Mandela

by Anthony Sampson

  Western governments were glad to use Mandela’s presence to burnish their images or to improve their race relations; but tightfisted negotiators felt little obligation to make concessions in return to a fragile young democracy. The calculations of the global marketplace had no room for humanitarian issues. There remained a gulf between worshiping the Mandela icon and helping the people he represented.

  But Mandela remained optimistic that the world was becoming less racist. He had always felt that the British were much fairer than colonials of British stock in Africa: “The best way to receive protection against British settlers in any colony,” he recalled saying as a freedom fighter, “is to go to London.” He was now reassured that America under Clinton was also moving away from racism: “The case of the United States shows very well what the trend is,” he said in January 1991. “The decision makers in every country are moving away from that.”43

  Clinton was glad to return the compliment, with an eloquent tribute to Mandela’s influence when he welcomed him in Washington in 1998:

  In every gnarly, knotted, distorted situation in the world where people are kept from becoming the best they can be, there is an apartheid of the heart. And if we really honor this stunning sacrifice of twenty-seven years, if we really rejoice in the infinite justice of this man happily married in the autumn of his life, if we really are seeking some driven wisdom from the power of his example, it will be to do whatever we can, however we can, wherever we can, to take the apartheid out of our own and others’ hearts.44

  *Once he asked Clinton to help the South African journalist Philip van Niekerk, who was in serious danger during the civil war in Liberia. Van Niekerk soon received a message to go to the American Embassy, from which he was flown out with the American staff by helicopter.

  40

  Mandela’s Country

  HOW BASICALLY and peacefully had South Africa been transformed by Mandela’s five years of government? In February 1999 Mandela gave his last annual speech to Parliament on the state of the nation. He looked back ten years to the time when “one humble prisoner” had written from jail to the President to propose negotiations, and to address two central issues: the demand of the blacks for majority rule in a unitary state, and the concerns of the whites over this demand. He recalled his warning about South Africa being “split into two hostile camps,” and reflected with some pride on the extraordinary changes since that humble prisoner had himself become President: “Things such as equality, the right to vote in free and fair elections, and freedom of speech many of us now take for granted.”

  But Mandela still saw worrying divisions between black and white: “We slaughter one another in the stereotypes and mistrust that lingers in our heads, and the words of hate we spew from our lips.” And he stressed once again that reconciliation was impossible without “the dismantling of what remains of apartheid practices and attitudes.”1

  Certainly most white South Africans took a much more negative view than blacks about the transformation of the country. Their euphoria after the elections in 1994 had been followed by growing complaints about the economy, corruption and crime, and the whites’ diminishing prospects; and most Western journalists and visitors, who had few social contacts with the black middle class, took their perceptions from whites. Many whites had expected that their lifestyles would be unaffected by the political upheaval of 1994. But they could no longer belong to a quite separate society with its own privileges and rules, an appendage of the rich world of the West; they were now part of a developing country in a state of continuous change, like Brazil or Mexico, exposed to all the problems and hazards of a growing, impoverished population streaming into the cities. Mandela’s government had faced a succession of crises which seemed like caricatures of the problems of the developing world, in the fields of race, immigration, finance, health and education.

  The whites’ preoccupation with their own problems made Mandela impatient of most of their politicians and their “pessimism of armchair whining.” “Opposition parties in this country are still concerned with promoting the interests of a white minority,” he told me in January 1999. “You can quote a lot of examples to say: you are not loyal to the country, you are loyal to the interest of a white minority.”2 He attacked the “Mickey Mouse” white parties, while Tony Leon of the Democratic Party replied that Mandela was “running a Goofy government.” (Some weeks later, Mandela was visiting a hospital where Leon was recovering from an operation, and called out from behind the curtains: “Mickey Mouse, this is Goofy!”)

  Certainly the future looked rosier to the burgeoning black middle class, which included much of the ANC leadership. Austere freedom fighters driving battered “struggle” cars in the townships were transformed into well-dressed executives driving BMWs and living in the white suburbs, while black managers had adopted the lifestyle of big business.

  It was a rapid transition from the years of self-sacrifice and hardship, and it shocked some observers. “Many ANC leaders raced to catch up with the finer tastes of the former masters,” wrote the sociologists Adam, Slabbert and Moodley in their controversial book Comrades in Business in 1997. “Anything less than a white bourgeois lifestyle would have appeared unequal.”3 Phumlize Mlambo-Ngcuka, the Deputy Minister of Trade, told black businessmen not to be shy about wanting to become “filthy rich.” Thabo Mbeki soon slapped her down, but the phrase continued to reecho among the less privileged.4 And the politicians were themselves becoming more separated from their voters. M.P.s’ salaries were reckoned to be thirty times the average income, while cabinet members and top civil servants (said the political scientist Tom Lodge) were “excessively well paid for a relatively poor country.”5

