral leadership is future-oriented. It changes attitudes in people and motivates them to do exceptional things.</p>
<p>Renewal – how to break the ice’s grip on the ship – carries dangers for the transformational leader. There will always be losers in a renewal process who can easily become disruptors, as seen in the transition to democracy in the early 1990s with certain <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02167/04lv02264/05lv02335/06lv02357/07lv02372/08lv02379.htm">right-wing political parties</a>.</p>
<p>James Brian Quinn, the American academic and author, points out that <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Strategies_for_Change.html?id=WpYoAQAAMAAJ&amp;redir_esc=y">transformational leaders</a> must pay even more attention to the interests of those who may lose during a renewal process than to the programmes of change themselves.</p>
<p>Many so-called professional politicians are short-term oriented. This easily makes them “enemies” of longer-term development, therefore of the future of a country. That’s because they need to survive politically. But leaders who are only long-term oriented can easily lose sight of the immediate needs. So, citizens stop following them.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/beware-of-misleaders-who-thrive-on-fear-and-capitalise-on-crises-69073">Beware of misleaders who thrive on fear and capitalise on crises</a>
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<p>Transformational leaders are dedicated to long-term development – built on good background analysis – while also trying to solve the immediate problems of a country and its people.</p>
<p>For such leaders, continuous self-examination, sharp observation, service to people, and dialogue are crucial in putting a country on the trajectory of a knowledge economy and sustainable development.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>If we measure the extent to which the country has skilled, capable and dedicated people who are building a vibrant, sustainable society, President Ramaphosa and the ANC sadly do not provide transformational leadership. </p>
<p>The country needs more than transformational leaders. It needs change management, a whole new design, which has the potential to lead to the purest expression of democracy for South Africa, with its vast differences in wealth, and diverse communities with their diverse interests. Yet, without transformational leadership, this is not possible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Every South African who cares about the future of the country will agree with former president Mbeki that, to avert disaster, something must be done urgently about its deep socio-economic problems.Chris Jones, Chief researcher, Department of Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology, head of Unit for Moral Leadership, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1876342022-07-26T14:49:02Z2022-07-26T14:49:02ZSouth Africa has been warned that it faces an ‘Arab Spring’: so what are the chances?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476062/original/file-20220726-13-kdqkq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protest in Johannesburg against the lack of service delivery or basic necessities such as access to water and electricity.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Marco Longari / AFP via Getty images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Former South African President <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a> recently launched a sharp critique of the governing African National Congress (ANC) for failure to address what it has <a href="https://cisp.cachefly.net/assets/articles/attachments/88080_umrabulo-policy-document-18th-may-2022.pdf">labelled</a> the triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality. </p>
<p>Mbeki, who led the party <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/former-leaders-2/">from 1997 to 2007</a>, said the government seemed to have no plan to address these problems, warning that rising poverty and hardship, poor governance, and mounting lawlessness could see South Africa erupt into its own version of the “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Spring">Arab Spring</a>”.</p>
<p>The “Arab Spring” uprisings which swept across North Africa and parts of the Middle East more than a decade ago, led to the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Many of the protesters were young and educated and had become disillusioned by the corruption and patronage that benefited only political and economic elites. </p>
<p>A common feature of these uprisings was that the existing constitutional orders had become so delegitimised that they simply collapsed under the weight of social discord. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-deadly-july-2021-riots-may-recur-if-theres-no-change-186397">South Africa's deadly July 2021 riots may recur if there's no change</a>
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<p>Mbeki’s prophesy is sobering, especially coming a year after <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-deadly-july-2021-riots-may-recur-if-theres-no-change-186397">devastating riots</a> in parts of the country in July 2021. With the plotters of what President Cyril Ramaphosa described as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-deadly-july-2021-riots-may-recur-if-theres-no-change-186397">failed insurrection</a> still at large, many South Africans nervously await a repeat. </p>
<p>Political parties, trade unions, business, civil society groups all realise that South Africa is a pressure cooker. But the youth have shown little interest in organised politics. Their <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1614389/south-africa-election-young-voters-stay-away-from-polls/">low participation rates</a> in elections are a sign of that. There is a sense that something needs to change quickly, and radically. If not, the youth could explode in impatience and anger, a tsunami that even political parties will find difficult to contain.</p>
<h2>Ramaphosa’s plan to avert chaos</h2>
<p>President Ramaphosa used a public platform to respond to Mbeki’s criticism, almost a week later. Addressing the closing session of the ANC KwaZulu-Natal electoral conference <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EthSjP-Amk">he pointed</a> out that the government did have a reform agenda to address these problems. He cited the unwieldy <a href="https://www.gov.za/issues/national-development-plan-2030">National Development Plan</a>, government’s formal blueprint for achieving its long term goals, and the ANC’s own <a href="https://voteanc.org.za/assets/manifesto-summaries/A5_Manifesto_English.pdf">2019 election manifesto</a> as “the plan”. </p>
<p>Some of the priorities identified have since been translated into the government’s <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202010/south-african-economic-reconstruction-and-recovery-plan.pdf">Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan</a>, which aims to change the asset and resource base of the economy by making the ownership structure more inclusive. </p>
<p>Tellingly, the president referred to these measures as “reforms”, language that invokes the idea of incremental change. But such initiatives sound distant and removed from what is needed.</p>
<p>What people want to see is visible change in their daily lives, and more imagination on the part of their government in relieving their hardships. The R350 (about US$20.72) monthly grant to unemployed people <a href="https://www.gov.za/services/social-benefits/social-relief-distress">during the COVID pandemic</a> was a tangible response to the crisis that families facing starvation needed. Similar scaled-up measures to deal with the multiple crises are needed, and there is no time to waste. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-lies-behind-social-unrest-in-south-africa-and-what-might-be-done-about-it-166130">What lies behind social unrest in South Africa, and what might be done about it</a>
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<p>Something needs to be done urgently to address a host of big challenges, ranging from the <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/609268/warning-signs-as-wealthy-south-africans-take-strain-from-the-higher-cost-of-living/">high cost of living</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-driving-the-surge-in-south-africas-fuel-price-185302">soaring fuel prices</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/local-government-in-south-africa-is-broken-but-giving-the-job-to-residents-carries-risks-155970">inadequate provision of basic municipal services</a>.</p>
<p>Bored youth, with limited opportunities for work and gaining skills, get sucked into drugs or alcohol abuse, petty crime or worse. </p>
<h2>Possible trajectories</h2>
<p>Given the picture I have painted, is an Arab Spring likely? </p>
<p>It is impossible to make an accurate prediction, but two trajectories are plausible. </p>
<p>One is a repeat of last July’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-deadly-july-2021-riots-may-recur-if-theres-no-change-186397">devastating unrest</a>. The failure of the state to respond decisively to the July unrest could encourage politically inspired anarchists to resort to violence again if they don’t get their way. They have tested the waters and seen what’s possible. And given that people remain frustrated about their lives, the country could see another outbreak of violence.</p>
<p>Another trajectory is the one in which lawlessness increases even further. Transnational organised crime networks and local gangs are <a href="https://theconversation.com/mass-shootings-in-south-africa-are-often-over-group-turf-how-to-stop-the-cycle-of-reprisals-187182">becoming increasingly brazen</a>. The police are <a href="https://www.groundup.org.za/article/police-are-overstretched-and-understaffed-north-west/">overstretched</a> and gripped by their own internal problems. This breakdown in respect for the law by criminals has the effect of eroding the legitimacy and authority of the state. </p>
<p>Extortion, protection rackets, kidnappings, drive-by shootings, if they are allowed to encroach unchecked, will result in criminal networks being even more of a destabilising factor than political actors. A convergence of these elements – a South Africa where disgruntled elements engage in ongoing destabilisation, and collude with, or even unwittingly create the space for criminal networks to run amok – does not augur well for a prosperous nation.</p>
<h2>Mitigating factors</h2>
<p>Uprisings like those that occurred in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, were the result of combustible local conditions, triggered by a small spark. People were railing against political systems they saw as authoritarian and intolerant of dissent. </p>
<p>South Africa is still a very different political space. The country is a noisy democracy with a free and open media, lots of dissenting voices, and insulting the government of the day doesn’t carry any overt sanction.</p>
<p>It could be a blessing in disguise that the country is perpetually in election mode. The local government elections and national general elections occur every five years. Because they overlap each other, the country has an election every three years. </p>
