Crooked timber of humanity’ includes the ANC

JACOB DLAMINI – Business Day 11th June 2010

IT IS one of the many ironies of South African politics that the bitterest battles of our age have been waged within the ranks of the anti-apartheid movement itself — not between the movement and its foes. It is within the ranks of the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies that SA has seen the worst fighting over race, class, gender, sexual orientation, corruption and many other questions of our times.

Take the old and ugly spat between former president Thabo Mbeki and Mac Maharaj, Jacob Zuma ’s “envoy” and SA’s de facto president. On the face of it, the clash between the two men is one of egos. Mbeki thinks he is smarter than Maharaj; Maharaj thinks he is smarter than everybody. Mbeki thinks we owe our freedom to his strategic nous; Maharaj believes our liberation is due to his daring and swashbuckling manner. Both are equally petty. That is on the surface.

But below the surface the fight between the two men is about class and race. In Mbeki, we have a black Victorian whose elite upbringing left him with a severe strain of the “talented tenth” syndrome. The man believes he was fated by history to lead. In Maharaj, we have a self-declared Brahmin who believes he was endowed at birth with every gift imaginable — from a sharp intellect to a fearless ego. Mbeki was born a class above Maharaj, but Maharaj seems to think his Brahminism places him a few notches above everybody else. But it does not end there.

Mbeki has always resented attitudes that suggest that Africans are by definition stupid and incompetent. He has always looked askance at Maharaj’s preference for the likes of Zuma, simple folks who pose no challenge to Maharaj’s supposed brilliance. Mbeki has always disliked Maharaj’s penchant during the struggle days for underground networks, in which Africans were at best marginal. For his part, Maharaj has always thought Mbeki’s intelligence overrated. The fight between the two men is as bitter as it is old.

Then there was Mbeki versus Joe Slovo. Here was a fight between, again, a black Victorian and a (white) immigrant son made good. In many ways, the fight between Mbeki and Slovo was fought over the same terrain as that between Mbeki and Maharaj.

The fight was as much about egos as it was about race and class. This is not to suggest that Mbeki did not have whites and Indians to whom he was close. But he seems to feel more keenly whatever slight, both real and perceived, is directed at him in particular and Africans in general.

Mbeki, Maharaj and Slovo are not the only people involved in some of the ugliest fights of our age.

The ANC has yet to come to terms with the legacy of its treatment of women in its military camps. It has yet to come to terms with the meaning of its lip service to gender equality. Many women in ANC camps were treated as male accessories and, worse, “perks” for commanders and other senior leaders. It did not take many women recruits long to realise that the struggle for freedom was as necessary within the ANC as it was in SA.

Sadly, very few women will talk about their exile experience today. The few who tried to do so via the truth commission were discredited and shunned. When they tried to speak out, those who suffered physical and sexual abuse were “abused” again as their integrity was called into question and loyalty to the freedom struggle disputed.

There was also the ugly demon of tribalism within the anti-apartheid ranks. Stories abound of Joe Modise, the hapless commander of the ANC’s military wing, preferring only Tswanas and Sotho speakers for special treatment. Ditto Chris Hani and Xhosa speakers. Moses Mabhida, the ANC and communist party stalwart who presided over the ANC in Mozambique, was said to favour mostly Zulus in his network — a network that included at some stage our dear President Zuma.

If SA’s freedom struggle was made out of such crooked timber, to steal an expression from Immanuel Kant, is it any surprise that the ANC has spent the past 16 years getting more corrupt? More importantly, what is it about SA’s struggle for freedom that made it both just and the moral question of the late 20th century, if the men and women who led that struggle were made of such crooked timber?

We should not expect the men and women who lead the ANC today to provide us with answers to these vexing questions. They are joined in battle — fighting over everything from power and the spoils of office to history itself. Just this week, Zuma went out of his way to thank Nelson Mandela for landing SA the 2010 Soccer World Cup. With all due respect to Mandela, the old man was long retired when SA won the hosting rights. It was Mbeki wot did it. Zuma and Maharaj can’t bring themselves to give Mbeki credit. It was the same with Zuma’s state of the nation address earlier this year. He found time to praise everyone except Mbeki.

Mbeki, Maharaj and Zuma are all former members of the South African Communist Party. If there is one thing they have learnt from their time in Soviet bosoms, it is how to brush opponents out of history.

That is what it means to fight bitter struggles. You fight until there is only your version of history left.

- Jacob Dlamini is the author of Native Nostalgia (2009)