Big Men Little People

by Alec Russell

  He loved to stress his ordinariness. He banned naming streets after him and he travelled almost incognito. One of his white neighbours in Houghton was on his way home when he saw a group of black men waiting outside his door. Convinced there was something afoot, he drove past the gate several times and rang the police. It was only later that he realized that Mandela had come to pay an unsolicited call.

  But Mandela's self-deprecating ways only served to magnify his legend, as he probably knew. For a puritan, who goes for dawn walks, eschews alcohol bar the odd glass of sweet wine, and when possible sticks to traditional African food, he developed a surprising fondness for the glitzy and glamorous. The second half of his presidency was a round of photocalls with visiting pop stars and celebrities. When photographs of Mandela with the Spice Girls, Whitney Houston, Bjorn Borg and many others were published round the world, they served as a reminder of South Africa's 'miracle' and a welcome boost to its international image. But it was hard to escape the conclusion that the seduction of the rich and famous had more to do with the indulgence of an old man than with realpolitik.

  He was moreover too much the politician to ignore the practical advantages of his icon status. De Klerk was probably right when he suggested in his autobiography that one of Mandela's failings was his tactic of 'papering over problems with charm and promises, without taking effective remedial action. (6)

  When his government was accused of being in the pocket of Sol Kerzner, the millionaire casino and hotel owner, he wrong footed his critics by admitting that he, and he alone, had known of a donation from him. His admission raised more questions than it answered, but somehow they were never posed and the scandal died. A few lone voices muttered that while everyone bowed at Mandela's 'shrine', South Africa was slipping into disarray.

  In one of Mandela's favourite anecdotes he recalls a visit to the Bahamas in 1994 when he was accosted by a couple that seemed to recognize him. 'Aren't you Nelson Mandela?' the man asked. 'I'm often confused with that chap,' Mandela replied. Clearly unconvinced, the couple muttered to themselves, until, determined to pin him down, the woman asked:

  'What are you famous for?'

  Mandela's lustre inevitably tarnished a little in office, but as the years passed of his retirement so his reputation grew and grew. There was a buzz to Mandela's South Africa in its early days. 'Rainbowism', the dream of a vibrant, multi-cultural united society, which was first coined by Bishop Tutu, was brilliantly marketed by the 'old man'. He appreciated that South Africans, particularly whites, needed a vision. But his was not really a Golden Age.

  The criminal violence that blighted society left South Africans of all races close to despair. Johannesburg was known as the world's unofficial murder capital. Lynch-mob justice, which began in the townships under apartheid as a primitive way of dealing with suspected informers, remained a part of daily life. After a brief honeymoon, race, too, returned to its pivotal position in South African life. Even Mandela's patience started to run out by the end of his term. In his final speech to the ANC as its president he launched a swinging attack on white reluctance to embrace the new order, peppered with paranoiac talk of conspiracies by unnamed forces to undermine the government. In the last year as state president he dismissed white emigrants with a trenchant 'good riddance'.

  But Mandela's faults do not destroy the legend; rather they help to explain it by showing glimpses of the human beneath the hype. He was not a saint and yet he was able to take a saintly approach towards his old enemies. Remarkably for a politician, he was ready to admit his faults. After appealing to lower the voting age to fourteen-year-aids he later conceded that it showed how wrong he could be. He was also able to rise above the political maul. When the Truth Commission published its final report, ANC officials were outraged by the criticism of their record. Mandela distanced himself from their anger, pointed out that the commission had been intended to be impartial, and rebuked the party's bid to stop the publication of the report.

  He was not unique. Andrei Sakharov might have provided the same role for Russia had he lived to see the end of the Soviet Union. But the comparison only serves to emphasize Mandela's remarkable qualities. Mandela provided the spiritual and emotional glue for the new society which De Klerk with his ideological baggage and dry pragmatism could never have provided and without which the post-apartheid settlement might never have happened. He became the distillation of South Africa's and indeed the world's hopes, partly because people were in need of a Messiah, partly because he was deliberately fashioning himself after their wishes, partly because of the world's desperation for South Africa to succeed, but also because he was who he was.