<p>In between these events, political parties hold their own leadership contests, which serve as bellwethers for who is likely to occupy national office or local government seat. This ongoing extra- and intra-political competition serves as a pressure valve to absorb the energy that might otherwise bubble over.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-political-risk-profile-has-gone-up-a-few-notches-but-its-not-yet-a-failed-state-170653">South Africa's political risk profile has gone up a few notches: but it's not yet a failed state</a>
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<p>Political assassinations, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-political-killings-have-taken-hold-again-in-south-africas-kwazulu-natal-143908">especially at the local level</a>, are a pernicious by-product of this endless electoral churn. But the prospects of attaining office through outwitting, or ganging up with rivals, are still sufficiently attractive to the political classes. </p>
<p>This is not to deny that destabilisation is not widespread, something referred to by Ramaphosa when he addressed the nation on broadcast media on <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/address-president-cyril-ramaphosa-actions-address-electricity-crisis%2C-union-buildings%2C-tshwane">Monday 25 July</a>. Sabotage of electrical infrastructure, illegal connections by community members, theft of cables by organised criminals might not necessarily be centrally orchestrated. Nevertheless, they delegitimise the authority of the central state. </p>
<p>Already, many young people engage in protest action. So-called <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2017.1329106">service delivery protests</a> are part of the South African experience: for the moment they remain largely localised and driven by single issues. Just five years ago, student protests through the <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1753-59132021000400006">#FeesMustFall movement</a> saw activism on a national scale. The national mood changed; politics changed. Some of those young activists are now in parliament, in local government, and other spaces. </p>
<p>But they account for a small minority. There is a vast, restless sea of young people with unmet dreams and aspirations. They wake up to lives of poverty, joblessness, boredom. They see little change, and perceive the state to be indifferent to their plight. </p>
<p>Yet these same young people are energetic, connected via social media, and bursting to claim their space. Some are fortunate to come by opportunities, but for those from poor families, there is not much to persuade them that their lives are about to get better. Therein lies the challenge to political parties and the state.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187634/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandy Africa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The country is still a very different political space. It’s a noisy democracy with a free media, lots of dissenting voices, and insulting the government doesn’t carry any overt sanction.Sandy Africa, Associate Professor, Political Sciences, and Deputy Dean Teaching and Learning (Humanities), University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1870462022-07-21T18:18:42Z2022-07-21T18:18:42ZSouth Africa’s Thabo Mbeki at 80: admired on the continent more than at home<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475139/original/file-20220720-20-plykfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African President Thabo Mbeki in 2017. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kevin Sutherland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s second post-apartheid president, celebrated his <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-cyril-ramaphosa-80th-birthday-celebrations-former-president-thabo-mbeki-18-jun">80th birthday</a> on 18 June 2022. Following Mandela’s era of multiracial and multicultural <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-rainbow-nation-is-a-myth-that-students-need-to-unlearn-66872">rainbowism</a>, Mbeki had to squarely address the challenges of acute inequality and the numerous grievances of the black majority caused by colonialism and apartheid. This was tough work with no easy solutions.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki-mr-0">Mbeki</a> was born in what is now the Eastern Cape province to fairly educated and politically conscious parents – <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/epainette-nomaka-mbeki">Epainette</a>, a schoolteacher, and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/govan-mbeki">Govan</a>, a contemporary of Mandela and other freedom fighters of that era. Govan was seldom home as he pursued the cause of freedom for South Africa. Thabo had to grow up fast and joined the youth league of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/african-national-congress-anc">African National Congress</a> (ANC) when he was only 13.</p>
<p>The topic of Mbeki’s political legacy is moot. Even his position between global icon <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a> and alleged <a href="https://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">state capture architect</a> Jacob Zuma is quite telling. For the most part, Mandela, whom he succeeded, basked in the glow of post-apartheid reconciliation and euphoria. But <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00064246.2018.1514927">Mbeki</a> could not afford that luxury. There was serious work to be done in building a post-apartheid political dispensation. Much of this arduous task fell on him, whom many considered Mandela’s de facto prime minister. </p>
<p>Mbeki is attractive to many intellectuals beyond South Africa because of his thinking about pan-Africanism, the <a href="https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/mbeki.html">African renaissance</a> and neocolonialism. All these issues are pertinent in Africa and its vast diaspora, which put Mbeki in the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thabo-Mbeki-Short-Histories-Africa/dp/082142274X">spotlight of the pan-Africanist movement</a>. Numerous works have been written on his <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.18772/22010105027">tenure as president and his legacy</a>.</p>
<p>Mbeki found his second wind as probably the most respected African elder statesman after his ignominious exit as ANC leader. His transition from national politics to the African continental stage has been without great fanfare but quite effective.</p>
<p>As the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thabo-Mbeki-Battle-Soul-ANC/dp/184277848X">ANC</a>, which has governed South Africa since 1994, became afflicted by widespread corruption and deadly politicking, Mbeki kept above the fray. His nemesis and erstwhile deputy, <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">Zuma</a>, who succeeded him as president, went further in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Keepers-Those-keeping-prison-ebook/dp/B076YBL1WS">tarnishing the ANC brand and legacy in the most disrespectful manner</a>. </p>
<p>This is the uncomfortable position from which Mbeki is compelled to be assessed.</p>
<h2>A no-frills technocrat</h2>
<p>Mbeki is not a charismatic leader, neither does he pretend to be. He does <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thabo-Mbeki%20Short-Histories-Africa/dp/082142274X">not possess Mandela’s charm</a> or Zuma’s demotic earthiness, which can move people to declare they’d <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/we-will-kill-for-zuma-20080616">kill for him</a>. </p>
<p>Mandela had a winning smile that floored <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-06-30-me-476-story.html">Hollywood A-listers</a>. Zuma sang and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBc1n5HqXxs">danced</a> his way into the hearts of the South African masses and wasn’t afraid to make a fool of himself. Mbeki always remained aloof. His appeal was largely among intellectuals.</p>
<p>Mbeki is rather a conscientious technocrat equally at home with other technocrats such as <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/directorate/former-executive-director-phumzile-mlambo-ngcuka">Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka</a> and <a href="https://www.weforum.org/people/trevor-manuel">Trevor Manuel</a>. The two served in prominent positions in Mbeki’s cabinet.</p>
<p>During his tenure as ANC president (<a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/former-leaders-2/">1997-2007</a>), Mbeki couldn’t woo the rank and file in his party with rousing speeches delivered with visceral directness. That isn’t his forte. He is, instead, a manager of systems and institutions and a purveyor of ideas.</p>
<h2>Downfall and resurrection</h2>
<p>Mbeki is a promoter of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24351577#metadata_info_tab_contents">pan-Africanism</a> – the quest to unite Africans in pursuit of a united, prosperous Africa. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frantz-fanon/">Frantz Fanon</a>, the Haitian revolution, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance">Harlem Renaissance</a> and important milestones of black empowerment powerfully shaped Mbeki’s ideological make-up. There is a certain cosmopolitanism present in his outlook. But the masses of the South African people did not appreciate it. Instead, he was deemed cold, unresponsive and, therefore, uninteresting. This, more than any other failing, was the reason for his political downfall.</p>
<p>His detractors and the party <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president/">cast their lot</a> with a more engaging Zuma in December 2007, which turned out not to be the best of choices. Mbeki was subsequently unceremoniously fired as president of the country by the ANC <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/20/southafrica1">in September 2008</a>.</p>
<p>Mbeki’s rejection by his party undoubtedly reduced his political influence within the ANC. But he did not become idle. He worked diligently on the continental African stage, where his expertise and experience are highly valued. He has been traversing the continent on behalf of the <a href="https://au.int/">African Union</a>, putting out political fires and helping broker peace with an energy and commitment that many of his age don’t possess.</p>
<p>While Zuma reigned supreme in the ANC <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/former-leaders-2/">from 2007 to 2017</a>, Mbeki kept a respectful distance. All through <a href="https://theconversation.com/state-capture-in-south-africa-how-the-rot-set-in-and-how-the-project-was-rumbled-176481">Zuma’s scandals</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42510304">motions of impeachment</a>, Mbeki more or less maintained his silence and dignity.</p>
<p>Zuma, on the other hand, abdicated his powers to a shady cabal that influenced key government appointments and commandeered most of the lucrative government <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">contracts of the ANC-led administration</a>. </p>
<p>Then people started to think that perhaps Mbeki wasn’t that bad after all. Some might argue that he had dictatorial tendencies but he was always his own man. Under Zuma, foreign actors without the least connection to the South African electorate wielded unimaginable power and influence.</p>
