Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2006-08-24 Reporter: Xolela Mangcu Reporter:

Will Thabo Mbeki, Like Richard Nixon, Finally Kick It All Away?

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2006-08-24

Reporter

 Xolela Mangcu

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za

 

Does the arms deal have the makings of our own Watergate, the American scandal that cost Richard Nixon his presidency?

This is a rather foreboding question. The whole arms deal thing is so confusing that in the midst of accusation and counter-accusation, no one is going to come out clean. I still cannot believe that the African National Congress allowed it to come this far without brokering a political compromise.

I am, of course, not qualified to comment on whether President Thabo Mbeki committed any wrongdoing in the arms deal saga. What I am qualified to do, however, is make historical comparisons between things that happen in our country and what has happened elsewhere in the world.

Everywhere I travel I am confronted with the same recurring question: what’s wrong with your president?

Well, I do not know what’s wrong with my president, I’m not a psychoanalyst. However, I do know what’s wrong with his style of leadership. And it is on these grounds that I compare him with Nixon.

In his book, Eyewitness to Power, David Gergen attributes Nixon’s fall to a number of paradoxes that I sometimes see in Mbeki. The greatest paradox is, of course, that “Nixon had it all and kicked it away.” I often feel that’s the way history will judge Mbeki. I never imagined that we would be the butt of jokes at international conferences because of our prevarication on the deadliest health challenge to humanity, HIV/AIDS.

There are several other qualities that our president shares with Nixon. Nixon was the great foreign-policy president, who opened America’s door to China despite American paranoia and xenophobia. Mbeki is the foreign-policy president who similarly opened our door to the rest of the African continent, despite our own xenophobia.

Nixon’s great domestic policy achievements were the desegregation of schools and environmental legislation. Mbeki’s legacy will be the impetus he has given to racial transformation in this country.

Nixon had a deep sense of intellectual history, often using historical precedents to explain his policies. Mbeki often appeals to historical texts, including the Scriptures *1.

Nixon said he wanted to “nudge history”. Mbeki “nudges” the international community to pay more attention to Africa.

Nixon had a penchant for role models from history, and this is where the two leaders begin to share less than admirable qualities. Mbeki often refers to Pixley ka Seme, but perhaps forgets that Seme, the aloof autocrat, lost his battle against the radicals in the ANC. Similarly, Nixon admired French leader Charles de Gaulle for his aloofness, believing that it lent him a certain mystique, which in turn kept his enemies guessing.

But Nixon did not appreciate that such aloofness would never work in the rough and tumble of American politics. Nixon showed a disdain for the media, indicating that he would rather follow De Gaulle’s approach to press conferences: “Two per year with a thousand journalists beneath crystal chandeliers in the Elysee Palace”.

Nixon surrounded himself with some of the key thinkers of the 20th century ­ from Daniel Patrick Moynihan on domestic policy to Henry Kissinger on foreign policy.

But he also surrounded himself with thugs who indulged his mean streak ­ Charles Colson, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichmann.

Similarly, Mbeki is surrounded by an equal mix of brilliant minds and bumbling sycophants who indulge his “lone warrior” model of leadership.

Only someone with a “lone-warrior” model of leadership can stand against the world medical community’s opinions on the most devastating health challenge of our times, HIV/AIDS, with Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang happily playing the role of the court jester ­ except the joke is on her. There are indeed none so blind as those who will not see.

Blind sycophants defended Nixon to the very last minute. Gergen describes this blind defence thus: “We held tight to our belief that, whatever the shenanigans of his team, Richard Nixon himself was innocent and so were the people in his inner circle. In politics there is a will to believe in your man, especially if he is elected to the presidency, and even more so if you are working for him in the White House. It’s a natural human tendency, strongest among the young, to idealise your leader, persuaded that you are part of some larger crusade for good and ignoring evidence to the contrary. Your wagon is hitched to a star, you resent those on the outside who tarnish the adventure.”

By all indications the wheels are coming off the wagons of the Mbeki adventure. Opportunists of various stripes are jumping off in time to catch a ride with the Jacob Zuma brigade. Unfortunately, the political and legal muck that these political wagons leave in their wake is likely to tarnish us all.


• Dr Mangcu is visiting scholar, Public Intellectual Life Project, Wits University. He is also a nonresident WEB DuBois Fellow at Harvard University.

With acknowledgements to Xolela Mangcu and Business Day.


*1       The most of which is : Fishers of Corrupt Men.

Yengeni, Zuma, Schabir Shaik are mere sprats.

Jurgen Kogl is a medium size fish.

Thomson-CSF is a big fish. Barbara Masekela is a biggish fish.

Joe Modise was a big fish.

Chippy Shaik is a big fish.

Essop Pahad is the big fish's remora.

The ANC is a big fish.

Mbeki is the biggest fish of all.

Let's go fishing.