Exit the President

Weblog 23 September 2008-09-23
Dateline Jozi
Zone One/Gauteng
Afrika/Azania

So exit Thabo Mbeki, former South African President and social networker par excellence from Stage right.
Enter Interim President K.M [spelling and pronunciation to be ascertained] from Stage Left.

According to the morning news the ex-president is applying to the Constitutional court for the right to co-join with the National Prosecuting Authority in an appeal against the judgement that overthrew the case against the wannabee President Mr Jacob Zuma, and opened the way for his enemies in the party to mount an unassailable assault against him.

In the meantime the party has chosen the less controversial Mr ‘K.M’ as its preferred interim President subject to the wannabee presidential pretender [Mr Jacob Zuma] gaining a mandate from the people. This is expected to happen next year when the party [ the only real contender] walks the general election; and proves conclusively [they hope] that they can fool most of the people most of the time.

In the final analysis this was a bloodless coup of considerable political elegance. President Mbeki has been “recalled” because he was unpopular with his supporters and increasingly divisive to the party; and without him the country can begin to deal with many outstanding issues, not least of which is the vexing problem of service delivery and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Whether the strategy pays off remains to be seen. In the meantime though newly enlightened self-interest should see most of the key players coalesce around the interim man, there will be a few casualties and the feeding frenzy may see a shift of players as those who have fed well at the trough depart for other pastures and a collection of newbies toi toi from left to centre: on their pilgrimage to the right hand side. Hopeful new ideologues with pockets filled to merry clinking for those adroit enough to grasp the ring while simultaneously keeping their backs covered.

Should we feel sorry for Thabo… This writer doesn’t. He will still be Thabo the Great to me because of his success in bringing the African Parliament to Gauteng. With his passage the entire African Union project may well move off set for awhile and their may be attempts by others to hijack the parliament for some other preferred place and we would do well to resist that.

As for the rest? As I said before Thabo Mbeki was a Smutsian figure. I know that the newly empowered will find the comparison odious but tough: perception is all. [For offshore readers South Africa/Azania had a former leader called Jan Smuts, as controversial a leader as ever existed. This writer was once chased from a man’s house with covering rifle fire after inadvertently mentioning the man’s name in an inappropriate context. Said Mr Smuts also sported a little goatee beard such as was favoured by Mr Mbeki and was more fond of being on the world stage than sitting around the fireside at home]. Mr Mbeki was such an absentee leader.

He won't be missed by the people because the people rarely saw him; and when they did, he read them speeches full of empty rhetoric in a uniquely robotic style… Ironically the only time we saw him out of Stoic mode was in his farewell speech.

He also presided over the longest period of economic expansion in the country’s history, thereby demonstrating one of economic history’s profound truths: that leaders who choose not to meddle in the economics of a country too overtly, facilitate considerable growth.

From a prosperity perspective Mr Mbeki oversaw a period of unprecedented growth in his country. So did Tony Blair and George Bush in theirs. We know that those men are leaving a legacy of wealth destruction on a scale not witnessed since the Great Depression as the bubble they helped to inflate, on an ocean of deceit, lies and deception, burst under the strain of dishonesty; and that has revealed the inherently moral streak that lines all self interest.

It remains to be seen what the shift from a relatively hands-off period of near, mercantilist inspired, laissez faire economics in South Africa; fuelling the empowerment transfer of wealth, to a more redistributionist policy, under the inspiration of the newly dominant Communist Party associations in the ruling party, will do for the country’s prospects. It is even possible that Mr Zuma may not make it to president. Now that the so-called ‘ultra-left’ have control of the Party thanks to Mr Zuma's machinations and Mr Mbeki's flawed strategies, do they really need a maverick populist who could well have his own less congenial [to them] agenda.

For the moments we have hove-to in the lee of the storm.

The Blogospherian