Mbeki, Zuma, Ramaphosa saga is no ordinary bullfight and has deep roots

Former post-apartheid South Africa presidents: from left, Jacob Zuma, the late Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. PHOTO| AFP 

In Summary

• Will the dancing ex-president manage to waltz out of all the jail-threatening cases? Much will depend on the goodwill of the new president, though he recently seemed to indicate that law enforcement agencies should act according to the law.

By JENERALI ULIMWENGU
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When Cyril Ramaphosa was sworn in as South Africa’s president on February 15, he had just won the latest round in a long political saga that had pitted him against African National Congress (ANC) heavyweights since the end of apartheid in the early 1990s.

That drawn-out struggle reads much like a multi-episode marathon power struggle in which several players were brought together in a grim battle to control the destiny of the emerging new nation and define the course it would take.

They all came from diverse backgrounds, carrying varying credentials of their anti-apartheid struggle, but more often than not they fought more like rivals than they did like comrades.

The prize on offer was the mantle of the venerable Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela, whose saint-like aura had grown during his long incarceration and who had, by the time he was released in 1990, become the most celebrated political icon of the world. The contestants were an array of actors who had won their spurs in the fight against the old regime in different theatres.

A choice of three

There was Thabo Mbeki, the suave, pipe-smoking, UK-trained intellectual with a reputation for brainy engagements and impatience for those who opposed him.

There was Ramaphosa, the trade union lawyer who caught Mandela’s attention in the short time they met around the process of the old man’s release from jail.

There was Jacob Zuma, the cunning, if unschooled, former intelligence chief of the ANC, a voluble populist, with a voice for song and step for dance, who was thought to have all sorts of dirt on his comrades.

There were others in the earlier years of the new order, people like Gabriel “Tokyo” Sexwale, Bantu Holomisa, even Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and others, but most drifted away into business and other pursuits and left the drama of the Mandela succession to the aforementioned-mentioned three.

Between Ramaphosa and Mbeki, it was becoming clear there would be some friction between the exiles — those ANC cadres who had conducted their struggle from abroad — and the “inziles” —those who had borne the brunt of apartheid at home.

Zuma shared the exile label with Mbeki, but had the added advantage of having been an “islander” as well, meaning one who had shared some Robben Island prison glory with Mandela.

Of the three, Ramaphosa looked like the one who had stolen a march on other postulants by appearing by the side of Madiba on February 11, 1990, as the latter walked out of prison, and later that day at the Cape Town Hall balcony as the apartheid struggle icon addressed his first rally (Ramaphosa held the microphone for Mandela).

The 37-year-old Cyril milked every ounce out of his chairmanship of the Mandela reception committee, and it soon emerged that Mandela had been favourably impressed by the youngster’s way of handling things.

Madiba succession

These momentous images catapulted Ramaphosa to the forefront of the Madiba succession, and when he was soon chosen to head the constitutional process, he appeared unstoppable. But other forces were at work, and when it came to anointing one of the Young Turks as heir to the Mandela sceptre, Mbeki was tapped.

Many observers believe that Ramaphosa was piqued by this choice, though he himself has been on record saying that he did not think much of it because he acknowledged his relative youth which made him defer to older comrades.

That hardly explains Ramaphosa’s conspicuous absence at Mandela’s inauguration in 1994. Mandela had clearly promised him the crown but, under persuasion from other ANC strands, failed to deliver. Ramaphosa was sore. He left and plunged into business with a vengeance.

I met Ramaphosa soon after Madiba’s inauguration in one of his corporate nests in Gauteng. I had been recommended as an interviewer by Tanzanian High Commissioner Ami Mpungwe. I found him to be personable, easy to be around, soft-spoken, articulate and charming. At the end of our short interview, I asked him whether he was out of politics for good or if this was just a sabbatical.

He laughed at the word sabbatical, quipping that that was for academics. For him this was it, he was done with politics. I could have been fooled by the candour with which he seemed to say this.

