Africa’s philosopher-kings
The idea of the philosopher-king is derived from Plato’s Republic, in which, as part of a vision of the just city, the best form of government is said to be one in which philosophers rule.1 The philosopher is the only person who can rule well, since they are intellectually and morally suited for this role, and they are expected to employ their knowledge of goodness and virtue to assist their citizens to achieve these ends. Plato’s mentor, Socrates, famously remarked: ‘Until philosophers rule as kings in their cities, or those who are nowadays called kings and leading men become genuine and adequate philosophers … cities will have no rest from evils.’2 For Socrates, the philosopher was a lover of wisdom and a seer committed to a perennial quest for the truth.
The biblical saying that prophets are not honoured in their own land epitomises the fate of two African philosopher-kings: South Africa’s second post-apartheid president, Thabo Mbeki (1999–2008) and Ghana’s founding president, Kwame Nkrumah (1957–1966). Despite perverse attempts to compare him with men like South African prime minister Jan Smuts,3 Mbeki’s political leadership must in fact be understood within an African context. Mbeki can in some ways be regarded as the present age’s Nkrumah. Both Mbeki and Nkrumah believed in Africa’s ancient glory and sought to build modern states that restored the continent’s past. Both were Renaissance men: visionary and cosmopolitan intellectuals committed to pan-Africanism and to restoring the dignity of black people whether in Harare, Harlem or Haiti.
Both Nkrumah and Mbeki were instrumental in the creation of pan-African organisations: in Nkrumah’s case the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and in Mbeki’s the African Union (AU). While Nkrumah championed the African Personality, Mbeki promoted the African Renaissance, both widely used but nebulous concepts that lacked clear definition or a road-map of how to operationalise them in practice. Both leaders were also peacemakers. Nkrumah sent troops to the Congo in 1960 to assist a United Nations peacekeeping mission and was himself on a peace mission to Vietnam when his government was toppled in a coup d’état in February 1966. For his part, Mbeki strove to make peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Côte d’Ivoire, and sent peacekeeping troops to the Congo, Burundi and Sudan’s Darfur region. Both leaders sought to speak on behalf of Africa in multilateral forums, often to the irritation of other regional leaders. Both were accused of monarchical tendencies, and both in the end were toppled in apparent acts of regicide: Nkrumah by the military, and Mbeki by his own party.
But there were clear differences between the two. Nkrumah was charismatic and, for a while, enjoyed the unparalleled adulation of the Ghanaian people. Mbeki did not inherit the charisma of his predecessor as president, the Nobel Peace laureate Nelson Mandela, and relied on other means, notably a form of technocracy, to rule. Nkrumah was able to mobilise and rally the masses; Mbeki relied on political manoeuvring within the ANC to maintain and exercise power. Nkrumah favoured a more federalist United States of Africa; Mbeki’s vision of regional integration was more gradualist. Nkrumah adopted a personality cult and ‘Nkrumahism’ was developed into an anti-imperial ideology of pan-Africanism; Mbeki avoided a personality cult and no ideology bearing the name ‘Mbeki-ism’ ever came into existence during his rule.
Mbeki’s ANC and Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party (CPP) were electorally dominant, and both leaders used their parties as elite-driven vanguard organisations, ruling in a top-down fashion and seeing themselves as guardians of the ‘national revolution’. Nkrumah deployed CPP cadres in a bid to transform the colonial civil service; while Mbeki deployed ANC cadres in an attempt to transform the apartheid bureaucracy. Both were masters of political intrigue and manipulation. Both could be indecisive in making difficult decisions, and often left unpleasant tasks to lieutenants, avoiding direct confrontation. Both stressed party discipline and personal loyalty. Both allowed a climate of fear to reign within their parties. The ANC and the CPP came not only to be closely identified with the state, but also fell under the control of their powerful leaders. Their closest supporters, lacking an independent power base, became dependent on their masters, and tended towards sycophancy and subservience. Both leaders doled out patronage through state agencies and managed their parliamentary parties with an iron grip. Both railed against corruption, and were widely perceived as being personally more interested in power than wealth (though seeming to condone some instances of corruption, especially in favour of their parties, while failing to rein in wayward lieutenants). Both also sought to prevent the ascendancy of an organised ‘left’.
In power, Nkrumah and Mbeki became increasingly sensitive to suspected plots and conspiracies, with Nkrumah deeply affected by two assassination attempts. Both were nocturnal workaholics who survived on only a few hours’ sleep, with Mbeki famously surfing the internet late at night. Both were pragmatic politicians who dispensed with ideology if they felt that it impeded the achievement of practical goals. Both regarded themselves as philosopher-kings who sought the company of fellow intellectuals, though many members of the intelligentsia were opposed to their rule. Both indulged literary tastes: Nkrumah had 14 publications to his name, while Mbeki published three books of speeches, many of which he wrote himself. Both seemed to focus disproportionately on foreign policy as they tired of incessant party squabbles. Both tried to run foreign policy from well-staffed presidential units, and both are likely to be remembered in the long term more for their foreign policies than for their domestic achievements.
Despite some histrionic depictions of Mbeki as a dictator, it was Nkrumah’s rule that in fact represented real autocracy: the Ghanaian leader outlawed the opposition, established one-party rule, smashed civil society, banned most labour action, censored the media, and bullied the judiciary. Another aspect of Nkrumah’s rule that Mbeki never replicated was a personality cult. In this regard, perhaps Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe may provide a closer contemporary comparison for Nkrumah’s autocratic rule, and Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi for his pan-African federalism.
It is also important when placing Mbeki in an African context of monarchical and prophetic rule to note some of the influences – conscious or unconscious – on his political leadership style derived from his two decades in African exile. Between 1971 and 1990 Mbeki lived in Botswana, Swaziland, Nigeria and Zambia. Two of the African leaders with whom Mbeki worked closest during these years – Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere – were themselves philosopher-kings and political prophets who attempted to provide visionary leadership in their own countries. Their leadership styles would influence Mbeki when he came to power as president of South Africa, though he stuck closely in his own presidency to constitutional rules, never moving towards the one-party autocracy of some of his fellow African leaders.
In placing Mbeki in a historical African context, it is important to assess briefly a few concepts and typologies of leadership style in Africa, in particular the monarchical and prophetic traditions in African politics. I do not wish to present an exaggerated picture of the influence of individual leaders (even powerful ones) in shaping events solely through their own actions, nor do I wish to ignore the fact that other actors, institutions and variables had an effect on events that occurred during their rule. The main purpose of my approach is to contextualise the leadership style, performance and legacy of some important African political leaders of their generation.
The Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui was one of the early pioneers in the study of personal rule and leadership styles in Africa. He remarked that African leaders have attempted to use monarchical forms ‘to strengthen the legitimacy of the regimes with sacred symbols and romantic awe’.4 Mazrui further saw monarchical tendencies in African political culture as part of the need of many African leaders to revive a splendid past in order to restore a sense of national dignity that had been damaged by the effects of centuries of slavery and European imperialism. In respect of Kwame Nkrumah, Mazrui noted that the Ghanaian president exhibited a certain flamboyance derived from a sense of racial humiliation and awe of British royalty, which was expressed in terms of a monarchical tendency in his own leadership style. Nkrumah had lived in Britain for two years during his exile. He admired British institutions, was proud of being the first African to be appointed by Queen Elizabeth to her Privy Council, and, when president, employed a British chief of army staff, a British attorney-general, and a British private secretary. As leader, Nkrumah sought simultaneously