Zuma would ultimately encounter problems in crafting his own leadership style because it had already been imagined and assigned to him – as the opposite of Mbeki’s leadership approach. But Mbeki’s own tendency to be overzealous got the better of him when he dreamed of a third term as president of the ANC.7 That mistake cemented the legend of his aloofness and gave it a life of its own. No matter how many letters he would write to explain himself, they only drove home the idea that he was aloof.8
And concerns were emerging in the ANC that Mbeki was going his own way, without sufficient approval from Luthuli House, the party’s headquarters in Johannesburg. At the time, it could be said that most ANC members and South African voters did not yet fathom the idea that a political party and the state are two different things. The party chooses ministers and officials to serve in government, and this may give the impression that the party is the state.
This problem often rears its head in Africa, where political parties in power operate under the illusion that they are the state, and thus the owners of state resources. A good example is Kenya under the leadership of Daniel arap Moi, who became president in 1978. It was only when Moi’s party, the Kenya African National Union (Kanu), lost power in 2002 that the country realised it had been using government offices and resources to carry out party activities. This makes a strong case for the complete separation of government from the ruling party. But any African leader who tries to draw a line between the state and a political party will have to confront a political culture that seems to be well entrenched – and sees no need for such separation. I suppose one of the problems Mbeki encountered was that of separating the party from the state, which led to his falling-out with the party, and eventually to his removal from office before the end of his presidential term.
The distinction between a ruling party and the state is a key principle when it comes to understanding the politics of a post-liberation country such as South Africa. The state is like a plane full of passengers (the nation), who appoint an aircrew and cabin attendants (the ruling party) to fly them wherever they want to go. The crew do not own the aircraft; the passengers employ them. If the flights are smooth, their contracts might be renewed; too many bumpy landings and they’ll be voted out – unless the crew hijacks the plane, of course, which provides a Zimbabwean flavour!
Thabo Mbeki angered many provincial ANC bigwigs when he decided to appoint the premiers of provinces directly, without following the party line of deployment.9 According to party tradition, the ANC provincial chair is naturally in line to become provincial premier. The argument for this approach would be that, as the president of the country and the head of the executive branch of government, the president has the right to select whoever within the party he or she thinks would best implement the government’s mandate. One of the administrative privileges of being the boss should be the ability to select your team, outside party constraints. It is only where the ruling party is not in charge, such as in the Western Cape province, that the president forfeits the chance to appoint a premier.
Thabo Mbeki was criticised for what I believe was an attempt to modernise the post-apartheid bureaucracy. In his own party there were discontented mumbles aplenty, including the accusation that Mbeki focused too much on international affairs and the so-called African agenda. It was said that he was not distributing the resources of the state in accordance with how the party preferred. In cruder terms, some critics said Mbeki was not pushing the ‘party mandate’, as he was obsessed with a Eurocentric version of how the state ought to be. It was whispered that Mbeki’s demeanour was that of a snobbish English gentleman, who dealt with his comrades in an ‘un-ANC’ manner. So Mbeki’s bureaucratic reorganisation of the state was simply branded as coming from his personal obsession with power. This, in my view, is not entirely correct. Even under Jacob Zuma, there has been further consolidation of bureaucracy, and Zuma has not been accused of doing this to increase his power base. This is because Zuma was not suspected of being capable of harbouring sentiments to create and hold on to a power base. The perception that Zuma was a ‘man of the people’ also implied he was not the type of politician who is really interested in power politics. Zuma’s experience in government, however, dispels the naive belief that he is only interested in singing and dancing. Like any politician, he indeed has an interest in latching on to and consolidating political power. What is even more notable about Zuma is that he is willing to trade political power for material benefits, as evidenced by the material enrichment of his children and family during his presidency.
Mbeki, on the other hand, steadfastly built the capacity of the state. In order to implement the complex macroeconomic policy that South Africa adopted after the collapse of apartheid, the state needed to be capable and the bureaucracy needed to be in place. This was achieved under Mbeki, notably in the strength of the National Treasury under Finance minister Trevor Manuel. While the National Treasury’s role, responsibilities and areas of function are well provided for in the Constitution, Mbeki protected its financial management system against populist demands for relaxed fiscal targets.10 Mbeki also protected the South African Reserve Bank’s monetary policy, particularly the inflation targeting practice that has come under severe attack by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and some within the ANC.
The protection of such institutions from populist and party onslaught represents further consolidation of bureaucracy in South Africa. But the ANC had yet to learn the lesson that you cannot just spend money as you wish. The idea had not sunk in that you cannot run a deficit to fund policies that you think are important. Fiscal discipline, proper fiscal management and the idea of ‘fiscal reality’ are usually seen as convenient ways of blocking the implementation of progressive policies in newly liberated countries. The absence of these traits in a system usually indicates a poor level of bureaucratic development.
The operation of the Reserve Bank under its governor, Tito Mboweni, also showed further consolidation of state bureaucracy. The idea of inflation targeting, which necessarily requires the constant monitoring of the currency and subsequent protection of its value, came under attack as part of the anti-Mbeki crusade. Critics said that reining in inflation clashed with the nation’s need for rapid industrial development. Cosatu has always maintained that inflation targeting keeps the value of the rand too high, and that the cost of production in local industries is therefore unsustainable. For Cosatu, economic policy – understood in terms of the need to accelerate expenditure and create jobs – should not be constrained. Together with the South African Communist Party (SACP), Cosatu argued that monetary policy should be subjected to the demands for rapid economic growth. In crude terms, Cosatu wants to spend at all costs, in the belief that growth will regulate inflation naturally, not deliberately, as the Reserve Bank has been doing. The attack against this approach intensified under Mbeki, causing headaches for Mboweni.11
Mboweni fended off calls to do away with inflation targeting up until his departure from the Reserve Bank in 2009. His ability to repel such calls was based on Mbeki’s belief in the central bank as part of his bureaucracy, and his devotion to the idea of an independent central bank that would not be easily swayed by the political mood of the day. Mboweni’s retirement as the head of the Reserve Bank was interpreted as the end of the inflation targeting policy. In a deeper sense, Mboweni’s retirement presented an opportunity to tinker with the bureaucracy that had kept South Africa on a recovering fiscal path, with a stable currency and a relatively low debt-to-GDP ratio. This bureaucracy also ensured a low deficit, despite rising government spending on social security grants.
I am in no way of the opinion that Thabo Mbeki was a perfect leader. There are numerous areas where he could have and should have done better. Among the black spots on his presidency was his approach to HIV/Aids. There are some in South Africa who have called for him to be hauled before the International Criminal Court at The Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity because of his stance on HIV/Aids. While this would be an extreme measure, Mbeki certainly undermined the fight against HIV/Aids. Further, the manner in which Mbeki handled calls for an arms deal inquiry before he left office in September 2008 also showed concern with saving the name of the party instead of allowing the pursuit of justice. Mbeki relinquished