Handed+the+holy+standards+by+Tambo,+Xolela+Mangcu,+Weekender



=**Handed the holy standards by Tambo**=

Xolela Mangcu, Weekender, 3 November 2007
President Thabo Mbeki is truly a piece of work — the master of the art of campaigning without campaigning. For lack of a better phrase, let’s call it political ventriloquism.

In other words, it is not he who wants the presidency, but other people who want it on his behalf.

Nonetheless, it remains his responsibility to announce what these other people are thinking through the public broadcaster, which is always on hand for such announcements. I’ve actually lost count of how many times the SABC has staged these announcements for Mbeki. Nothing is better than television to show how pained the president is by those who covet the presidency. They can only mean bad, and only he can mean good. In fact, it is not simply that he is the only source of good intentions, but he also happens to be the carrier of wisdom as delivered exclusively to him by Oliver Reginald Tambo on his deathbed. It’s something like one of those biblical stories of Moses receiving the 10 Commandments after a conversation with God. He recounts how he was prevented from going back to the country to confront the apartheid regime by comrades Govan Mbeki and Tambo.

This appeal to militarism is obviously an effort at dispelling those who might want to question his revolutionary credentials. Charming indeed, I must say. Then the helpless young man was conscripted, kicking and screaming, to work at Tambo’s feet “preparing the drafts of OR’s public speeches and the major public documents of our movement”. Just in case the movement should think of handing its reigns to an uneducated populist such as Jacob Zuma, Mbeki reminds us that “this work demanded intimate understanding of the strategic and tactical tasks of the movement, the contemporary balance of forces at home and abroad, our objective challenges at all moments, and what the leader of the ANC (African National Congress), Tambo, would have to say publicly, bearing in mind our domestic and international tasks and audiences, in order to sustain the advance of our struggle”.

I don’t know if you can make that out, I certainly can’t. But wait, here’s the clincher. Mbeki describes how Tambo, almost by divine intervention, tasked him with the leadership of the ANC: “He then communicated another mission, the most challenging since I first met him in Dar-es-Salaam 27 years earlier: look after the ANC and make sure we succeed. You will know what needs to be done.” Tambo authorised him to make contact with Nelson Mandela because he knew that “I would not make mistakes that would compromise the advance of our revolution and struggle”.

Now how much more authentic does it really get? However, Mbeki seems acutely aware of how inappropriate this kind of writing is for a commemorative book on Tambo: “It might appear to the casual reader of this contribution to this book of tribute to Tambo, on what would have been his 90th birthday, that this humble piece is more about myself rather than the immortal hero of our struggle .” I would have been led to think so myself, Mr President.

Ivory tower truths don’t make leaders
I don’t know whether to blame OR Tambo or Thabo Mbeki for our problems. I find myself asking: how could Tambo have possibly known that his protegé would never make mistakes?

Apparently not only did Tambo believe Mbeki would never make mistakes, but he also taught him a particular leadership style: “Similarly, I came to understand why OR insisted on maximum precision in the preparation of his public statements. He taught me the obligation to understand the tasks of leadership, including the necessity never to tell lies, never to make false and unrealisable promises, never to say anything that might evoke an enthusiastic populist response, but which would ultimately serve to undermine the credibility of our movement.”

The guiding principle, taken directly from Tambo, is that the president must be true to himself. It does not matter what others think. This is a charming quality indeed, but it does not quite work in a democracy, especially if you care about what people think at election time. American scholar Garry Wills writes about this attempt to be unaffected by others: “That may be a proper credential for the lonely genius, the martyr to a truth, the austere intellect — people who forge their own souls in fierce independence. But what have such heroes to do with leading other people?”

Tambo has a lot to answer for, whether we are talking about Mbeki’s stubbornness on HIV/AIDS, or his expulsion of senior African National Congress leaders from the government; or the allegation that Tokyo Sexwale, Cyril Ramaphosa and Matthews Phosa were plotting to overthrow Mbeki; or his various responses to crime; or his ministers standing on a street corner counting to ridicule statistics about rape; or Vusi Pikoli’s suspension in what has been alleged to be an attempt to protect Jackie Selebi from prosecution. Tambo has a lot to answer for indeed. Trouble is that he is not around to say: “Mistakes have been made, this is not what I meant.” The sad part in all of this is that not even the sacred memory of someone such as Tambo is beyond the reach of this political season.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/weekender/article.aspx?ID=BD4A603793**

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