Mandela

by Anthony Sampson

  In these different worlds Mandela remained a star performer who could play all the parts: the African chief, the Western President, the sportsman, the philosopher, the jiver with the “Madiba shuffle.” He still loved changing clothes as he had in the fifties, now switching dramatically from a dark suit to a loose flowery shirt to a rugby jersey to a T-shirt and baseball cap. He could be transformed quickly from the stern head of state to the people’s favorite. Sometimes he could change sides unpredictably: when trade unionists demonstrated angrily outside the President’s office in Cape Town he suddenly appeared among them, to the alarm of his Cabinet colleagues. “But I’ve learned never to underestimate his political skills,” said one of them. “It probably means he will soon hit them all the harder.”

  Mandela seemed able to adapt to any constituency. He stiffly read out most of his speeches, written by a multiracial team led by Joel Netshitenzhe, looking through his spectacles without attempting to make eye contact with his audience. But often at the end he would take off his glasses and say: “That’s what my bosses said.” Journalists would look up, aides would frown, and he would come out with homely thoughts or reminiscences. He liked to repeat favorite stories—about being criticized by a child, or about people mistaking him for Nelson Mandela—to remind his audience that he was only a fallible old man, an ex-prisoner who found himself by accident in this odd position. He could still handle his own charisma, without being fooled by it.

  In his first months as President, he enjoyed a brilliant honeymoon, particularly with white South Africans, to whom this tolerant old man came as a wondrous relief. He was in no hurry to rename the streets, suburbs and airports which commemorated Afrikaner heroes like Botha, Strijdom or Malan, the old hate figures of the black majority, or to rename the Verwoerd Building, which housed government departments in Cape Town. He generated an atmosphere of normality and stability which dispelled all the past white nightmares about a black revolution. At the end of his first hundred days in office the Financial Times could find no whites who had a bad word for him.22 It was a normality which carried its own dangers, as black militants saw the revolution betrayed; and younger ANC leaders including Thabo Mbeki knew they must soon make reforms which would offend the whites. They recalled how Robert Mugabe had a similar honeymoon after he took over Zimbabwe in 1980, only to antagonize the whites when he began making drastic changes fifteen years later.

  But Mandela now seemed above politics. The campaigning party leader, the hard man of the negotiations, had been transformed into the father figure who could sympathize with everyone’s problems. At white cocktail parties he could work the room, making everyone feel special—particularly the women. “Now I know the secret of your husband’s success,” he would say to the wife of a prominent figure—who would sometimes be disappointed to overhear him saying the same thing to another woman a few minutes later. “But I would still have been charmed,” said one editor’s wife, “even if he’d said I’d got spinach on my teeth.” Most whites were reluctant to criticize him; however much they complained about the black government, they would exclude Mandela and blame his underlings. Like Ronald Reagan, he appeared to be a Teflon man, against whom no charge would stick; or like a traditional monarch, whose faults could be blamed on his courtiers.

  Mandela often seemed more like a king than a politician, all the more so when he received the British Queen on a state visit in March 1995, and established a friendship which took her entourage by surprise. As a student forty-eight years earlier he had watched her when her father the King was making his state visit. Now they had both seen apartheid come and go, while the Queen had been sympathetic to black South Africans through the Thatcher years.23 Mandela fitted in naturally with the regal celebrations, and took the opportunity to conciliate the African chieftaincy by inviting thirteen South African kings to his state banquet. The Queen awarded him the Order of Merit, the most coveted British honor, and invited him to make a return state visit: “You are, of course, well versed in making history,” she said, “but I hope that, even for you, it will be an important milestone.” Sometimes Mandela appeared to be stealing the show, but the Queen always seemed unusually at ease; later she would often recall her enjoyment of Mandela’s company. She especially appreciated the fact that he had delayed his impending divorce to prevent it from overshadowing the occasion.24

  Mandela sometimes sounded like a philosopher-king, as if part of him had never left prison and was still looking at his country from his solitary cell. “They can take us out of Robben Island,” said his colleague Kathrada, “but they can’t take Robben Island out of us.”25 He liked to talk about first principles—about reconciliation, human dignity and love. His secretaries sometimes found him quite naïve about world affairs; he tended to see diplomacy in terms of contact with individuals, from Clinton to the Queen, as if he were still in the nineteenth century. But his simple view gave him insights. “Like other great men,” said a Cabinet colleague, “he is not afraid of simplicity: he is willing to be unpretentiously simple, to see beyond the immediate future.”