<p>After years in a political purgatory, Mbeki seems to have undergone a resurrection, based on the unmitigated disasters of his successor. He is now <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbcCp6vI5Wo">helping to save the ANC</a>.</p>
<h2>Africa’s elder statesman</h2>
<p>It is a pity that Mbeki’s invaluable work on continental affairs isn’t much valued in South Africa.</p>
<p>Beyond South Africa, Mbeki is increasingly being considered among African intellectuals such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/toyin-falola-1358213">Toyin Falola</a> (Nigeria), <a href="https://www.theblackscholar.org/board/zeleza/">Paul Zeleza</a> (Malawi) and <a href="https://www.tut.ac.za/rni/rs/research-chairs/prof-muchie">Mammo Muchie</a> (Ethiopia). He’s placed in the same league as African philosopher-kings like Senegal’s <a href="https://www.presidence.sn/en/presidency/leopold-sedar-senghor">Leopold Sedar Senghor</a>, Ghana’s <a href="https://aaregistry.org/story/kwame-nkrumah-fathered-pan-africanism/">Kwame Nkrumah</a> and Tanzania’s <a href="https://www.juliusnyerere.org/about">Julius Nyerere</a>.</p>
<p>At 80, Mbeki still articulates his pet concerns of African unity, African renaissance and pan-Africanism with diligence and precision. His analyses are usually well-considered and deserving of attention. His interventions to end the <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20101205-ivory-coast-thabo-mbeki-arrives-ivory-coast-mediate-crisis-gbagbo-ouattara">Ivorian</a> and <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-04-26-mbeki-comments-on-the-south-sudan-crisis-urges-reconciliation/">South Sudanese</a> crises are noteworthy.</p>
<p>Mbeki continues to function as probably the most resourceful elder statesman on the African continent. For instance, he is involved in efforts to solve the <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/news/mbeki-urges-african-lawyers-support-crusade-against-continents-stolen-funds">impasse</a> that has pitted Anglophone Cameroonians against their Francophone counterparts.</p>
<p>He is also involved in efforts to resolve the crisis in the Great Lakes Region. The conflict has been called <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wn0rvj.10#metadata_info_tab_contents">Africa’s first world war</a> because of the number of external actors and African nations engaged in the scramble for the region’s mineral wealth. </p>
<p>Because violence anywhere on the continent tends to have broader continental consequences, Mbeki makes it his business to try to prevent outbreaks of war and mayhem.</p>
<p>In Cote d’Ivoire, he led initiatives to resolve the confrontation between two presidential aspirants, Alassane Quattara and Laurent Gbagbo. Their bloody stand-off put their country into a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoRTpv6lEfA">downward spiral</a>. Finally, Mbeki has advised that to end the civil war in South Sudan, all the stakeholders <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoRTpv6lEfA">must be involved in the peacemaking process</a>.</p>
<p>It is clear that Mbeki has successfully transitioned from being an old horse of his party, the ANC, to a highly venerated and in-demand African elder statesman. And just as Nkrumah was, he is more respected on the continent than in his country. Given his attitude, composure and utterances, Mbeki seems quite natural in speaking and acting on behalf of the entire continent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187046/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mbeki has successfully transitioned from being an old horse of South Africa’s governing ANC to a highly venerated and in-demand African elder statesman.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1835412022-05-24T09:01:40Z2022-05-24T09:01:40ZPan-African integration has made progress but needs a change of mindset<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464807/original/file-20220523-21-unn2ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addresses an African Union summit in Addis Ababa via video in February 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year’s celebration of <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/africa-day-2022-18-oct-2021-1312">Africa Day</a> provides another opportunity to assess how far continental integration has progressed. </p>
<p>Integration would mean a truly united Africa – either a federalist “United States of Africa” or the African Union (AU) exercising <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337898687_Can_Africa_ever_achieve_continental_sovereignty_in_the_shifting_West-to-East_strategic_landscape_The_geopolitics_of_integration_and_autonomy">binding powers over member states</a>. At present the AU merely serves as a platform for coordinating the interactions of its <a href="https://au.int/en/member_states/countryprofiles2#:%7E:text=The%20AU%20is%20made%20up,divided%20into%20five%20geographic%20regions.">55 member states</a>. </p>
<p>Although some progress has been made, more needs to be done to achieve the goal of integration.</p>
<p>Member states need to move beyond paying lip service to unity, and empower critical AU organs. This requires a shift in mentality. States need to appreciate the need to sacrifice some autonomy for common socioeconomic and political gains. Lacklustre commitment to continental integration is connected with Africa’s peripheral position in global dynamics. </p>
<p>In my view, as a researcher of the institutional dynamics of Africa’s integration process, pan-African integration is in a crucial phase. This phase is as important as the creation of the Organisation of African Unity <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/organisation-african-unity-oau">in 1963</a> and its eventual replacement with the AU <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/september-2002/african-union-launched">20 years ago</a>.</p>
<h2>A pan-African worldview</h2>
<p>In a 1969 speech, the then Tanzanian president, Julius Nyerere, <a href="https://www.tanzania.go.tz/egov_uploads/documents/stability_and_change_sw.pdf">captured</a> what the African worldview entails:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We recognise that we are involved in the world and that the world is involved in us. Involvement without understanding, however, can be embarrassing and even dangerous. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A pan-Africanist worldview understands that the continent cannot exist in isolation. However, this must be accompanied by a determination to drive an agenda that enhances pan-African goals.</p>
<p>This position reflects the views of many of Nyerere’s contemporaries, and those who came after him, on how Africa should position itself on the global stage. </p>
<p>Kwame Nkrumah’s <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2F9780230118645_8.pdf">“African personality”</a>, Thabo Mbeki’s <a href="https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/mbeki.html">“African renaissance”</a>, and the oft-repeated <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/african-solutions-to-african-problems">“African solutions to African problems”</a> have also been used to capture the essence of an effective pan-African worldview. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Sobukwe's pan-Africanist dream: an elusive idea that refuses to die</a>
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<p>Mbeki’s idea speaks to restoring Africa’s dignity, and pushing for its economic and political development. Nkrumah’s advances the principles of societal equality. It places the community over the individual in preparing African societies to establish a federal union of African states that is assertive on the global stage.</p>
<h2>What’s working</h2>
<p>The continent has seen some positive developments that could advance integration. They include the adoption of the following instruments and processes: </p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://au.int/en/agenda2063/overview">AU Agenda 2063</a>, the AU’s blueprint for faster economic growth </p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://au.int/en/aureforms/financing">0.2% import tax levy</a> on member states to finance AU programmes and policies </p></li>
<li><p>the <a href="https://www.tralac.org/resources/our-resources/6730-continental-free-trade-area-cfta.html">African Continental Free Trade Area</a> </p></li>
<li><p>the <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/africa-intracontinental-free-movement">free movement protocol</a> (yet to come into force) </p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://au.int/en/pressreleases/20181127/african-union-strengthens-its-sanction-regime-non-payment-dues#:%7E:text=Cautionary%20sanctions%20will%20be%20applied,meetings%20of%20the%20African%20Union.">sanctions</a> for non-payment of membership dues</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/au-commission-has-made-a-good-start-on-gender-equality-but-a-lot-remains-to-be-done-155005">reducing</a> the number of AU Commission members</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/au-commission-has-made-a-good-start-on-gender-equality-but-a-lot-remains-to-be-done-155005">gender equality in leadership</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.tralac.org/blog/article/15548-how-relevant-is-the-protocol-on-relations-between-the-recs-and-the-au.html">regulating the relations</a> between the AU and the eight regional economic communities.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464981/original/file-20220524-24-2q84o5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464981/original/file-20220524-24-2q84o5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464981/original/file-20220524-24-2q84o5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464981/original/file-20220524-24-2q84o5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464981/original/file-20220524-24-2q84o5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464981/original/file-20220524-24-2q84o5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464981/original/file-20220524-24-2q84o5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The African Union: timeline of events.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Usifo Omozokpea / AU</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-african-union-at-20-a-lot-has-been-achieved-despite-many-flaws-175932">Thomas Tieku</a>, an expert on Africa’s international relations, has observed, despite some of the failures of pan-African integration, the AU has set admirable guidelines on governance, peace and security. </p>
<p>It has also developed enforcement mechanisms for violations of its standards. It has quickly adopted the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-african-union-at-20-a-lot-has-been-achieved-despite-many-flaws-175932">African Continental Free Trade Area</a>, empowered the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-african-union-at-20-a-lot-has-been-achieved-despite-many-flaws-175932">mobilised resources to get COVID-19 vaccines</a>, and integrated the AU development agenda <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/MDG/SDGs_Country_Report_2019_South_Africa.pdf">into national development plans</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/making-sense-of-decades-of-debate-about-nkrumahs-pan-african-ideas-132684">Making sense of decades of debate about Nkrumah’s pan-African ideas</a>