  His most enduring legacy to South Africa, however, was that he knew when to go. Africa's history is littered with rulers who lingered. A cautionary tale for South Africa lies across the Limpopo River in neighbouring Zimbabwe. When Mugabe took office in 1980 after the bloody war of independence, he was hailed for his reconciliatory approach to whites; he thanked Ian Smith for handing over intact 'this jewel of Africa'. Two decades later he was running an autocratic and corrupt regime, beset by street protests, with only a token façade of democracy.

  Mandela, however, made clear that South Africa was to be different. He signalled from the outset that he intended to serve only one term and he reinforced the message by slowing his schedule, spending more time on ceremonial, and allowing his successor to take over the daily running of government. It was up to the 'new' generation of African leaders to take up the challenge.

  10 - Small Men

  The 'New' Leaders- Or More of the Same?

  An architectural blend of science fantasy and Pharaonic sentiment, Ghana's Independence Square towers over the Atlantic coast as a giant stone talisman of freedom. From the stands you can see cargo ships retracing the course of the slavers, which headed off across the ocean with their grim cargoes two centuries before. The stadium was built back in the days of Kwame Nkrumah, who showered money on grandiose projects, even giving £50 million to help neighbouring Guinea to buy independence. As I joined tens of thousands of Ghanaians taking advantage of the cool dawn air to secure a good seat ahead of a mid-morning rally, older citizens chattered that they had not seen a gathering like it since Nkrumah first roused the continent with his immortal cry: 'Freedom. Freedom. Africa.'

  But the Africanist visionary would have been distraught if he had been alive to witness the scene. His people were gathering not for one of the Third World heroes for whom the stadium was built but for the leader of the reviled imperialist West, President Clinton, who had picked Accra as the first stop-off on his much-trumpeted African tour.

  The requirements of Clinton's vast entourage had stretched Ghana's infrastructure and patience to the limit. The Americans had insisted on bringing their own generator to compensate for Accra's erratic electricity. When the White House discovered one of the city's principal hotels was owned by Libyans they reneged on months of planning and decided not to stop off for the night. But the Ghanaians did not mind. Under the personal supervision of 'J.J.' Rawlings, their president, a swashbuckling former fighter pilot, they sealed sewers, blocked off roads and gave signposts a new coat of paint, preparing a boisterous welcome as West Africans do so well.

  The Ashanti kings were among the last to arrive. Ferried under extravagant gilded palanquins they perched on giant ceremonial stools just as their predecessors had at the end of the last century when they kept the British at bay - or indeed the previous century when they sold rival tribesmen into slavery. A black American Secret Service agent in Wall Street shirt and braces ran up and down in front of my stand dripping with sweat as he vainly tried to marshall the crowd, much to the amusement of the spectators, who joked that if that was what America did for you they were relieved their ancestors had been left behind.

  'What is wrong with the brother?' one of my neighbours shouted.

  'It does not matter,' said another. 'He is a relative from overseas. He is welcome.'

  The Cl
intons' ten-day six-nation trip of Africa in March 1998 was the most comprehensive tour of the continent ever taken by a sitting American president and was promoted by the White House as the start of a new era in the continent. The resonance of those claims was reinforced by the parallels of his visit with another symbolic twentieth-century African tour by a leading Western statesman. In 1960 Harold Macmillan travelled through the continent paving the way for the end of colonial rule. Indeed he first uttered his legendary 'wind of change' phrase on the opening leg of his tour at a banquet in Accra, but the remark was made off the cuff and was not recorded by the accompanying press pack. It became famous only when he repeated it before the shocked MPs in South Africa's whites only parliament.

