A choice between deviants and greatness

As the world this week celebrates with Nelson Mandela his 93^rd birthday, it is perhaps appropriate to look at the question of leaders and leadership in Africa, and particularly in South Africa – realising like every other part of the world we are capable of  both the best and the worst.

In a keynote address delivered recently at a Black Management Forum (BMF) function in Richards Bay, author and academic Prince Mashele referred to Mandela and former South African president Thabo Mbeki as “two inspirational leaders” who “through their integrity and intellectual capabilities provided leadership to South Africans in a manner that made other Africans submit to their leadership”.

Yet in the same address, Mashele also touched on a raw nerve: the image of Africa as a savage continent, its countries being at the bottom of the global economic system as former World Bank economist Paul Collier unflatteringly wrote in his book The Bottom Billion.

More often than not Africa is portrayed in the Western media as a conflict and disease-ridden continent led by corrupt leaders who do nothing to alleviate the suffering of its impoverished masses. Quite often, it would seem, this happens to be true. Just think of leaders such as Uganda’s Idi Amin, Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the former Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, or South Africa’s Hendrik Verwoerd.

Are these then the kind of leaders that are to be associated with Africa, or the collective African image? Certainly not. This is not the norm in Africa, not the "African way".

These are the deviants, just like every other continent in the world has produced its fair share of deviants. Europe gave us Hitler, Stalin. Franco, and Mussolini among others. South America produced Somoza Garcia, Augusto Pinochet, Manuel Noriega and many more.

To equate African leadership with failure, repression and corruption would be to deny the global legacy of integrity, generosity, reconciliation and reason bestowed by Mandela, or the intellectual capabilities of an Mbeki. There were many others like them, such as the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Seretse Khama in Botswana, and in South Africa the likes of Albert Luthuli, Albertina Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Desmond Tutu, FW de Klerk, Steve Biko and many more.

Like any other continent, Africa has both its deviants and its greats. This brings us to South Africa and some tricky questions about leadership that are under the spotlight this week.

As a leading nation in Africa, and as the continent’s biggest economy, every move by its leaders, particularly its president, is keenly watched here and around the world. And this week its president, Jacob Zuma, will be closely watched for the kind of leadership he projects and the choices he makes.

It is expected that he should act on the damning report by the country’s Public Protector, Advocate Thuli Madonsela, on the role of national police commissioner Bheki Cele and public works minister Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde in a leasing scandal that would have cost taxpayers a staggering R1.7bn.

Zuma is also under pressure from the public, the media, opposition parties and even his political allies like the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) to take action against corruption, including against Cele and Mhalngu-Nkabinde as well as against other allegedly corrupt politicians like Co-Operative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka, Northern Cape ANC chairman John Block and Nelson Mandela Bay ANC chairman Nceba Faku.

Thus far Zuma seems to have avoided making the hard decisions, but the pressure has grown, and Madonsela’s report has presented him with an inescapable challenge.

There are two options open to him. One presented by the inimitable Mac Maharaj, that struggle veteran, political jack of all trades and Zuma’s newly appointed official voice, in the form of “ANC tradition”. Asked by a Sunday newspaper why Zuma had not fired Shiceka – who irregularly squandered R300,000 in taxpayers’ money to visit his jailed drug smuggler mistress in Switzerland – he said it is  “ANC tradition” leading to the president’s “deep reluctance...to kick a person who is ill.” (It is the same Mac who joined Mo Shaik several years ago to falsely finger Zuma’s persecutor and prosecutor, Bulelani Ngcuka, as an apartheid spy. Both have since been rewarded with cushy jobs by Zuma. )

The other option is offered by another ANC colleague of Zuma’s, being none other than ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe. It was Mantashe who this past weekend joined the likes of Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi in  condemnation of corruption in the ANC and government when he presented a nine-page document to the mid-year lekgotla of the ANC’s national executive committee.

Despite being long-time close allies, Mantashe effectively threw down the gauntlet to Zuma to stop being soft on corruption and to take action. Mantashe cited the “huge damage done to the image” of the ruling party by its leaders simply dismissing the many “high profile cases” of allegations of corruption against “our comrades”.

Which begs the question: will Zuma this week choose the Maharaj option or the Mantashe option? Will he choose for Africa’s deviants, or for its greats? Watch this space.

Meanwhile, we wish you a happy birthday Madiba. May the spirit of everything you represent and stand for continue forever to inspire our great continent and this wonderful country, and may our greats bury the deviants.

Stef Terblanche