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<p>Yet pan-African continental integration remains constrained by many problems. These include countries’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/toothless-pan-african-parliament-could-have-meaningful-powers-heres-how-87449">unwillingness</a> to transfer powers to AU organs.</p>
<p>Addressing this will require a change of worldview. Africa needs to rebalance the way it sees itself and relates to the world. African states need to equip national and regional institutions to deliver on the promise of political and economic development.</p>
<h2>What’s not working</h2>
<p>The ability to project a strategic pan-African worldview is undermined by several factors. One is the unwillingness to transfer supranational powers to key AU institutions. For example, the Pan-African Parliament has only <a href="https://theconversation.com/toothless-pan-african-parliament-could-have-meaningful-powers-heres-how-87449">limited, advisory</a> rather than full legislative powers.</p>
<p>Similarly, the AU Commission lacks the power to make member states comply with institutional rules. The 2017 <a href="http://www.mandelaschool.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_tool/images/78/News/FInal%20AU%20Reform%20Combined%20report_28012017.pdf">Kagame report</a> on AU reforms noted that the union has passed over 1,500 resolutions but has no mechanism for tracking their implementation.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/toothless-pan-african-parliament-could-have-meaningful-powers-heres-how-87449">Toothless Pan-African Parliament could have meaningful powers. Here's how</a>
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<p>Member states have failed to <a href="https://theconversation.com/successes-of-african-human-rights-court-undermined-by-resistance-from-states-166454">comply</a> with about 75% of the decisions of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In reaction to judgments against them, member states such as <a href="https://www.ejiltalk.org/individual-and-ngo-access-to-the-african-court-on-human-and-peoples-rights-the-latest-blow-from-tanzania/">Tanzania</a>, <a href="https://ijrcenter.org/2020/05/06/benin-and-cote-divoire-to-withdraw-individual-access-to-african-court/">Benin</a>, <a href="https://ijrcenter.org/2016/03/14/rwanda-withdraws-access-to-african-court-for-individuals-and-ngos/">Rwanda</a>, and <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2020/04/30/ivory-coast-withdraws-from-african-human-rights-and-peoples-court/#:%7E:text=Ivory%20Coast%20withdrew%20from%20the,to%2020%20years%20in%20jail.">Côte d’Ivoire</a> have withdrawn the permission allowing individuals and NGOs access to the court.</p>
<p>The AU’s dependence on external funding is another impediment. Despite ongoing financial reforms, at least <a href="https://au.int/en/articles/african-union-sustainable-funding-strategy-gains-momentum">61% of its budget</a> comes from external donors. Some use donations as a tool to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354654152_'She_who_pays_the_piper'_Examining_the_delegitimising_influence_of_European_Union's_financial_support_to_the_African_Union">manipulate</a> AU processes. </p>
<p>The continuous violation of AU norms and standards on human rights and governance is a major obstacle to deepening continental integration. For example, there has been an <a href="https://theconversation.com/burkina-faso-coup-latest-sign-of-a-rise-in-the-ballot-box-being-traded-for-bullets-175642">upsurge</a> in military coups in recent years. In addition, <a href="https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/publications/publication/did/a-divided-continent">democratic backsliding</a> is on the rise, through unconstitutional changes of term limits, <a href="https://africacenter.org/spotlight/deluge-digital-repression-threatens-african-security/">digital repression</a>, violent <a href="https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/publications/publication/did/a-divided-continent">clampdown on opposition voices</a>, and <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2020/03/how-african-presidents-rig-elections-to-stay-in-office/">electoral fraud</a>.</p>
<p>The AU’s response has been tepid. In some cases, leaders involved in <a href="https://www.africaportal.org/features/sisis-chairmanship-isnt-tonic-african-union-currently-needs/">suppressing</a> democratic voices are <a href="https://au.int/en/speeches/20200209/statement-president-paul-kagame-overview-implementation-institutional-reform-au">tasked</a> with leading key processes in the AU.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/connecting-african-citizens-with-african-decisions">limited role</a> of civil society in pan-African integration is another concern. And there is little public awareness of what the AU does and how.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/successes-of-african-human-rights-court-undermined-by-resistance-from-states-166454">Successes of African Human Rights Court undermined by resistance from states</a>
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<p>Despite the benefits that could come from <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/promise-of-african-economic-integration-by-c-lestin-monga-2019-01">an integrated Africa</a>, many African countries remain wary of the process. For example, some restrict human mobility. They have refused to sign the continental protocol on free movement, citing security concerns and <a href="https://blogs.eui.eu/migrationpolicycentre/barriers-free-movement-africa-remove/">protection of local jobs</a>.</p>
<h2>Changing mindsets</h2>
<p>The effectiveness of reforms at the AU depends on a change of mindset. Members need to understand that enhancement of Africa’s position in global realpolitik depends on an internally cohesive body. This will require actions in three key areas:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>a detailed but <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/bafr/8/2/article-p156_7.xml">flexible</a> plan showing how willing states will transfer supranational powers to AU organs </p></li>
<li><p>including the African populace in AU programmes and processes </p></li>
<li><p>adherence to constitutionalism. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Without a system that emphasises fundamental rights and good governance, regional integration goals such as trade, free movement of people, gender equality, peace and security cannot be realised.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Babatunde Fagbayibo receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa. </span></em></p>Despite the benefits that could come from integration, many African countries remain wary of the process.Babatunde Fagbayibo, Professor of International Law, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1823532022-05-10T13:57:06Z2022-05-10T13:57:06ZInsights from Zimbabwe on how to link formal and informal economies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461197/original/file-20220504-23-vm31z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Zimbabwean broom vender pushes his bike on the streets of Chitungwiza outside Harare.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> ALEXANDER JOE/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2003, Thabo Mbeki – then president of South Africa – described <a href="https://www.news24.com/Fin24/Mbeki-SA-has-two-economies-20031009">South Africa’s economy as being like a two-storey house</a>. The top floor was quite plush, with all the fittings packed neatly together. He referred to this as the modern, diversified economy within South Africa. Below that level, however, was an informal economy where the poor were trapped in poverty, with little or no skills. </p>
<p>Mbeki’s analogy went further: there was no interconnecting staircase between the two floors. In effect, South Africa had two economies and there was no bridge between them.</p>
<p>What Mbeki was describing is a common problem in developing countries, including South Africa’s neighbour Zimbabwe. My colleague Baldwin Guchu and I recently <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23322373.2022.2039052">conducted research</a> on an initiative in Zimbabwe that is trying to address the problem. In the paper we examined the role intermediaries are playing in connecting formal and informal economies in the country. South Africa can learn from this.</p>
<p>Since 1994 South Africa has built on the existing two-storey infrastructure without paying much attention to a stairway. At least, not one wide or sturdy enough to encourage upward movement. This poses a serious developmental problem – one shared by many developing economies.</p>
<p>Academic <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/sociology-and-social-reform/sociology-general-terms-and-concepts/economic-0">research</a> typically labels this as being a function of dualism and the lack of institutional connections between these dual economies: although institutions establish the “rules of the game” governing economic activity in each of these economies, the institutions do not bridge the two disparate economies and so they coexist but in isolation. </p>
<p>How often do we hear the refrain that big business does not do business with small business?</p>
<p>The result of this missing link is that the two economies struggle to engage with each other, leading to inefficiencies and substantial lost opportunities. Worse still, it entrenches social and economic divisions, and deepens inequality. We see this manifest in various ways in South Africa. </p>
<p>South Africa has deep and liquid financial markets, together with a highly functioning and well-regulated banking industry, which means our top-floor financial system measures well against any of the leading economies around the world. Access to capital should therefore be widely available.</p>
<p>But it’s not. Swathes of small businesses fail to meet the criteria set for top-floor financing. In developed economies, small businesses have a range of alternatives for financing from banks or other capital markets, including secured and unsecured options. </p>
<p>How can this be fixed? Claiming “it’s the government’s job” ignores other players who have the ability to play a more innovative intermediary role.</p>
<p>If South Africa’s two-storey economy is pronounced, Zimbabwe’s is severe. Its house is pyramid shaped. Yet there are attempts underway to connect the different levels. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23322373.2022.2039052">Our research</a> looked at what these are.</p>
<h2>The role of intermediaries</h2>
<p>Zimbabwe has a reputation for weak and extractive political and economic institutions. The <a href="http://databank.worldbank.org/" title=" ">World Bank</a> estimates that the informal economy makes up approximately 60% of the total economy; roughly 90% of those considered “employed” work in the informal economy.</p>
<p>This is especially true in the agriculture space, where the combined legacy of colonialism and more recently, land grabs, has carved a chasm between large-scale commercial farmers and small-scale, often subsistence farmers.</p>
<p>These smaller agriculture producers cooperate in their villages through a system of mutual trust, but this way of doing things does not extend beyond the villages. Tight legal contracts are needed to sell to the bigger retail industry players. In addition, small-scale farmers need some level of financing to ensure access to machinery, and a sustainable supply of input commodities necessary to plant, harvest, and store their crops. </p>