  The black middle class appeared to embrace capitalism with an enthusiasm which would have been unimaginable twenty years earlier. It was true that hopes of rapid “black empowerment” in business had been disappointed, whether by white resistance, by the acute shortage of trained black managers and accountants, or by the crippling effects of Bantu education. Liberal white businessmen insisted that the transformation, like that of the Afrikaners, would take time: “Afrikaner empowerment and affirmative action started in the 1920s,” said Marius Schoon, the Afrikaner ANC supporter in the Development Bank. “It took until the mid-1960s for Afrikaners to have a meaningful grip on the South African economy. It is crazy to expect rapid results.”6 But a few black entrepreneurs had achieved real commercial power, like the veteran capitalist Dr. Nthato Motlana, who became Chairman of the conglomerate NAIL (“When I want to get hold of my old doctor now,” joked Mandela, “I have to get through to the stock exchange”).7 He was joined for a time as Deputy Chairman by Cyril Ramaphosa, before he resigned in February 1999 to pursue his own business interests.

  Mandela had his own worries about the excesses of commercial enthusiasm; having been in jail while consumerism had swept through the world, he was often distressed by the conspicuous consumption of the young generation, including some grandchildren. But he had been convinced that business enterprise and foreign investment were essential for jobs and prosperity. He saw finance and industry, like other institutions, in terms of individuals with whom he could relate personally. He was constantly ringing up business leaders to ask for their support, particularly for the Children’s Fund, his favorite charity, which raised spectacular sums during his presidency, but also for other schemes to provide schools, clinics and scholarships for children. And he appreciated their response, as he told me in January 1999:

  Since 1990, when I came out of prison, I have gone to big business, not as a member of the ANC or as President of the country, but as an old man. I said: “I want you to deliver services to our people using your own resources.” … You ask them to do certain things and you judge them from their response whether they are taking part in transformation.… Almost everything I have asked for from business they have responded to very positively.8

  Left-wing critics thought that Mandela was being too cozy with businessm
en as he welcomed their gifts to his favorite projects, while being too uncritical of their politics; but he was convinced that the ANC had to remain on friendly terms with big business if it were to create a thriving economy.

  The greatest worry of the whites about the sudden commercial activity in black South Africa was the prospect of widespread corruption, such as had devastated so many African states. In fact, it was initiated by white businessmen as much as black recipients, as ruthless entrepreneurs sought to gain contracts and shortcut the bureaucracy by offering bribes to Ministers or officials. But a succession of scandals soon revealed the weaknesses of several ANC leaders. Mandela was shocked by their venality. “We came to government with the zeal of a group of people who were going to eliminate corruption in government,” he said in January 1999. “It was such a sad disappointment to note that our own people who are there to wipe out corruption themselves became corrupt.” But he insisted that he and Mbeki were doing everything possible to root out the problem, including the appointment of a formidable judge, Willem Heath, to investigate all allegations of corruption in government: “We cannot act on accusations which have never been investigated.” The ANC, he insisted, was quite different from the previous government—whose own corruption was rapidly coming to light—who “tried to brush everything under the carpet.”9

  It was true that the Afrikaner governments had been much more venal than had ever publicly emerged; and the ANC’s policy of transparency, together with the newfound freedom of the press, gave an unfair impression of a rapid deterioration in standards. But the ANC was too lenient toward corrupt Ministers, and too slow to condemn and root out bribery and abuses of power, particularly in the provincial governments, which Mandela admitted were the “Achilles heel of democratic governance.” Mandela became increasingly outspoken. As he put it in February 1999:

  Among the new cadres in various levels of government you find individuals who are as corrupt as—if not more than—those they found in government. When a leader in a provincial legislature siphons off resources meant to fund service by legislators to the people; when employees of a government institution, set up to help empower those who were excluded by apartheid, defraud it for their own enrichment, then we must admit that we are a sick society.10

  The ANC’s embrace of big business distressed many left-wing and Christian veterans of the struggle, who had looked forward to an ideal country without class barriers or personal greed. Idealists and revolutionaries abroad, who had imagined South Africa as a special Utopia, were still more disillusioned: the crusading Australian journalist John Pilger expressed all their anger in a television documentary shown in Britain and South Africa in April 1998. “A small ANC-connected elite,” he wrote afterward, “has seized the opportunity of the ‘market’ while the majority sink deeper into unemployment and poverty.”11

  The left’s attacks on the global marketplace gained ammunition from the crises in the “tigers” of Southeast Asia in 1997. When their economies and currencies collapsed South Africa at first seemed remarkably unaffected; but the reserves were dangerously low, and by May 1998 speculators saw a chance to gamble against the currency: in two months the rand lost a quarter of its value against the U.S. dollar, forcing new cutbacks on the government and serious problems for companies which had overborrowed abroad. The collapse could not be blamed primarily on the ANC’s policies: “The mugging of the rand is a classic act of bullying,” commented the Financial Times. “The victim’s main sin is its weakness.”12 But the uncertainty about the currency was increased when Thabo Mbeki announced in July 1998 that the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Chris Stals, would be succeeded in a year’s time by Tito Mboweni, the Labour Minister, who was a former trade unionist and an old friend of Mbeki. White businessmen worried that the Reserve Bank would be politicized and would become vulnerable to corruption—though the bank was already being investigated for having shored up Afrikaner-owned banks which had been close to the Broederbond, and Mboweni was known for his fierce independence. In fact the announcement was followed by some rallying of international support.13

