Life+beyond+Mbeki+sell-by+date,+Karima+Brown,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, 29 August 2006
=Smart MPs look at life beyond Mbeki’s sell-by date=


 * Karima Brown**

MAY you govern in interesting times. President Thabo Mbeki has less than three years in arguably the most powerful office on the continent, and everywhere about him things have begun to fall apart.

It’s great to be powerful for nearly a decade, but the end result is to walk around with a “best before” sign stapled to your back for three years. That’s no fun, and can even be dangerous. At this stage of tenure, it is even difficult to get African National Congress (ANC) MPs, who are renowned only for toeing the line and negotiating vehicle discounts, to sign a “pledge of allegiance” to you.

It is hard to know what to make of ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe’s comic attempts to force a pledge of loyalty to the president down the throats of unsuspecting ANC backbenchers.

But it was an ill-timed and clumsy move, one that met with the contempt of the MPs, as it should. If nothing else, we now know that Goniwe is one of the few in the ruling party and in government who have not flipped Mbeki around and read the warning label on his back. He is a man unlikely to have a political future beyond 2009.

Mbeki’s administration is taking severe strain, and has come under sustained pressure, not only from the opposition but from sections of the ANC and its forever pesky allies. The past few weeks in particular have been rough for the president, and it looks as if things will get only rougher.

His trusted health minister continues to be as obtuse as ever, embarrassing his government at international forums. Her latest stunts earned an unprecedented rebuke from the United Nations AIDS envoy in Africa and brought renewed international focus to SA’s faltering fight against the disease. But, most importantly for Mbeki, locally the calls have grown more strident to rid the country of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, lobbing the ball back into Mbeki’s court. Ominously for him, some people point out that, in fact, the real problem is Mbeki, and Tshabalala-Msimang is only following his lead.

The South African Communist Party in Gauteng has called for Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi’s head for his mishandling of the Khutsong uprising last year. But the one thing that could cast a really big shadow over the last three years of the president’s tenure is an old bogey — the arms deal.

The fallout from the arms deal has claimed senior ANC leaders, including former chief whip Tony Yengeni, now serving a jail sentence for defrauding Parliament. Former deputy president Jacob Zuma is being prosecuted for his behaviour related to the arms deal.

But these two cases will pale into insignificance if Mbeki becomes embroiled in criminal investigations around the arms deal. Media reports locally and abroad suggest Mbeki could be the focus, or the centre, of a new criminal probe into the arms deal.

The only thing standing between Mbeki and the ignominy of an investigation is the indulgence of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). While we have no precedent in SA for investigating a sitting president, the NPA is under pressure to show it will investigate anyone where wrongdoing is suspected. It has emerged that Mbeki met French arms dealers when he was in a position to influence the awarding of contracts. Although he has chosen to “not recall” the series of meetings, that they even took place is problematic.

Failure by the NPA — which rushed to charge Zuma when it was not ready to make a case against him — to scrutinise Mbeki will only strengthen the argument that Zuma is the target of a politically inspired prosecution.

Should the NPA decide to investigate the president’s role in the arms deal, Mbeki could join his counterparts on the African continent who relinquish power to supposedly “safe” successors, only to find themselves on the wrong side of the law a few months down the line. This week, the Young Communist League upped the ante and called for Mbeki’s links in the deal to be probed. By so doing the league shifted its focus from Zuma to Mbeki. It remains to be seen how long the arms deal spotlight will stay on the president, and what the outcome will be. This is the sort of development Mbeki does not need in his final term.

Is it any wonder then that the smart MPs are beginning to look at life beyond Mbeki? Even on matters concerning the nuts and bolts of the parliamentary process, MPs are bold enough to throw their oversight weight about.

The joint standing committee on intelligence slammed a report by the intelligence inspector-general that had the full endorsement of the cabinet. The minerals and energy portfolio committee told the cabinet where to get off on the thorny issue of electricity industry deregulation. The writing is on the wall.

Brown is political editor.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A258572**

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