<p>This is impossible without collateral to guarantee a loan, or without buying contracts from retailers. The result is that they are trapped in a vicious cycle – they can’t borrow money to produce, nor are they able to produce to borrow money.</p>
<p>That’s where an organisation like the private, for-profit entity <a href="https://thepalladiumgroup.com/about">Palladium</a> can step in. Its approach is collaborative. In this case it backed a donor funded project, acting as a bridge between the formal and informal economies connecting small-scale farmers to formal markets. In other words, the staircase between the two floors.</p>
<p>Palladium functions as an intermediary in various ways. It facilitates contract farming by connecting input suppliers with small-scale farmers, who then agree to sell the produce back to them at a pre-agreed future price. This addresses input financing and provides a guaranteed market for the farmers’ output. </p>
<p>It also builds partnerships with the private sector to enable mobile buying systems. This frees farmers from having to find a market, and ensures them a fair price; furthermore, it relieves them of the problem of storage and packaging. </p>
<p>As part of a consignment stock initiative, the intermediary also keeps an electronic transaction history farmers can use to access credit in the future by providing records and information that would otherwise be missing.</p>
<h2>Solutions</h2>
<p>All these interventions are better served by intermediaries rather than through bureaucratic government overreach. This is particularly true where government institutional capacity is weak and corruption is common.</p>
<p>Governments with little or no entrepreneurial mindset fail at this because they don’t see a gap they can fill in a sustainable way. What governments can do is enable policies that support these intermediaries to function effectively, and to recognise that the traditional boundaries between the public and private sectors are increasingly blurred and hybrid partnerships provide the potential for innovative solutions. </p>
<p>For its part big business needs to realise that maintaining the status quo of dual economies delegitimises markets and results in lost opportunities.</p>
<p>The question for intermediaries is to imagine ways in which bridging support can extend beyond project initiatives. These projects are time-bound, with limited budgets. If not implemented with longevity in mind, such interventions can create dependencies rather than solve them. That’s why longer-term, more sustainable solutions must be imagined, to bring the formal and informal economies closer together. And also to ensure permanent integration.</p>
<p>Without this kind of lateral thinking countries like Zimbabwe and South Africa will continue to have two-storey houses with no stairway, leaving the majority of citizens stranded on the ground floor, looking upwards. Such structural inequality is unsustainable.</p>
<p><em>Baldwin Guchu is a co-author of this article. He has a background in financial management. His work focuses on the nexus between institutions and financial markets in developing regions.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182353/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Luiz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The informal sector in Zimbabwe is massive. Finding ways to connect it to the formal sector is vital.John Luiz, Professor of International Business Strategy & Emerging Markets at the University of Sussex Business School, and the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1756692022-02-10T14:06:11Z2022-02-10T14:06:11ZNew book examines how science and tech shaped South African history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443392/original/file-20220131-116247-1iabj0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the nineteenth century, improved breeds and new agricultural technology underpinned exports of ostrich feathers from South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">powerofforever/iStock/Getty Images Plus</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As historians, we have both been immersed for many years in trying to understand and write about South Africa’s complex, conflictual history. Conquest, colonial domination and racial division in the shape of apartheid played a central role. So too did the rise of black opposition and the transition in 1994 to an African National Congress government. </p>
<p>There were many strands in the weaving of this history, some neglected in the focus on race and political power. These include the profound role that science and technology played in shaping South Africa’s history. In our new book, <em><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/scientific-imagination-in-south-africa/C9AB3AC018116772C2DC3E5B801C8B06">The Scientific Imagination in South Africa, 1700 to the Present</a></em>, we offer a historical overview of scientific ideas, practices and institutions in South Africa over more than three centuries.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cambridge University Press</span></span>
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<p>We refer in the title to the “scientific imagination”. That’s because we link science both with power and with ideas about how human society can be reshaped. We also aim to discuss science as an expression of human curiosity, ingenuity, and the ability to make unlikely connections. </p>
<p>This book is a history of individuals, ideas and institutions that were at the fulcrum of important scientific developments. Writing history is bounded by what has happened. Our text explores the complexity of the colonial era and its indelible legacies. We argue that science and technology both facilitated colonialism and to some degree stood outside such processes. </p>
<p>Racial policies and modernist approaches privileged the narratives of formal, written, largely disciplinary-based sciences. The book incorporates discussion of indigenous and local knowledge when it fed into scientific discussion, such as in understanding the local environment in the eighteenth century. We also explore alternative approaches and <a href="https://ourconstitution.constitutionhill.org.za/speaking-truth-to-power/">conflicts over knowledge</a>. </p>
<h2>Innovation testing ground</h2>
<p>South Africa has been a regional rather than a world power. In global terms it was not a major centre for invention. Yet its geographic position at the southern foot of the African continent made it a staging post for Portuguese, Dutch and British maritime empires. It became part of an expanded European and global imaginary. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Cape-Colony">Colonisation by Britain from 1806</a> brought the region into tight connection with one of the most powerful – and technologically advanced – world empires.</p>
<p>From the late eighteenth century, the Cape became an important site for botanical and zoological exploration. The wealth of its plant species, as well as the extraordinary diversity of wildlife, attracted sustained attention. By the early twentieth century, the discovery of ancient fossils, stone implements and hominin remains suggested that the country may have constituted a <a href="https://www.maropeng.co.za/content/page/introduction-to-your-visit-to-the-cradle-of-humankind-world-heritage-site">“cradle” of modern human evolution</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa was not a core zone of invention. But it was, at key moments, a significant incubator and testing ground of innovation. Application could be as important as discovery. In the nineteenth century, improved breeds and new agricultural technology, including dams, wells, fodder and fencing, underpinned exports of wool and ostrich feathers. Devastating new rifles helped to change the balance of power in favour of colonial regimes. </p>
<p>In the twentieth century the mineral revolution necessitated developments in applied geology and the chemistry of gold extraction. The scientific imagination was also more exploratory in curiosity-driven fields such as astronomy, palaeontology, and wildlife conservation.</p>
<p>Our text also builds on many individual stories. <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-extraordinary-secret-life-of-dr-james-barry">James Barry</a>, who came to the Cape in the 1810s, was probably the first formally trained woman doctor in Britain. She made a significant contribution to modernising Cape Town’s early medical institutions. She also performed one of the first successful Caesarean operations in the British empire, for an ancestor of the man who became the first Afrikaner nationalist Prime Minister. It was in commemoration of this operation that he carried the unusual name <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/james-barry-munnik-hertzog">James Barry Munnik Hertzog</a>.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in South Africa, rich mineral resources gave impetus to a sequence of discoveries. Hans Merensky, son of a German missionary, was sent to train as a geologist in Prussia. Returning to South Africa, he played a major role in identifying coastal diamond deposits, as well as platinum, and phosphates. Platinum group minerals have outstripped gold in their value. Merensky invested his wealth in a farm, Westfalia, which became an important site for scientific work in improving avocado pears. </p>
<h2>Thinking creatively</h2>
<p>South Africa gave birth both to Afrikaner and African nationalism, which affected the trajectory of scientific endeavour. White South Africans were also carriers of a darker tradition – the attempts to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/za/academic/subjects/history/history-ideas-and-intellectual-history/scientific-racism-modern-south-africa?format=PB&isbn=9780521479073">justify racial segregation in scientific terms</a>. In the relatively brief era of African nationalist rule after 1994, the state has espoused more universalist goals and the segregationist drive to account for racial difference has yielded to an emphasis on common humankind.</p>
<p>We explore the circulation of ideas, recognising that many originate in the north but are not trapped in the social context of their origin. Scientific ideas are potentially universal and can be appropriated and modified everywhere. </p>
<p>Today, it is clear that scientific work in multiple sites with diverse backing is important for South Africa to address its socio-economic and environmental problems. There are signs that its scientists are up to the challenge: after all, it was in South Africa that the Omicron variant of COVID was first identified. Scientists were sufficiently inserted in global networks to identify this variant and sufficiently open to publicise it. </p>
<p>The scientific imagination needs to be nurtured in the country, along with the capacity to think creatively about history and society.</p>