  To optimists the Clintons' visit represented a tiny hope that, second time round, Africa's liberation dreams might still have a chance. 'One hundred years from now your grandchildren and mine will look back and say this was the beginning of an African Renaissance,' he told the crowd in Independence Square. 'By coming and going a bird builds a nest. We will come and go and do all we can to help you build a new Africa.' Such was the crowd's excitement that when he went on a walkabout draped in a glorious orange, purple and gold kente cloth, he was nearly knocked over. Looking distinctly flustered, he was forced to tell the crowd to move back.

  It was impossible not to be moved. Since leading Africa into independence in 1957, Ghana had spiralled into chaos. The coup which ousted Nkrumah nine years later when he was on a trip to China merely set in motion a series of incompetent and corrupt governments and more military coups. By the early Eighties Ghana was a symbol of African decay. And yet now in recognition of Rawlings' reformist record it was being touted as a seed for the continent's rebirth.

  In an attempt to add weight to his vision, as Clinton toured the continent he hailed Rawlings, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa as three beacons of hope of the new era, shining in the West, the East and the South. It is no coincidence that all three were born in the mid-Forties. Raised amid the excitement of the Fifties, they reached adult hood in the euphoria of the early Sixties only to watch the dream of new Africa collapse into chaos. All three were seen as pragmatists with an abhorrence of Big Man excess and a desire for a fresh start for the continent.

  Accra was abuzz with the talk of new beginnings as Clinton left, but as I sat down to write my dispatch, a more sober realism prevailed. It shows how desperate the rest of the world was for good news from Africa - and how low expectations had become - that Rawlings, a man who inaugurated his government by lining several of his predecessors up on the road out of Accra and shooting them, and Museveni, who was embroiled in three vicious wars, were hailed as the continent's hopes. But while their reputation is very mixed, in hindsight their governments did mark a stepping stone on the way to a new and more enlightened era.

  Rawlings certainly had the dynamism to lead Africa into the new millennium. The most colourful of the three 'new' leaders, he was Africa's quintessential 'angry young man' ever since he realized that, shortly after he was born, his father, a Scots chemist, abandoned his mother and returned to Glasgow. At school he is said to have joined gangs only if he could be their leader. Still simmering, he joined the air force and was recognized as the best pilot of his year. He was not promoted above flight lieutenant as his superiors were said to distrust his habit of talking to the lower ranks. But the generals no doubt regretted their snobbishness on 4 June 1979 when Rawlings seized power at the head of a group of young populist revolutionaries committed to grass-roots socialism and eradicating corruption, with the slogan: 'Let the blood flow.'

  Within a fortnight he executed two generals, including a previous head of state, on the main road from the capital. Two weeks later, six more commanders were shot, including another two former heads of state. Remarkably for a dictator, Rawlings stepped down after only 112 days in power. But as the civilian political class returned to their old ways, he led another coup on New Year's Eve 1981 and this time he stayed.

  Initially the story seemed all too familiar. Critics were imprisoned and in a few notorious cases disappeared. But unlike the Big Men, Rawlings seems to have retained some of his ideals: he was, by West African standards, uncorrupt, avoided fancy titles, hated hero worship, and did what he thought was best for the poor. When it was explained to him in the mid-eighties that unless he embraced free-market reforms the remnants of the economy would disappear, he submitted to the World Bank. Over the next decade Ghana recorded a steady average 5 per cent growth. It came from a low base but it was a marked improvement after a decade in which wages had sunk by almost a third.

