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Is Thabo Mbeki Africa's Saviour?

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Is Thabo Mbeki Africa's Saviour? Is Thabo Mbeki Africa’s saviour? GERRIT OLIVIER An outstanding characteristic of South African president Thabo Mbeki’s leader- ship is his predilection for matters foreign over matters domestic. This prefer- ence seems to be a legacy of his many years serving as head of publicity and information for the exiled African National Congress. Since he took over the presidency from his illustrious predecessor, Nelson Mandela, foreign relations, particularly African and Third World causes, have been his main political pursuit. Following in the footsteps of the founding fathers of pan-Africanism— Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. du Bois, George Padmore, Ladipo Solanke, Kwame Nkrumah, Robert Sobukwe and others—he dreams of a new Africa. However, while the original pan-Africanists sought the ‘political kingdom’ for Africa, Mbeki casts himself as a neo-pan-Africanist, seeking the ‘economic kingdom’ for the ailing continent. He articulates the idea of building a new, progressive and modernized Africa, an Africa relieved from poverty, backwardness and political decay, and swimming with the main current of world politics and economics. He paints his foreign policy with a broad brush and his vision for Africa is grandi- loquent, setting himself an agenda which is simultaneously ambitious, mission- ary and somewhat romantic, but daunting in complexity and magnitude. Although Mbeki’s philosophical approach to international relations is gener- ally liberal and universal, he defines his primary goals mainly in terms of the ideology of his neo-pan-Africanism and the aspirations of developing countries in the southern hemisphere, with issues such as poverty, debt relief, racism and underdevelopment high on his foreign policy agenda. All the main strands of his foreign policy join together in his grand vision for Africa. He introduced and popularized the idealistic notion of an ‘African renaissance’; he is the seminal thinker behind, and principal author and articulator of, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the foremost African peacemaker and multi- lateralist, a founding father and first chairman of the new African Union (replacing the anachronistic Organization of African Unity), a main player and outgoing chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, Africa’s strongest voice in the globalization debate between the rich North and the poor South, and the super-diplomat who has succeeded in placing Africa high on the global agenda. International Affairs 79, () ‒ 815 INTA79_4_07_Olivier 815 7/2/03, 11:29 Gerrit Olivier Mbeki’s leadership style: a unique mixture, but is it potent enough? South Africa’s celebrated peaceful transformation from apartheid to democracy in 1994, and notably Nelson Mandela’s role in South Africa’s new beginning, gave Mbeki the best possible launch pad from which to shape and direct South Africa’s foreign policy. Knowing that South Africa had become a very special country in the eyes of the world after its peaceful transformation from apartheid to democracy, Mbeki used his presidency and diplomatic skills to elevate him- self as Africa’s strongest and most eloquent voice in world politics. At the same time he relegated South Africa’s foreign policy almost to the status of an adjunct of his grander visions and pursuits in Africa and the rest of the developing world. His role perception, being revisionist, liberal and universal, led him to deal mostly with big ideas and big issues; international organizations like the United Nations and its specialized agencies, the Non-Aligned Movement, the African Union, the World Economic Forum, and meetings of the G-8 (industrialized nations) have served as favourite platforms for his diplomatic pursuits. While Mbeki is no narrow-minded dyed-in-the-wool ideologue, nor a leader corrupted by power in the traditional postcolonial African mode, his effective- ness as a democratic leader is impaired by his lack of strategic adaptability (especially when policies backfire, as on HIV/AIDS and Zimbabwe), certain personal idiosyncrasies and contradictions in his leadership style. These qualities render him a remote leader from the point of view of the masses and something of an impenetrable enigma to his interlocutors and the media. Like a prophet, he believes in grand plans and total solutions for Africa, creating enormous expectations, and raising questions about risks and consequences of over- extension and failure to deliver. As Henry Kissinger has noted: ‘The prophet represents an era of exaltation, of great upheavals, of vast accomplishments, but also of enormous disasters.’1 However, there is also another Mbeki: this is Mbeki the prudent diplomat-cum-bureaucrat who involves himself with administrative minutiae, who is a master of rhetorical obfuscation, who would at the same time criticize and embrace outdated political orthodoxy in Africa, and who prefers to settle for weak compromises and procrastinate rather than challenge or overrule aberrant fellow African leaders. Even so, although Mbeki probably does not fall in the same esoteric category as charismatic African leaders like Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah or Leopold Senghor, he enjoys considerable standing abroad. After three years as South African president, he has established himself as South Africa’s and Africa’s Überdiplomat and one-man foreign policy think-tank, as an indefatigable international globetrotter who enjoys easy access to all main world leaders, and as an African leader whose worldview and role perception (reminiscent of a former South African prime minister, General Jan Christiaan Smuts) far exceed the relative global power status of his country. 