<p><em>The Scientific Imagination in South Africa, 1700 to the Present, is published by Cambridge University Press (2021).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175669/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This book is a history of individuals, ideas and institutions that were at the fulcrum of important scientific developments.William Beinart, Professor, University of OxfordSaul Dubow, Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1647952021-07-21T15:02:23Z2021-07-21T15:02:23ZSouth Africa since 1994: a mixed bag of presidents and patchy institution-building<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412195/original/file-20210720-17-tylty5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African president Cyril Ramaphosa delivers a speech next to a statue of the late former president Nelson Mandela in Cape Town in 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Ruvan Boshoff</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The coronavirus pandemic has placed the leadership of presidents and prime ministers across the world under the most unforgiving <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-world-leaders-face-mega-covid-19-crises-how-ramaphosa-is-stacking-up-134682">spotlight</a>. It has exposed underlying weaknesses and revealed hidden strengths.</p>
<p>An extreme crisis like this provides the most searching examination of a political leader – a very acute form of accountability. Such a crisis can make or break a leader.</p>
<p>South Africa is a country that faces a crisis of leadership. Against a backdrop of a former president <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-african-court-dismisses-zumas-application-block-arrest-2021-07-09/">being jailed</a> for contempt of court for failing to appear before a commission of inquiry probing state capture and corruption, public trust has unsurprisingly declined. This has come through in research, including <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/departments/sasas">studies</a> by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).</p>
<p>This implies that there is a need for a form of leadership that responds to ethical crises. In South Africa and around the world, there is a severe challenge to the “normative core” – the underlying values and ethical principles that hold a society together – as the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/world/south-africa-riots-jacob-zuma-b1887121.html">recent devastating unrest</a> has underlined.</p>
<p>This is the starting point of our chapter, Presidential Leadership and Accountability from Mandela to Ramaphosa, in a new <em>State of the Nation</em> <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/ethics-politics-inequality-new-directions">publication</a> from the HSRC.</p>
<p>Our conceptual approach to comparing the presidents of South Africa’s democratic era was guided by the notion of “ethical presidential leadership”. We posed questions such as: what were the principal characteristics of three of the presidents who preceded Ramaphosa (Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma)? And what are the appropriate and useful inferences for his term as head of government?</p>
<p>We developed a framework for assessing presidential leadership based on five criteria: constitutional fidelity, institution building, socio-economic transformation, decision-making and political judgment, and strategic vision and statecraft.</p>
<p>Our chapter applies the first two – constitutional fidelity and institution-building.</p>
<p>We found that, in the 25 years since South Africa became a democracy, there has been both impressive constitutional fidelity and egregious constitutional infidelity. There has been impressive institution-building and destabilising institutional destruction. </p>
<p>Thus, South Africa’s experience of presidential leadership and accountability since 1994 is a confusing and often contradictory mixture of strength and weakness, success and failure, resilience and vulnerability.</p>
<h2>Constitutionalism and governance</h2>
<p>South Africa is a constitutional democracy. Fundamental to its transition away from the arbitrary, authoritarian and discriminatory rule of the apartheid era was the establishment of a rules-based society. In this, executive power would have to be exercised against the stern test of what the South African activist, academic and jurist <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/soaf113&div=80&id=&page=">Etienne Mureinik</a> called a “culture of justification”. Every exercise of public power would be publicly explained in an open and transparent way.</p>
<p>Moreover, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">founding document</a> of South Africa’s new democracy was conceived as more than simply a map of the fresh distribution of power and authority. It was also seen as a constitution with “transformative” purpose. In other words to change the “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02587203.1998.11834974">country’s political and social institutions and power relationships in a democratic, participatory and egalitarian direction</a>.” </p>
<p>South Africa’s constitution does this. It lays out the primary code for democratic governance as well as social change – even though we recognise that this is a contested paradigm. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man wearing spectacles, a suit and tei listens attentively to another." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412201/original/file-20210720-19-1ws2vtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412201/original/file-20210720-19-1ws2vtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412201/original/file-20210720-19-1ws2vtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412201/original/file-20210720-19-1ws2vtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412201/original/file-20210720-19-1ws2vtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412201/original/file-20210720-19-1ws2vtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412201/original/file-20210720-19-1ws2vtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Former presidents Jacob Zuma, left, and Thabo Mbeki, chat after the former’s state of the nation address in Parliament, in June 2009.</span>
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<p>Hence, the extent to which presidents adhere to the constitutional written code will have profound implications in relation to their use of executive power and their leadership.</p>
<p>Mandela, with his unequivocal support for the principle of constitutionalism and the supremacy of the rule of law, set a high bar. </p>
<p>For his part Mbeki did his utmost to strengthen the capacity and coherence of democratic governance, most notably with reforms to the Presidency itself. It’s nevertheless hard to avoid the conclusion that his approach to statecraft, and to the political management of his own complicated and often fractious party, led him to have undermined the constitution and the rule of law. This might have been done unwittingly, but nonetheless unerringly. </p>
<p>We conclude that he will therefore not be remembered as a great constitutionalist or ethical leader, even though in comparison with his successor, Zuma, history is proving to be kinder to him. </p>
<p>In the case of Zuma, the highest court in the land declared that <a href="https://theconversation.com/historic-moment-as-constitutional-court-finds-zuma-guilty-and-sentences-him-to-jail-163612">he had transgressed the constitution</a>. In addition, <a href="https://pmg.org.za/call-for-comment/694/">a large volume of evidence</a> has been adduced before the Zondo Commission of Inquiry that suggests that Zuma abused the power entrusted in him as president. And that he enabled the systemic form of corruption that is now commonly referred to as “state capture”.</p>
<h2>Institution building</h2>
<p>Institution building is a close relative of constitutional fidelity. This is because South Africa’s constitution is notable for the extensive constellation of “institutional infrastructure” that it establishes. It is the other side of the same coin. Institution building ensures that the vehicles for transformation have the necessary organisational drivers, fit for purpose in every sense.</p>
<p>As the Ghanaian lawyer and educationalist <a href="https://afrobarometer.org/our-network/leadership/henry-kwasi-prempeh">H. Kwasi Prempeh</a> argues, there is a need to shift focus from </p>
<blockquote>
<p>strong leadership to building credible and effective institutions at the national and local levels. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>We agree institution building is critical. But institutions without conscious, visionary and accountable leaders are vulnerable to abuse of power and loss of integrity.</p>
<p>In other words, ethical leadership requires strong, capable institutions. As Ramaphosa discovered last week, leaders will be rendered vulnerable by weak institutions. There was a massive failure of both crime intelligence and policing, as the president was compelled to publicly accept. </p>
<h2>What next</h2>
<p>The mixed outcomes of the last 25 years have numerous implications for Ramaphosa and future leaders. </p>
<p>Individual ethical standards of the highest order are essential. But these must be buttressed by strong, capable public institutions. Mbeki recognised this and set about building them. Zuma hollowed them out and rendered them vulnerable to “capture”. Ramaphosa is now in a process of rebuilding, but faces a perfect storm of interlocking social, fiscal, economic and health crises.</p>
<p>The influence of strong ethical leadership by heads of state is critical. But a culture of “ethics of care” must be translated at every level of governance. </p>
<p>Facing a severe, protracted and multifaceted crisis, the presidential leadership stakes could not be higher – for the authority of the Presidency and democratic state, the integrity of the constitution, and the socio-economic stability and advancement of South Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164795/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Calland is a founding partner of political risk consultancy, The Paternoster Group, and a member of the advisory council of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mabel Dzinouya Sithole is affiliated with the Civic Futures Africa, African Governance Futures Initiative, a range of civil society groups working on issues of democratic governance, youth participation, youth leadership, international organisations.</span></em></p>The extent to which presidents adhere to the constitutional written code will have profound implications in relation to their use of executive power.Richard Calland, Associate Professor in Public Law, University of Cape TownMabel Dzinouya Sithole, Programme Officer - Building Bridges, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1638722021-07-06T06:54:51Z2021-07-06T06:54:51ZJacob Zuma: when did erstwhile South African revolutionary lose his way?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409656/original/file-20210705-39677-18fs4vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African president Jacob Zuma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Photo by Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s the small crimes that bring you down. Al Capone went merrily on his murdering way until the FBI <a href="https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2005/march/capone_032805">nailed him for tax evasion</a>. Richard Nixon seemed immune to the consequences of lying about Vietnam, Cambodia and Chile but his lies over the silly crime of burgling the Democratic Party’s headquarters <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/richard-m-nixon/">did for him</a>.</p>