  Rawlings remained at heart an old-fashioned Marxist. He loathed the businessmen whose sharp practices he associated with all that was rotten with the early independence years. When the Berlin Wall came down, he said elliptically that he hoped reforms in the East would be reciprocated by reforms in the West. In August 1992 in an interview with the Financial Times he described the World Bank's economic reform programme as 'economic blah blah blah'. 1 But he applied the

  'medicine' with the determination that only a benign dictator could get away with. Not even Rawlings' closest ally would call him a natural democrat; He was a man of action, not consensus, who would rather fly a fighter plane than chair a political caucus. In his early years in power he did much of his governing assisted by only a tiny cabal. He was famously impatient of the civilian political classes. In October just before the 1992 elections he told one interviewer from The Times that he was 'the only person who can rule this country.' During a cabinet meeting in 1996 he is said to have knocked his vice-president down and kicked him as he lay squirming on the ground. But unlike the generals who ruled neighbouring Nigeria for most of its post-independence years, he did move towards multi-party democracy, acknowledging that if it encourages Western investment then it is in Ghana's interest.

  In the campaign for his first elections in 1992, he undid much of the good work of his economic reforms by a spate of populist overspending. 'As head of state he was referee, lines man and player in the transitional process,' wrote one commentator in the New African. 'Frightened like little children, his civilian challengers did as he told them. Jump - they jumped. Sit - they sat]'2 But the 1996 election was fairer and more hotly contested. His challenger won 40 per cent of the vote. Eighteen months later Rawlings nominated his deputy to succeed him as party leader, scotching speculation that his ambitious wife, Nana, an Ashanti princess, would replace him.

  The hope is that his record can act as a guide for the regional giant, Nigeria, to recover from the excesses of its own coup culture. With more than 100 million people and a long literate tradition Nigeria should be the 'Lion of Africa', nudging the rest of the continent forward. But instead it has become an international byword for trickery and drugs. The sudden death of General Abacha in 1998 ended the most corrupt and vicious in a series of post-independence governments. His successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, did much to unravel Abacha's corrupt apparatus of state, encouraging Wole Soyinka, the literary scourge of Big Men, and other dissidents to return, before stepping down at long-awaited elections in 1999.

  The election of General Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler, was the first step towards a recovery. Civilian rule did not of course offer automatic salvation. Travelling through Africa it is depressing how often you have to conclude that the 'real test' will come only 'at the next election'. Early civilian governments in both Nigeria and Ghana had almost as bad a record as the military. Ghana's progress towards political and economic freedom was one of the more encouraging stories in Africa of the Nineties and 2000s. Rawlings did eventually leave office in 2001 and was succeeded by his main rival from the 1996 elections. Yet it was sobering to record that even if Ghana's economy continued to grow at 5 per cent a year, as it then was, it would take 30 years to reach the same standard of living Ghanaians enjoyed in 1970, an equation that is grimly familiar to the people of Uganda. (Fortunately for Ghana t
he growth rate easily surpassed 5 per cent in the decade after Rawlings stepped down as the country harvested the new investor appetite for Africa.)

  In the dosing years of the millennium Yoweri Museveni became something of a cult figure among Africa analysts trying to wrestle with the conundrum of democracy, progress and rights. Museveni was the pragmatist who transformed Uganda from a shambles into a thriving concern. He spoke the reformist language of the West without kowtowing to Washington. He was the 'Bismarck of Africa', his panegyrists claimed, whose aim was to overthrow tyrants. At last, the world said, central Africa has a leader to follow and admire. With his mixture of peasant and free-market economics and his blend of coalition and autocracy rooted in traditional African government Museveni was intriguing and original leader. But as he entered his third decade in power it became clear that he was a staging post and his critics argued cogently that for Uganda to achieve its potential it needed genuine freedom.

  Born, as he loved to remind his admirers, into an illiterate peasant family, from his student days Museveni is said to have displayed the fiery independence of thought that would stand him in good stead in later life. When Julius Nyerere, Tanzania's independence president, made a speech at his university at Dar es Salaam in 1969, the young Museveni publicly attacked his policies, an astonishingly bold move given that Mwalimu, (teacher), as Nyerere was known, was then revered throughout the continent even though his ujamaa home-grown Marxism policy was turning Tanzania into a giant collective farm, destroying the vibrant peasant agriculture which could have fed much of East Africa.