  The South African economy paid a heavy price for the growing distrust of all emerging markets, but it escaped the worst disasters that had overcome the Asian countries. “South Africa did not experience what others did,” Mandela could claim in February 1999, “because we have credible and sustainable fiscal and monetary policies.”14

  Black South Africans nevertheless had some reason to be disillusioned with global capitalism after five years had failed to produce much investment or new jobs, while unemployment increased further. The setbacks might have been expected to give a new boost to the ANC’s communist allies. As it happened, in June 1998, while the rand was falling, the Communist Party was holding its tenth conference, which Mandela was invited to address. Before he spoke, the militants were in a provocative mood, attacking the government’s economic policy GEAR, and delegates were singing “We don’t want GEAR.” “That song makes our guest angry,” warned the Party’s Deputy Secretary, Thenjiwe Mtintso. Mandela did indeed make an angry speech, wagging his finger at the audience. “I will ensure,” he said, “that the government continues to implement what we believe is good for the country.” He warned the communists that if they left the ANC’s structures, they must be aware of the implications. The delegates were stunned: Mtintso complained that Mandela’s speech was “unmandated,” and hoped Mandela was not “going to disrupt this congress as you disrupted meetings of the Communist Party in the 1940s.” But Mandela’s attack was fully supported the next day by Thabo Mbeki, who warned delegates not to dismiss it as the “rantings of an old man.” The communists did not press home their attack: they were reluctant to split with the ANC, particularly since several Party members were in the government.15 After all the scares about the Communist Party since its rebirth in 1990, they realized they were dependent on the ANC for their share of power.

  There remained a clear danger that underprivileged blacks, who had seen none of the promised benefits of liberation, investment or job creation, would eventually challenge the moderate ANC leadership with a militant program laced with antiwhite propaganda. But the old bogey of revolutionary communism, which had hovered over Mandela throughout the Cold War, appeared to be losing its fascination.

  It was criminals rather than politicians who now appeared to pose the greatest threat to the peace of Mandela’s South Africa. Gruesome headlines daily proclaimed murders, rapes, bank robberies and car-jackings, and Johannesburg was being described as the crime capital of the world, providing a growing deterrent to foreign investment. Crime waves had devastated other countries emerging from authoritarian rule, like Russia or Brazil, where criminals took advantage of new freedoms, and demobilized soldiers with guns and no jobs were quickly lured into crime. But South Africa was uniquely vulnerable. When Mandela was released in 1990 he had soon realized the danger: “We are today witnessing a crime wave of terrifying proportions,” he warned in February 1991, “which, if it continues and escalates, could quickly reduce South Africa to a pile of ashes.”16 After 1994 international syndicates and drug networks systematically moved across the country’s porous borders, exploiting a benign government and using the sophisticated financial system to launder their funds.17 There was nothing new about crime in black Johannesburg. The townships which Mandela knew in the 1940s and 1950s were full of armed gangs, rapists and robbers. Soweto in the fifties had one of the highest crime rates in the world: one in thirty of the black population of the Johannesburg region could expect to be murdered.* But the police were too busy arresting blacks for offenses against the pass laws to secure many convictions for serious crime, and the white media scarcely noted black murders or robberies.

  It was not until the crime wave began seriously to affect the white population that it became more widely publicized. As criminals ventured into the suburbs, several prominent white citizens and foreign businessmen were assaulted or murdered: car-jackings and house burglaries soon alarm
ed everyone, and visiting tourists and businessmen all had stories about robberies and stolen cars. In some rural areas there was a spate of gruesome murders of white farmers: four hundred were killed in four years.18

  Mandela as President was soon made aware of white fears about crime by his neighbors in Houghton, but the ANC were slow to grapple with the problem. “We were always thinking about human rights,” the Minister of Justice, Dullah Omar, explained. “We thought of law and order as being part of the apartheid system.”19 Mandela was reluctant to interfere with his Minister of Security, Sydney Mufamadi, but in 1997 he appointed a prominent industrialist, Meyer Kahn, to reorganize police resources. Kahn warned that the process would be slow, “like making love to an elephant.”20 By September 1998 he reckoned that “the situation has stopped getting worse,” and was confident that acceptable crime levels would be reached within three or four years.21 In fact the total number of murders had been going down fairly steadily since the election of Mandela’s government in 1994, but the number of serious robberies had later increased.† The basic problem was the police as much as the criminals: they were corrupt and incompetent, trained to track down political enemies through informers and torture rather than to patiently pursue criminals. They were poorly deployed, with few visible on the streets, and they were underpaid and demoralized. In four years from 1994, 874 policemen were murdered, while three hundred committed suicide. When Sir Paul Condon, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, visited South Africa in October 1998, he reckoned that “The scale of murder and violence committed against the police was unprecedented in the world.”22 A quarter of the police left the service in four years.23