<p>So it is with Jacob Zuma South Africa’s former president. He faced <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/jacob-zuma-pleads-not-guilty-to-18-corruption-charges-e5d7fe94-9e4a-4883-ab7f-e6625ab48556">multiple charges of corruption</a>, but, so far, has avoided his day in court. He was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/10/khwezi-woman-accused-jacob-zuma-south-african-president-aids-activist-fezekile-ntsukela-kuzwayo">tried for rape and acquitted</a>. As president he was accused of working with an Indian family, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22513410">the Guptas</a>, in orchestrating <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/state-capture-report-public-protector-14-october-2016">“state capture”</a> (seizing control of state organs for corrupt purposes). He is refusing to cooperate with the <a href="https://www.sastatecapture.org.za/">judicial commission</a> investigating the allegations.</p>
<p>In the end it is his contempt of the Constitutional Court’s order that he cooperate with the commission that may send him to jail <a href="https://theconversation.com/historic-moment-as-constitutional-court-finds-zuma-guilty-and-sentences-him-to-jail-163612">for 15 months</a>. He’s appealed for a <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/reprieve-for-zuma-as-concourt-agrees-to-hear-his-contempt-rescission-case-20210703">rescission of the order</a>.</p>
<p>A question that invariably gets asked is whether power changed him. The country’s former foreign intelligence chief Moe Shaik seemed to think so, <a href="https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780624088967">writing glowingly</a> of the capable “struggle” version of Zuma, suggesting it was only as president that things went awry, although he noted that we will never know when “precisely Jacob Zuma lost his way”.</p>
<p>Perhaps it came rather earlier than Shaik thinks. As with so many fallen revolutionaries, the seeds of venality seem to have been sown in his younger days. It’s just that political power provided the nutrients for spectacular sprouting.</p>
<h2>A taste of Zuma</h2>
<p>My first taste of Zuma came in 1989. The ANC’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/members-anc-and-sacp-are-detained-due-operation-vula">Operation Vula </a> was under way. It involved building an underground insurrectionary network and I belonged to one of its regional leadership structures. We received an instruction to investigate whether <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-mokaba">Peter Mokaba</a>, the leader of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2002-06-14-two-faces-of-mokaba/">was a spy</a>. </p>
<p>Our damning report was presented to Zuma and the ANC’s security chief Joe Nhlanhla who informed us that <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-mokaba">Mokaba</a>, who died in 2002, was an informer whose relationship with the security police <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2002-06-14-two-faces-of-mokaba/">went deeper than we’d suspected</a>. Other ANC leaders got on board to spread this message but we were told that <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a>, who then led the exiled ANC, decided it would be better to rehabilitate Mokaba, which duly happened. </p>
<p>Soon after that I was visited by a senior leader of the South African Communist Party, which was in an alliance with the ANC. He pleaded with me to do a journalistic hatchet job on Zuma. He said his own home in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, was bugged by ANC intelligence and that Zuma was corrupt. </p>
<p>I ignored the request. But it was one of several signs I’d seen that Zuma was despised within the Communist Party. </p>
<p>Zuma had briefly been on the party’s politburo but fell from favour partly because of conflicts between ANC intelligence and its armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe. One conflict involved commander Thami Zulu, who was branded by Zuma’s allies as an enemy agent, <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/how-the-killing-of-thami-zulu-contradicts-zumas-cl">detained for 14 months</a> by the ANC in Lusaka and <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2018-02-15-the-murder-of-thami-zulu-a-call-for-a-formal-judicial-inquiry/">died of poisoning a week after his release</a>. Those who knew Zulu insisted he was innocent.</p>
<p>His death contributed to the hatred for Zuma. It was by no means the only crime attributed to ANC intelligence.</p>
<h2>Steely resolve</h2>
<p>Zuma started life in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jacob-gedleyihlekisa-zuma">1942</a>, the son of a policeman and a domestic worker. He received scant formal education but emerged as a lad with a sharp mind and steely resolve. At 17 he joined the ANC and three years on was arrested as part of a group of military recruits, leading to a <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">10-year spell on Robben Island</a>. He went into exile in 1975.</p>
<p>His ambition, prodigious memory and avuncular personality all helped him along and he became the ANC’s chief representative in Mozambique, a member of its political and military committee and its intelligence chief in 1987. Those who backed him tended to overlook his darker side, including his sexual promiscuity. </p>
<p>When Zuma returned to South Africa in 1990 KwaZulu-Natal was in the midst of a territorial war between the ANC and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Zulu nationalist <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/history-in-africa/article/abs/inkatha-and-its-use-of-the-zulu-past/14E0B3C8A767C4811A3A1AD974A1EA77">Inkatha </a> movement. He emerged as ANC leader there after seeing off the ANC warlord <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harry-themba-gwala">Harry Gwala</a>, using his charm and Zulu credentials to secure the peace. But this came at a cost. The ANC drew some of Inkatha’s most notorious killers into its fold and a new form of violence broke out. </p>
<p>This time it had nothing to do with ideology. Instead, it was all about money – as so much was when Zuma was around.</p>
<h2>Corruption and legal jeopardy</h2>
<p>In 2004, when Zuma was deputy president, his financial advisor Schabir Shaik was arrested for his role in an arms deal and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment (but released after 28 months on <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/thepost/news/schabir-shaik-is-a-free-man-48662347">spurious health grounds</a>). He was found to have solicited bribes of R500,000 a year for Zuma, who was later charged with corruption. This was followed by further charges relating to another arms deal. But procedural irregularities and allegations of political interference meant <a href="https://theconversation.com/president-zuma-loses-bid-to-dodge-criminal-charges-but-will-he-have-the-last-laugh-85703">none of these went to trial</a>.</p>
<p>He faced legal jeopardy from a different source in 2006, tried for allegedly raping a 31-year-old Aids activist whom he knew to be HIV-positive (he said he believed a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/sas-zuma-showered-avoid-hiv-bbc-news-05-april-2006">shower after sex would be adequate protection</a>). Zuma claimed it was <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/zuma-i-had-to-oblige-271913">his duty as a Zulu man</a> to have sex with a woman if she wore a short kanga (African wrap), and that he could not leave her <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA20732740_29">“unfulfilled”</a>. </p>
<p>He argued Zulu men have sexual primacy over women and he could therefore not be guilty.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/jacob-zuma-deadly-serious-1667308.html">To deny her sex, that would have been tantamount to rape</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Zuma was <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/fr/node/226198">acquitted</a> while the alleged victim was vilified, with Zuma and his supporters singing his favourite song, <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/zuma-gets-heros-welcome-20060213">Lethu Mshini Wami</a> (Bring me my machine gun) during and after the trial. The woman, later named as Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, fled into exile for safety. She returned after a decade and died <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2016/10/09/Zumas-rape-accuser-Khwezi-dies">in 2016</a>. </p>
<p>Thabo Mbeki had dumped Zuma as his deputy <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/zuma-axed-243733">in 2005</a> and the long-time allies became enemies. The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">paranoid Mbeki</a> lacked the common touch and was oddly devoid of his former gracious charm, while Zuma was the opposite: friendly and humorous. By playing on popular concerns about service provision, crime, and Aids, and being chummy with the unions, the youth and the left, he won the backing of people who should have been more wary.</p>
<p>Zuma defeated Mbeki for the ANC leadership <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/52nd-anc-national-conference-polokwane-2007">in 2007</a> and became president in 2009, remaining in office for <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">nine years</a>. The left hoped he’d curb his excesses, but the opposite happened. The Guptas fed his greed in return for state contracts, to the point that they <a href="https://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">offered cabinet positions to obedient hopefuls</a>.</p>
<p>Eventually, Zuma over-reached. He dipped into state coffers to upgrade his house <a href="https://theconversation.com/dramatic-night-in-south-africa-leaves-president-hanging-on-by-a-thread-57180">in Nkandla</a>. Then he <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-zumas-actions-point-to-shambolic-management-of-south-africas-economy-52174">fired two finance ministers</a> who would <a href="https://theconversation.com/firing-of-south-africas-finance-minister-puts-the-public-purse-in-zumas-hands-75525">not do his bidding</a>. </p>
<p>Cyril Ramaphosa won the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anc-has-a-new-leader-but-south-africa-remains-on-a-political-precipice-89248">ANC leadership race in December 2017</a>. Two months later Zuma stepped down as president of the country. The Guptas promptly <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tony-ajay-and-atul-gupta-flee-south-africa-and-denounce-corruption-inquiry-lt5828rxh">fled to Dubai</a>.</p>
<p>Zuma faces jail for contempt, the revival of the original fraud, racketeering and money laundering charges, and possibly further charges, depending on the findings of the Zondo Commission into state capture, whose subpoenas he ignored. </p>
