Many South Africans, especially the young ones, may be asking themselves as to why the hell are we here.
This in reference to the shenanigans that are taking place in South Africa on a daily basis.
My answer to the young ones would be that we find ourselves where we are as a country today, especially blacks, as a result of decisions taken way back by former President Thabo Mbeki.
For over two years I have been trying to engage Mr Mbeki on the issues that I am going to ventilate in this opinion piece and up until now he hasn’t bothered to respond to my queries.
Maybe he doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
The following is a plethora of events, ideas, decisions, indescretions and miscalculations that were imposed by Mbeki on us as a nation, and which upon hindsight clearly show that Mr Mbeki misled us.
At the 1997 Mafikeng elective conference of the ANC Mbeki came up with the idea of using slates to vote for the members of the ANC’s so-called top six executive members.
The slate system meant that before voting, Mbeki had already made known the names of the people that he preferred to work with when he took over as President of the ANC in his executive committee, and that all the said people that he had chosen had to be voted into the top six positions by ANC voters at the conference.
Anyone who was not among those chosen by Mbeki would have to face off against the candidate that had been preordained by him (Mbeki).
This mammoth task befell poor Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who had to challenge Mbeki’s preferred choice Jacob Zuma for the position of ANC Deputy President.
Seeing that there was no way she would win against Zuma, who was visibly supported by the majority of ANC delegates at the behest of Mbeki, the mother of the nation withdrew from the race and duly thanked the few ANC members who had nominated her as a candidate for the position of second in command in the ANC.
In his camp, Mbeki had the unwavering support of people like Terror Lekota, Smuts Ngonyama and of course Jacob Zuma, and was tacitly supported by the likes of Gwede Mantashe, Kgalema Motlhanthe, Mbhazima Shilowa, Mluleki George and Zwelinzima Vavi.
The likes of Mbeki, Lekota, Ngonyama and Zuma were all elected unopposed to the top six of the ANC.
This scenario heralded the “them and us” state of affairs right inside the ANC, thus dividing the party membership into two camps, namely those who supported Mbeki and those who supported Mama Winnie.
At the selfsame Mafikeng Conference, Mbeki and his comrades adopted the much-maligned cadre deployment policy as well as the GEAR economic model, which entailed the so-called “trickle-down” economics.
Trickle-down economics ridiculously means that you enrich a few black people and in time their wealth will filter down to the poor members of society.
In reality, what happened is that government tenders were awarded to a select few repeatedly at inflated prices with assurance that they will share their wealth with their fellow black brothers and sisters.
Needless to say, that has never happened because tenderpreneurs simply flaunted their wealth on TV and on social media before going away to spend it in Dubai.
Mbeki’s GEAR policy produced jobless economic growth, and he ignored this matter, thus the rampant joblessness that the country is facing today.
When South Africa purchased military weapons in what later turned out be the notorious” arms deal,” Mbeki is on record as having said the purchase of the said weapons would create jobs for South Africans
Now let me do some”throw-back” and indicate that Mbeki always espoused the so-called African Renaissance philosophy which entailed, according to him, African solutions to African problems.
So as an African man he took it upon himself to go to Nigeria to mediate between the government of that country and human rights activist Ken Sarowiwa, who was leader of the Ogoni tribe in that country.
Sarowiwa was in custody after being found guilty of incitement to murder and had been sentenced to death by hanging.
On the morning of 10 November 1995, when Mbeki landed in Nigeria as a self-styled mediator, Ken Sarowiwa and several of his co-convicts were hanged, and Mbeki had to return back to South Africa in shame as he had failed in his so-called African solutions for African problems mission.
Now let me “throw forward” and mention that Mbeki adopted austerity measures during his time as the President of South Africa and as a “Renaissance man” he failed to build proper toilets at a primary school in Limpopo; something that would down the line lead to young schoolboy Michael Komape falling into a pit toilet and drowning in faeces therein around 2014 or so.
In the 1999 general elections Mbeki won by a landslide 66,5% but failed to change Section 25 of the Constitution which deals with land expropriation without compensation.
Now there is no way the ANC would ever again redress the land issue as it does not have the two-thirds majority in Parliament that Mbeki had, but sadly wasted.
In the year 2000 Mbeki sponsored the Haiti 200th Anniversary celebrations with R10 million rand of South African tax payers’ money even though he had been warned that the President of that country Jean Bertrand Aristides was unpopular in that country as he was apparently involved in drug-dealing and human rights violations.
Now in March of the selfsame year 2000, Aristides was toppled from power and ended up seeking refuge in South Africa at the behest of Mbeki.
When foreigners started coming into South Africa end masse, Mbeki said they must be allowed to live among South Africans and not be sent to refugee camps, as is the norm in countries like Botswana, Kenya and Zambia.
The United Nations resolutions make it clear that foreigners must be sent to refugee camps to avoid a situation whereby they would compete with locals for jobs and business opportunities.
When HIV/ Aids became rife in South Africa with its victims dying on a daily basis, Mbeki stood out as an HIV/Aids denialist and refused to offer antiretrovirals to those who needed them.
When electricity generation experts told him that he must replenish Eskom on a massive scale as the current electricity would run out soon, he ignored them, and what followed is what today is known as load-shedding.
When the media started reporting about apparent acts of corruption by ANC members in government departments and SOEs, Mbeki responded in Parliament that the media was fishing for corrupt men and women, thus allowing corruption to flourish like it has today.
When several tenderpreneurs complained about the fact that they were being harassed by individuals who demanded 30% shares in their contracts, Mbeki responded that the government won’t involve itself in such matters, and that it was up to the tenderpreneurs to sort out this matter with “community members” who were seeking shares in their projects.
Needless to say, that is why we have construction Mafia in South Africa today as Mbeki failed to nip this matter in the bud when it first reared its ugly head.
Around 2005 when Jacob Zuma made allegations that then NPA boss Bulelani Ngcuka was a spy of the apartheid regime, Mbeki, instead of simply calling Zuma’s bluff, deemed it fit to use state resources and money to establish the Hefer Commission to ascertain Zuma’s wild claims.
Matters took an ugly turn when Judge Hefer found that Mbeki had interfered and influenced the prosecution of Jacob Zuma regarding the arms deal saga.
This led to the popularity of Mbeki taking a big knock in the ANC before he was defeated at the ANC elective conference by Jacob Zuma in Polokwane, Limpopo Province in 2007.
Zuma used the selfsame slate method of voting that had been invented by Mbeki himself.
Talk about hoisting by one’s own petard!
In Mbeki’s camp were people like Terror Lekota, Ngonyama and Mluleki George, while Zuma had all the ANC heavyweights in his camp, including current President Cyril Ramaphosa, Julius Malema, Zizi Kodwa, Kgalema Motlhanthe, Mbhazima Shilowa, Zwelinzima Vavi as well as current ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula.