Mbeki: A massive failure of spin-doctoring

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki left the stage a beaten man on Tuesday night. He was defeated by one of the canniest political campaigns ever waged in South Africa as Jacob Zuma transformed himself from a fired, corrupt, misogynist rape-accused into a people’s champion in two short years.
The story of how Mbeki lost his political mojo has the makings of an epic screenplay, perhaps along the lines of Luchino Visconti’s classic The Leopard, in which Burt Lancaster portrayed the decline of Prince Don Fabrizio Salina as power shifted from the aristocracy to the populists.
But this comparison is a sentimental exaggeration. The truth is much simpler: Mbeki is the victim of a massive failure of spin-doctoring.
Consider this: Here was a man who in 1999 led the ANC to a greater margin of victory than that achieved by Nelson Mandela in 1994, who presided over the most sustained period of economic growth in the country’s recent history and who presided over South Africa winning the right to stage the 2010 football World Cup.
These achievements, large though they were, were dwarfed by Mbeki’s macro-economic successes. Under his and Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s watch, the country’s economic fundamentals were stabilised, the deficit was reduced, inflation was reigned in, the currency was brought onto an even keel and conditions were created for a stock market rally that has swelled the pensionable income of workers as much as it has made share-optioned executives extremely wealthy.
Mbeki had his political failings. He presided over an arms deal that has spawned a thousand corruption stories. He failed to deal with the haemorrhaging of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe and, perhaps most tellingly, he failed to respond to the Aids pandemic with conviction.
All leaders have their failings. The difference with Mbeki is that these failings were allowed to fester, multiply and, ultimately, overwhelm his successes.
The blame for this resides first and foremost with Mbeki himself. While in exile, he was the supreme spin-doctor, convincing white South Africans who visited the ANC in Lusaka that his party had good intentions for South Africa.
This was no mean feat, given that the ANC was a banned organisation engaged in guerilla warfare at the time.
But, somewhere between exile and the long, lonely night of December 18, 2007, Mbeki lost his patience with spin doctoring.
On the eve of his presidency in 1999, he made an effort to build a relationship with political journalists, holding a warm, informal discussion with them about matters of state in a disarmingly honest fashion. The very next day, a daily newspaper broke his confidence and the die was cast. Mbeki retreated.
Nelson Mandela’s brilliant spin-doctor, the late Parks Mankahlana, found himself unable to stem the ooze of negativity. Mandela had cut him loose, allowing him to work the press with a free hand. Under Mbeki he was cramped for style, constantly having to defer to higher authorities.
It did not help that he was sent to the front line to fight for Mbeki’s questionable stance on Aids as the disease ravaged him. He was a man in turmoil and Mbeki’s front line finally gave in when he died in 2000.
After Mankahlana came a succession of dour yes-men, terrified to pass on information and unable to find a way to cast Mbeki’s introversion and his odd utterances on Aids and Zimbabwe in a positive light.
Mbeki’s new front line became the Minister in his office, Essop Pahad, laughingly referred to as South Africa’s Lord Haw-Haw. If it was Mbeki who wrestled his own public image to the ground, it was Pahad who put in the steel-toed boot. Angry, finger-pointing and prone to temper tantrums, Pahad cut a swathe of alienation through the press corps.
In April 2001, Mbeki’s then Minister of Safety and Security, the late Steve Tshwete stunned the nation by announcing that Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Mathews Phosa were plotting to overthrow Mbeki.
Mbeki’s response to the claims suggested that he was behind the bizarre move, instantly turning three powerful figures in life-long enemies. He told eTV: “It’s a conspiratorial thing. I know you have business people who say, ‘We will set up a fund to promote our particular candidate and we will then try to influence particular journalists’.”
The seeds of paranoia had been sown and, while the public at large was bemused, there was palpable negative shift in perceptions of Mbeki within the ANC. Respect turned to dread.
The rest, as they say is history. Despite rolling out a massive Aids campaign which now enjoys the support of highly critical Aids organisations, Mbeki failed to convincingly distance himself from Aids-denialism.
In the months leading up to the conference, Pahad launched an all-out assault on the country’s most influential newspaper, the Sunday Times, calling for a government advertising boycott. Whatever hope Mbeki had of turning around public opinion vaporised on Pahad’s hot breath.
On Tuesday night it all boiled down to 400 ANC delegates at the ANC conference. It would have taken just 400 ANC delegates to switch their support from Zuma to Mbeki for Mbeki to survive the political onslaught by Zuma.
But, when Mbeki rose to claim credit for his successes, no-one was listening. Success had long been overwhelmed by the untamed tentacles of failure.