  Mandela liked to say—to the Queen among others—“I’m only a country boy,” and there was some truth in it. “I’ve realized he is very rural,” said one of his closest aides. David Beresford of the Guardian compared him to the homespun gardener played by Peter Sellers in the film Being There, whom politicians regard as infinitely wise and whom they invite to become a presidential candidate. Mandela’s greatness, said Beresford, lay not in political or military skills, but in simple identification with his country: “a creation of the collective imagination, an expression of national identity deeply desired in a bitterly divided country.” To both whites and blacks he seemed to have emerged as the man of destiny, to rescue his people from disaster: “Cometh the hour, cometh the man.”26

  35

  The Glorified Perch

  PRESIDENT MANDELA had theoretically strong powers under the South African constitution: as both head of state and head of government he was like a French President, but without a Prime Minister who chose his own Cabinet. His first Deputy President, Thabo Mbeki, had only the powers which Mandela chose to delegate, which could be quickly taken away. The President could be aloof one moment and immerse himself in detail the next. He enjoyed the personal scope: he had never worked easily with bureaucracies, and disliked paperwork. He relished his personal patronage, offering old friends grand jobs like ambassadorships and watching their surprise. He made the most of his easy access to the media, sounding off with strong views, and sometimes forgetting he was part of a collective Cabinet. Some commentators became alarmed, and he was accused of being a “reckless gambler” and “shooting from the hip.”1

  Mandela still showed some authoritarian tendencies which were at odds with democratic controls, and some feared that he might emerge as yet another African autocrat, like Nkrumah or Mugabe, exploiting the traditions of a tribal chief. His old friends from the fifties looked for signs of autocracy. Walter Sisulu still watched him like a trainer watching his champ, but was soon reassured: “I have no fears that you’re going to have a dictator arising from him,” he said in 1993.2 Mandela had great respect—perhaps too great—for African democracy.

  He quickly realized, as de Klerk had warned him, that a President had less power than he appeared to. He could rule effectively only through his colleagues and civil servants, who had to be patiently persuaded; and he could not force his policies through Cabinet. “It is comparatively easy … to win an election,” he had warned ANC members a year before he became President. “But when you do so, you merely hold political office. You don’t have political power.”3 He still had to carry the ANC with him through the transition from rebellion to responsible government, against accusations that he was betraying the revolution.

  At the end of 1994 he opened the forty-ninth conference of the ANC in Bloemfontein. He admitted the problems of the historic compromise of the sunset clauses which entrenched Afrikaner bureaucrats from the previous r
egime: it was still debatable “whether we are today reaping the whirlwind of a terrible misjudgment.” But the ANC were so disorganized after the elections, he explained, that they “could have endangered the revolution,” and the leadership had speeded up the process of transition by the decision to first capture the beach-heads, then to strengthen their forces. The ANC should not see themselves as “weak, tied hand and foot by some terrible agreements.”4

  In his closing address he once again complained about the ANC’s incompetence, as he had done forty years earlier; it was now more serious, since the ANC was in power. It was ironic, he said, that they should talk as a government about fiscal discipline, waste and inefficiency when “there is no financial discipline in the African National Congress, when there is waste, where there is inefficiency.” He implored delegates to spend more time thinking, as he had in jail; to welcome opposition; and to remember that “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But he congratulated them on being more united than ever, while delegates for the first time in their history “discussed, not resistance, but reconstruction and development.”5 They elected a new National Executive of sixty, who were clearly more militant than their predecessors; the top five were Bantu Holomisa, Pallo Jordan, Peter Mokaba, Mac Maharaj and Winnie Mandela. But Mandela’s own position remained unchallenged.