But the saga continued, even after the succession battle had been settled in favour of Mbeki.

The man chosen to take over from Mandela did not have the “Madiba magic,” but he had pedigree. He was the son of Govan Mbeki, a most prestigious “islander” and close associate of Madiba, who had worked intimately with Oliver Reginald (O.R.) Tambo in exile and who had led the earlier negotiations with business people as apartheid was on its last kicks.

With Ramaphosa on “sabbatical,” the field was reduced to two pugilists who could not have been any more different from each other: Mbeki, the epitome of erudition and sophistication, versus Zuma, the exemplar of populism and basest human instincts of cupidity and sleaze.

When Mbeki chose Zuma for vice president as he took over from Madiba, he was pandering to a number of factors, which included, sadly, the ethnic calculus.

The ANC, which was born in the hands of Zulu scholar John Langalibalele Dube, and which for some time continued under Zulu leaders, was, at the time of Mandela’s release, perceived as having sidelined the Zulu in favour of the Xhosa, so much so that there was talk of the so-called “Xhosa-Nostra.” All the top leadership came from this group (Tambo, Mandela and Thabo), although the ANC has always downplayed the ethnic factor.

‘Et tu, Brute?’

The black-on-black violence surrounding the arrival of the new state, the tribal innuendo weaved into the political discourse and the felt need for ethnic inclusiveness gave traction to Zuma’s ambitions and helped hoist him to the vice-presidency (in 1999), right under Thabo, and a vantage point from which he could now make the lunge for the top post.

Though Zuma was obviously a reprobate right from the word go, he was riding a huge popularity surge, and his strong base in KwaZulu-Natal helped beef up ANC numbers there, and when he decided to strike after Thabo removed him from the vice-presidency (though Zuma retained the ANC vice-presidency) for scandalous delinquency in 2005, Zuma had enough political ammo to plunge the knife in his boss’s back and take his throne.

What Zuma did in 2008 at Polokwane city was to galvanise the grievances of the so-called “Coalition of the Wounded” — people Mbeki had slighted or sidelined; those annoyed by his strange theories about HIV-Aids; those who thought he was too aloof and lost in African and world diplomacy — and Mbeki found himself “recalled.”

Two years later Jacob Zuma was president of the ANC and South Africa.

The long knives

When Ramaphosa was elected ANC president in 2017 (beating Zuma’s ex-wife, who was the president’s favourite in the election) adding to his incumbency as of the country’s vice president, I felt we were witnessing a replay of Polokwane, with slight modifications.

Soon Ramaphosa was leading delegations to meet Zuma to arrange for the latter’s departure à la Mbeki.

Zuma played the innocent “I did nothing wrong card,” but to no avail. The long knives were out again, but this time he was the one facing the sharp end of the blades, and as William Shakespeare’s Macbeth says in Macbeth about murderous conspiracies as he ponders the possibility of killing his king:
‘That we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor; this even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips.’

Endgame

Will the dancing ex-president manage to waltz out of all the jail-threatening cases? Much will depend on the goodwill of the new president, though he recently seemed to indicate that law enforcement agencies should act according to the law.

South Africa's President Jacob Zuma (right) and his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa at an ANC party conference in 2012. PHOTO | AFP

The two were seen at a farewell dinner for Zuma, and both were beaming from ear to ear.

But beware the smiles and back-slapping. FW de Klerk, the man who released Mandela from prison and spent many months in tough negotiations with Ramaphosa felt uneasy about the man.

He told his biographer, Ray Hartley, about Cyril’s demeanour: “His relaxed manner and convivial expression were contradicted by coldly calculating eyes, which seem to be searching continuously for the softest spots in the defences of his opponents. His silver tongue and honeyed phrases lulled potential victims while his arguments relentlessly tightened around them.”

Zuma might need to talk to his lawyers some more.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam.