The President’s constant references to ‘those among us’ and his use of a pen dipped in bile betray the mind of someone feeling threatened, writes Mondli Makhanya

‘Far from being an educational tool which explains policy choices and political positions, Mbeki’s letter has become a poisoned arrow’

There is a phrase that crops up, in various forms, in President Thabo Mbeki’s writings: “There are some among us”; “There are some in our ranks”; “There are some in our country” and so on. It is an ominous phrase, used by the President to show displeasure and disdain towards those who dare to cross his path.

The “some among us” refrain has become such a trademark Mbekiism that those who read the Letter from the President on the ANC’s website use it to mimic him.

The presidential letters have become a much-feared medium, so much so that there is a cyber-stampede every Friday as the political and intellectual classes rush to see who has become the latest to be on the receiving end of the presidential pen.

When the ruling party launched its online newsletter, ANC Today, a few years ago, it told us that it would give the party a voice denied by a critical media. It said that it would be a forum where the ANC would explain its policy positions and its activities directly to its members instead of relying on the media to interpret them.

The pivot of the publication would be a weekly column from the President himself.

Mbeki has been an editor’s dream ­ the kind of columnist who readers cannot wait to read, whose writings they talk about long after the publication date.

His is a feared pen, full of anger and invective.

The question is whether this is what South Africa needs right now; a presidential pen that is at war with various sections of society.

The answer has to be a definite NO.

What nations, particularly those still under construction, expect from their heads of state is leadership. They expect direction on the paths to take, the conversations to engage in.

What they do not need is a leader permanently in Round 15 pose, ready to deliver the knock-out punch. And that is what Mbeki has done with his letter.

Far from being an educational tool that explains policy choices and political positions, Mbeki’s letter has become a poisoned arrow.

Just this year Mbeki has waged war with leaders and individuals from various sections of society ­ from the head of the country’s biggest company to the nation’s most respected cleric.

In the case of Anglo American’s Tony Trahar, Mbeki took a one-line reference to there being a level of “political risk” in South Africa and turned it into an ad hominem attack on the company’s history and its commitment to this country.

Of course Anglo, ever guilty about its very ugly past of collaborating with colonial and apartheid governments, was cowed into submission and refused to publicly engage Mbeki on its definition of “political risk”. And thus was corporate South Africa sent an unequivocal message: watch your words or your nose will be bloodied. If it can happen to Anglo, it can happen to you.

Then came a strange attack on has-been journalist Charlene Smith, whose hysterical appeals for public attention are ignored by most rational people.

Mbeki ignored what was largely sensible coverage and commentary on the release of South Africa’s crime statistics by the media and analysts, and instead focused on Smith’s hyperbolic analysis.

Out of this he constructed a thesis that there were many white people in South Africa ­ Smith being one of them­ who believed that black men had uncontrollable sexual urges and were therefore prone to committing acts of sexual violence.

It was an illogical argument that, like some of the President’s interventions on the subject, did the war against racism no favours.

But the President’s response to Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s call for robust debate in South Africa must rank as one of the lowest points in his tenure as columnist extraordinaire.

Tutu’s speech was a challenge ­ from one of the world’s most eminent personalities and moral guardians ­ for us as a nation to avoid becoming a nation of yes men.

“If we believe in something, then surely we will be ready to defend it rationally, hoping to persuade those opposed, to change their point of view ... We should not too quickly want to pull rank and to demand an uncritical, sycophantic, obsequious conformity,” Tutu said in a speech.

Mbeki responded last Friday by slapping down Tutu with slurs on his integrity and his loyalty to truth, even questioning his right to question the ANC policymaking process.

It was a most unpresidential piece of writing, the sort of thing one would expect from someone who is clearly feeling beleaguered.

Which is the bewildering thing about the President’s state of mind.

For a man who is arguably the most powerful individual on the continent and one of the most respected statesmen on the globe, Mbeki’s writings betray a person who believes he is powerless.

They are laments of weakness and victimhood. Of conspiracy and fear. They betray a mind that is permanently on a war footing.

Reading them, one gets the sense of a President under siege from Western powers, racist whites, an ignorant and vicious media, unreconstructed socialists and ill-informed critics who do not appreciate the good that he and his government have done for South Africa.

A picture that is very far from the truth.

The ANC government’s achievements over the past 10 years have been acknowledged by most sensible people as one of humankind’s greatest accomplishments in the modern era. To have taken a morally rotten state from near bankruptcy and conflagration and turned it into the beacon we have today is no small feat

We South Africans, and the leadership of the ANC, should be walking tall and working hard to deepen this democracy and to spread prosperity.

We should be working to ensure that the nation-building project remains on track and that the eradication of poverty and all forms of inequality remain our guiding principles.

We should be claiming our space on the world stage by doing everything to ensure that all the peoples of this planet enjoy the rights that we do. And we should be celebrating our triumph over an evil system.

All of the above need confident and self-assured leadership. They need a positive frame of mind from those at the helm, especially the nation’s Number One citizen.

What we have from our President is negativity and a message of fear. It might just be time for those close to him to whisper in his ear that all is okay. That he is firmly in charge and that there is no need for him to fear what lies behind the bushes.

Then maybe he might just decide to use that pen to point us in the right direction, rather than to depress us out of our skulls.

With ackowledgement to the Sunday Times.

*1 And the answer is - Fishers of Corrupt Men.