  In choosing his own government, Mandela had first hoped to form the widest possible coalition, to include the Democratic Party, the Freedom Front and the PAC; he approached the PAC President, Clarence Makwetu, four times without success.6 Under the terms of the Government of National Unity he had to include de Klerk and his National Party. There was some bitter disagreement about Cabinet posts, and de Klerk complained that Mandela did not consult him about ANC Ministers.7 De Klerk wanted his party to control either the police or defense; but Mandela insisted that the ANC must control both, since only the ANC could deal with the question of the third force.8 The National Party had to be content with lesser posts: Roelf Meyer as Minister of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development; Kraai van Niekerk at Agriculture; Dawie de Villiers at Environment; and Pik Botha, the veteran Foreign Minister, in charge of Minerals and Energy.

  The ANC Ministers included old friends of Mandela from almost every stage of his career. Joe Modise, the Minister of Defence, had been a colleague in Johannesburg in the forties; Alfred Nzo, the Foreign Minister, had been a leader of the bus boycott in 1958; Joe Slovo, the Housing Minister, had been alongside Mandela since the Treason Trials; Mac Maharaj, the Transport Minister, had been his loyal friend on Robben Island; Dullah Omar, the Minister of Justice, had often visited him in Pollsmoor as his legal adviser. Two came from chiefly backgrounds: Buthelezi, now Minister for Home Affairs, and Stella Sigcau, the daughter of the King of Eastern Pondoland in the Transkei, the Minister of Public Enterprises. But Mandela had only recently met many younger Ministers, who came from every strand of the struggle, including exiles like Tito Mboweni, the Minister of Labour, and Jeff Radebe at Public Works. There were complaints that the exiles had been preferred to internal leaders, but Cyril Ramaphosa, the most eligible, had refused a Cabinet post, and several new Ministers had been prominent internal activists in the eighties, among them Jay Naidoo, Sydney Mufamadi and Trevor Manuel. The most striking feature of the ANC government was the range of background and race, including whites, Indians and Coloureds, Muslims, Christians and communists, brought together by the forty-year struggle. As director of his own Office of the President and Cabinet Secretary Mandela chose Jakes Gerwel, an outstanding Coloured academic, philosopher and expert on Afrikaans literature, who had supported Black Consciousness before becoming Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Western Cape.

  From the start Mandela relied heavily on his First Deputy President, Thabo Mbeki, twenty-five years his junior, and the leading former exile. Mbeki had a difficult assignment: he was as dependent on his boss as an American Vice President, but with much heavier responsibilities. Mandela was given credit for triumphs, while Mbeki took the blame for mistakes. He developed an almost opposite style to Mandela, working from behind, as schooled by his mentor Tambo, while Mandela led from the front. Mbeki would inscrutably puff his curved pipe, fixing and bargaining behind the scenes through a small group of confidants. Even their daily habits were out of sync: Mandela rose early and went to bed early, and was strictly punctual. Mbeki was more casual about appointments, and liked to talk expansively into the night. But their skills were complementary: Mbeki was the troubleshooter, picking up the pieces and filling in the gaps. He would always suffer from the world’s recurring question: “After Mandela?” But like all deputies of strong leaders—like Truman under Roosevelt or Pompidou under de Gaulle—he was impossible to assess while still under the shadow of the great tree.

  The ANC Ministers took time to get used to sitting in the Cabinet alongside their ex-enemies: “I still have to keep pinching myself to remember where I am,” said Kader Asmal, the Minister of Water, a year later.9 But some former revolutionaries proved the most effective administrators. Joe Slovo, the former General Secretary of the Communist Party and MK chief of staff, reorganized his Ministry of Housing, bringing in his own Director-General and negotiating with banks for easier loans. Mandela suffered a great blow when Slovo died of cancer in January 1995, after only eight months in office. His funeral displayed the paradoxes of the peaceful revolution: the white leader was mourned by thousands of blacks; the Afrikaners’ most sinister enemy had first proposed the coalition with them; the revolutionary idealist had become the most practical and flexible of politicians. Slovo was a man, said Mandela later at his graveside, who “knew when to fight and when to negotiate.”10