<p>There will be more posturing and more singing of Lethu Mshini Wami by followers who stand to lose from his demise. But at the age of 78 Zuma’s long day in the sun is over.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The posturing is bound to continue. But at the age of 78 Jacob Zuma’s long day in the sun is over.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1481212020-11-24T15:02:00Z2020-11-24T15:02:00ZMbeki and Obasanjo: case studies in the use of soft power in Africa’s interests<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364785/original/file-20201021-23-7ijop4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki share a light moment at a meeting of the G8 and developing nations in Tokyo in 2000.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Michel Euler</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The concept of soft power has been part of the parlance of international relations for <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1148580?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">three decades</a>. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00358533.2020.1819629?journalCode=ctrt20">Soft power</a> actors use non-coercive and persuasive means to achieve their objectives. Attraction rather than force is their preferred language.</p>
<p>The application of soft power remains focused on states because of their primacy in international politics. But, the increasing influence of non-state actors dictates a need to review this approach. Non-state actors on the international stage include international organisations, NGOs, multinational corporations, terrorist groups and individuals. </p>
<p>It is against this backdrop that I <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00358533.2020.1819629?journalCode=ctrt20">studied</a> the power of attraction of non-state actors. I focused on the soft power credentials of former African presidents – <a href="https://www.thebrenthurstfoundation.org/people/olusegun-obasanjo/">Olusegun Obasanjo</a> (Nigeria, 1999-2007) and <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a> (South Africa, 1999-2008). </p>
<p>The two have made important contributions to the continent this century through promoting peace, democracy, pan-Africanism and regional integration.</p>
<p>The study captures the essence of their soft power. It also engages how it has rubbed off on their respective countries – during and after their presidencies. </p>
<p>I examined Obasanjo’s and Mbeki’s traits, ideas and policies. In particular I focused on their contribution to pan-Africanism and the idea of the <a href="http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/mbeki.html">African Renaissance</a>. I argue that they successfully used their soft power and international clout to make significant contributions in Africa and beyond.</p>
<h2>Obasanjo as a soft power president</h2>
<p>After Obasanjo’s civilian administration ended in 2007, he attracted widespread criticism within Nigeria. This is perhaps best captured by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s description of him as a “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt81pgm">master of hypocrisy</a>”.</p>
<p>But, this underplays some of his accomplishments. The period between 1976 and 1979 when he was the military head of state is <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Nigeria_s_External_Relations_and_Foreign.html?id=ImN0AAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">lauded by some</a> as the most dynamic era of Nigeria’s foreign policy. And during his civilian administration (1999–2007) Nigeria was catapulted from a pariah state (due to gross human right abuses by successive military regimes) to a significant regional and, to a lesser extent, global player. </p>
<p>Thanks to Obasanjo’s idiosyncratic soft power, Nigeria, once neglected in global affairs, witnessed an influx of high profile visits, including US presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Its voice was better heard in such bodies as the <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/">Commonwealth</a>, <a href="https://www.g77.org/">Group of 77</a> and the <a href="http://www.dirco.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/inter/nam.htm">Non-Aligned Movement</a>. </p>
<p>Obasanjo was notable for his courage and decisiveness, particularly when it came to colonialism and, later, apartheid. His toughness on these issues, and his promotion of regional integration, had remarkable success. </p>
<p>A foreign policy that embraces genuine promotion of democracy and peacemaking generates <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=x5Q5DgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=soft+power&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwje2-zgiLvsAhX_SxUIHZ7aBt4Q6AEwAHoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q=soft%20power&f=false">soft power</a>. </p>
<p>Obasanjo enhanced his, and by extension Nigeria’s soft power through his successful peacemaking and promotion of democracy. The former, in places such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. The latter, in São Tomé and Príncipe, Togo and Côte d'Ivoire.</p>
<p>In Liberia, he was instrumental in ending the war. Obasanjo also facilitated the resignation of President Charles Taylor who was granted asylum in Nigeria. He played an active role in the transition to democratic rule that ushered in President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533952.2018.1492833?journalCode=rsdy20">in 2006</a>.</p>
<p>In São Tomé and Príncipe, Obasanjo ensured the reinstatement of President Fradique de Menezes following a military coup <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533952.2018.1492833?journalCode=rsdy20">in 2003</a>.</p>
<p>His reformist ideas, set out in the <a href="http://www.dirco.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/africa/cssdca.htm">Memorandum of Understanding</a> of the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa, was adopted by the African Union summit in 2002. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589000600769926">memorandum</a> has four cornerstones. These are security, stability, development and cooperation as prerequisites for good governance on which African states would be measured. </p>
<p>It is thus clear that Obasanjo’s towering personality and international stature have enabled Nigeria to shape African institutions. He is thus a wielder of soft power.</p>
<p>Since leaving office, Obasanjo has continued to exhibit this soft power through conflict mediation and humanitarian interventions, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2008–2009) and Côte d'Ivoire (2011). </p>
<p>But, a number of shortfalls blot his soft power credentials. These include his unilateral decisions and apparent disdain for the rule of law <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/aa_afren/5/1/EJC10288">while in power</a>.</p>
<h2>Mbeki’s legacy</h2>
<p>Mbeki was influenced by some of Africa’s great political minds, as well as pan-African thinkers, during his years in exile in the UK. </p>
<p>For example, while studying at Sussex University in England in the mid-1960s, he engaged the ideas of pan-Africanist luminaries <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aime-Cesaire">Aimé Cesaire</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/fanon-and-the-politics-of-truth-and-lying-in-a-colonial-society-102594">Frantz Fanon</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-Senghor">Leopold Senghor</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-E-B-Du-Bois">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>. Arguably, all these individuals influenced Mbeki’s views as seen in his pursuit of pan-Africanism and African Renaissance. </p>
<p>Mbeki has often been labelled an “African intellectual” and “African <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17532523.2017.1414396">philosopher king</a>”. There is no gainsaying that his administration had the most impact of any post-apartheid government in international affairs – even more so than <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>. </p>
<p>This was evident in his push for South-South solidarity and reform of old international institutions such as the <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/">UN Security Council</a>. The African Union, despite its weaknesses, provided the platform for him to promote peace and security in Africa.</p>
<p>Exercising his soft power attribute (persuasion), Mbeki used shuttle diplomacy to garner the support of other African states, the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/group-eight-g8-industrialized-nations#:%7E:text=The%20Group%20of%20Eight%20(G8)%20refers%20to%20the%20group%20of,security%2C%20energy%2C%20and%20terrorism.">Group of Eight</a> and the <a href="https://asean.org/">Association of Southeast Asian States</a> to establish the <a href="https://www.nepad.org/">New Partnership for Africa’s Development</a> and the <a href="https://www.aprm-au.org/">African Peer Review Mechanism</a>. He was noted as a major peacemaker on the continent. This is best shown by his administration’s peacemaking and peacekeeping in Burundi, the DRC and Sudan.</p>
<p>Mbeki was often called upon to mediate and find lasting solutions to conflict in Africa. In 2004, the African Union asked that he proffer a political solution to the conflict in Côte d’Ivoire. He was actively involved in mediation to end conflicts in Comoros, Rwanda, Sudan, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>Some of the interventions turned out to be a mere plastering of wounds as countries such as the DRC and Sudan remained fragile. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Mbeki facilitated the <a href="https://peacemaker.un.org/drc-lusaka-agreement99">Lusaka ceasefire agreement</a> and the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/burundi_arusha-peace-and-reconciliation-agreement-for-burundi.pdf">Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement</a>. The accords aimed to end the DRC and Burundi’s conflicts, respectively.</p>
<p>Indeed, the calls for Mbeki’s mediation reflect recognition of his idiosyncratic soft power.</p>
<p>Mbeki’s administration demonstrated remarkable commitment to provide aid to Africa. The African Renaissance Fund was established in 2000 to disburse aid to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10220460802636158">fellow African states</a>. This offered an alternative to Western aid laced with debilitating conditions.</p>
<p>Mbeki continued to play a significant role after his presidency. He was appointed chair of the African Union’s efforts to bring peace to <a href="https://www.peaceau.org/en/article/progress-report-of-the-african-union-high-level-implementation-panel-for-sudan-and-south-sudan">Sudan and South Sudan</a> in 2009. This culminated in South Sudan’s independence in 2011.</p>
<p>The most significant factors that undermined his credibility were his <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40175024?seq=1">quiet diplomacy in Zimbabwe</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.25159/0256-8845/3094">HIV/AIDS denialism</a>. </p>
<p>Due to their soft power resources, Obasanjo and Mbeki made their mark on pan-Africanism and conflict resolution in Africa. Their ideas remain deeply ingrained in the African Union.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148121/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oluwaseun Tella does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Former presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki have arguably made the most important contribution to Africa in the 21st Century by promoting peace, democracy, regional integration and pan-Africanism.Oluwaseun Tella, Director, The Future of Diplomacy at the Institute for the Future of Knowledge, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.