1 Henry A. Kissinger, American foreign policy: three essays (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), p. 46. 816 INTA79_4_07_Olivier 816 7/2/03, 11:29 Is Thabo Mbeki Africa’s saviour? Since assuming power, Mbeki has mellowed from being a left-wing activist in the ANC’s struggle against apartheid into a more moderate left-of-centre politician. Under his guidance and influence the ANC as ruling party modified its foreign policy credo from aspirational moralism to operational pragmatism as the idealism of the ANC-in-struggle made way for a more orthodox and con- servative approach by the ANC-in-government. What is particularly notable about this new policy is its moral neutrality and even indifference with regard to intra-African politics. It meticulously respects the sovereignty of African countries, viewing judgement on their human rights records, however odious and harmful, as unwarranted interference in their domestic affairs. For example, Mbeki got himself deeply involved in the anti-war campaign in the United States–Iraq confrontation, tried to play a mediator role in Palestine, and helped to bring peace to Africa’s various conflict zones; but as far as the Zimbabwe fiasco in South Africa’s own backyard, and the many cases of blatant autocratic mismanagement and undemocratic behaviour elsewhere in Africa, are con- cerned, he absolves himself of responsibility simply by declaring ‘we claim no right to impose our will on any independent country.’2 Out of fear of being isolated and sidelined as a solitary crusader for moral justice, Mbeki prefers the multilateral route on human rights issues. In the African context his moral stance is primarily dictated by a pan-Africanist political correctness, in its turn a derivative of pan-African solidarity, unity and fraternity. Outside Africa, coun- tries with abominable human rights records—Cuba and China, for instance— get the same benevolent treatment because they supported the ANC’s struggle against apartheid. These leadership traits render Mbeki’s foreign policy a complicated and some- times contradictory mixture of ideology, idealism and pragmatism: a policy characterized by grand opening moves, but one that for the most part founders on the delivery side. At times his ideological preferences seem to override South Africa’s core economic and security national interests, or threaten the future of his own brainchildren, such as NEPAD and the African renaissance. With great dexterity, he shifts smoothly from one paradigm to another. His idealism leads him to champion noble causes like NEPAD, the African renaissance, the elimin- ation of African poverty and the restoration of African pride, and to proclaim the virtues of good governance, human rights and democracy in Africa. In a speech at Chantilly, USA, in 1997, when he was still deputy president, he said that in order for Africa to reach its goals, the present generation ‘must resist all tyranny, oppose all attempts to deny liberty, to resort to demagoguery, repulse the temptation to describe African life as the ability to live on charity’.3 Launching the AU summit in Durban in 2002, he again exhorted: ‘through our actions, let us proclaim to the world that … Africa is a continent of democracy, a continent of democratic institutions and culture—indeed a continent of good 2 Business Day (Johannesburg), 19 Feb. 2003, p. 1. 3 Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s address to the Corporate Council Summit on ‘Attracting capital to Africa’, Chantilly, Virginia, USA, April 1997. 817 INTA79_4_07_Olivier 817 7/2/03, 11:29 Gerrit Olivier governance, where the people participate and the rule of law is upheld.’4 This moral aspirationalism runs like a thread through many of Mbeki’s speeches, particularly those he has made before international audiences and potential foreign investors. But how serious or committed is he to making these things happen? Most of the time, when he has to make the hard choice, his ideological predilections take over, leading him to act with moral indifference and to stand by ‘permanent friends’ of the ilk of Mugabe, Castro and Qadhafi. One prominent example of Mbeki’s fluctuating attitude is his volte-face on NEPAD’s voluntary African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). This mechan- ism was originally designed to encourage African countries ‘to consider seriously the impact of domestic policies, not only on internal political stability and economic growth, but also on neighbouring countries’.5 Great expectations about Africa’s rehabilitation abounded when he and the co-authors of NEPAD proposed the APRM.
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