  When Mandela presided over his mixed Cabinet of blacks and Afrikaners, he found most discussions surprisingly nonpartisan, and the Afrikaners genuinely committed to making the coalition work: “You’d think they were members of the democratic movement.”11 “The atmosphere wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cool,” said Pallo Jordan. “Most policy was in conformity with what the ANC wanted.”12 The National Party, said Kader Asmal, “had a ferocious eye for detail, which could prove useful in Cabinet deliberations, although its overall showing on many issues of significance was not terribly helpful.”13 On their side, the Afrikaners were surprised to hear ANC Ministers arguing openly with each other, with no sign that a caucus had agreed their line beforehand. De Klerk was gratified to find himself sometimes adjudicating in disputes between them.14 “There was a boyish boarding school camaraderie which was very South African,” said one participant. “Ninety-nine percent of the discussion was unideological, often quite boring: you couldn’t tell they came from different parties. The differences were often due to their age, rather than their ideology.”15 The coming to power remained exhilarating for the ANC Ministers. Kader Asmal was reminded of Seamus Heaney’s lines:

  But then, once in a lifetime

  The longed-for tidal wave

  of justice can rise up,

  And hope and history rhyme.16

  The ANC Ministers were not driven by Marxist dogma as their right-wing opponents had so often prophesied; and many past members of the SACP, like Thabo Mbeki and Mac Maharaj, showed little interest in Marxism. Scare stories about a communist takeover now looked irrelevant as Ministers of all political hues sat down together to resolve day-to-day problems.

  Mandela dominated the Cabinet, not just as President but as an older man, twice the age of many of the others, with a unique experience and reputation. They talked about him as the “Old Man”; to his face they would call him “Madiba,” rather than “Mr. President,” but always with deference. He was the same age as Churchill had been when he returned as Prime Minister in 1951 at seventy-six, to resign at eighty; and like Churchill he embodied a patriotic spirit which overarched daily politics. He would preside sporadically over the Cabinet, held every two weeks, with a light hand, only occasionally making a strategic intervention. “He took it like a chief,” said Mac Maharaj. �
�He listened impassively, took everything in, and then intervened.”17

  Mandela had asked George Bizos to investigate how other heads of government had handled mixed Cabinets. Bizos came up with the example of Clemenceau in France from 1917 to 1920—who after listening to all viewpoints would give his own opinion and then ask: “Any resignations?” Mandela sometimes adopted the “Clemenceau solution,” and no one resigned.18 He was proud that no issue ever had to be taken to a vote. He detached himself from most detail, but involved himself closely in the Cabinet committees on security and intelligence. “He followed it obsessively,” said one participant. “He was still the old underground operator, the guerrilla fighter.” In smaller meetings he intervened sparingly but decisively. “His decisiveness is what I most like,” said the same colleague. “Often the briefings take only ten minutes, then he would decide.”19

  He had some difficulties with two old antagonists, de Klerk and Buthelezi. As Second Deputy President, de Klerk took turns with Mbeki to preside over the Cabinet when Mandela was absent, or had decided to stand down. The two Deputies met frequently to settle problems: overhearing them amicably arranging agendas, it was hard to remember that they had ever been deadly opponents. De Klerk was impressed by Mbeki’s economic insights and grasp of “the essential realities of modern government.”20 But he was much less at ease with Mandela; he realized that Mandela distrusted him, and asked mutual friends why this was so. The reason was clear: Mandela still felt betrayed by de Klerk’s connivance with the third force. “One thing Mandela cannot forgive,” said one secretary, “—a stab in the back.” Mandela still saw de Klerk as trying to divide the ANC: “His tactic is to praise the President, and then attack and undermine the ANC.”21 And Mandela always resented being patronized: “He is most cross,” said one aide, “when he feels his dignity is offended.”