Has Mbeki been good for South Africa?

As South Africa's governing African National Congress prepares to decide whether President Thabo Mbeki should continue to lead the party, former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein says Mr Mbeki has badly damaged the party.

Mbeki's tenure as ANC chief may be coming to an end

President Thabo Mbeki has presided over a serious moral decline in South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) - facing its worst crisis since its founding in 1912.

Just 13 years ago, at liberation in 1994, the ANC had defeated apartheid and was at its zenith.

And on his assumption of the party presidency in 1998 from Nelson Mandela, Mr Mbeki began the necessary transformation of a liberation movement into a more disciplined and effective governing party, centralising power in his office.

But when he became the country's president after the 1999 elections, the programme of change accelerated beyond what was required for effective government.

As an ANC member of parliament at the time, my experience of these cold winds was primarily through the replacement of our convivial chief whip by the arrogant chairperson of parliament's defence committee, Tony Yengeni, who established himself as the centre of Mr Mbeki's political control.

It soon became clear that the primary political currency had transformed from a commitment to the common values of the organisation to uncritical loyalty to the leader.

This manifested on all of the main issues of the day: HIV/Aids, Zimbabwe and corruption.

Rivals cowed

Dissent - towards Mr Mbeki's inexplicable Aids denialism, his uncritical approach to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, or his championing of a multi-billion dollar arms deal mired in allegations of corruption - was met with swift discipline or marginalisation.

People who were critical of him were faced with the choice of keeping silent or leaving politics, as a number did.

This administration has more than a whiff of excess, impropriety and unaccountability about it

To defend himself, Mr Mbeki has been happy to trample on the institutions of democracy.

When parliament attempted to investigate the notorious arms deal - in which it is alleged that not only did senior government players receive personal bribes totalling millions of dollars, but that the ANC itself received contributions from the winning contractors - he destroyed its non-partisan public accounts committee.

Mr Mbeki has used the organs of state to fight his party political battles, such as when he scared off competitors before the ANC's previous electoral conference by having his then minister of police announce in a dramatic press conference that his rivals were plotting to overthrow, even harm, the president.

No such plot existed, but his rivals were cowed into submission.

The Mbeki era has also seen the ANC's collective leadership style replaced by the dominance of a small clique of unelected advisers of varying quality.

This has resulted in a leader who is isolated, detached and remote. His inability to show sympathy with victims of the country's alarming violent crime rate is only the most obvious manifestation of this.

Mr Mbeki has championed the renaissance of the African continent, an ideal stillborn by his protection of the Mugabe regime.

But it has nevertheless led to an insidious Africanism that has replaced the ANC's historic commitment to non-racism.

The organisation's much-vaunted non-sexism has also become a mere chimera as more than half a dozen senior leaders have been accused of sexual harassment in the past year alone.

Revelation

In these instances, as with the approach to allegations of corruption, one's treatment depends on how loyal one is to the president.

A brave deputy minister of health, who dared take on the president's Aids denialism, was fired for a concocted misdemeanour.

Questioning the official line on Aids got Ms Madlala-Routledge sacked

But her equivalent in the home affairs department, an Mbeki loyalist, was not even investigated for a litany of alleged transgressions, including the misappropriation of government funds.

Mr Mbeki's fellow-travelling denialist health minister is also still in office despite embarrassing the country with her protestations that beetroot, garlic and the African potato are preferable cures for Aids, the revelation that she was allegedly expelled from Botswana for stealing from a patient while working there, and her alleged drunkenness within weeks of receiving a liver transplant last year.

Similarly, the commissioner of police is still in his post despite facing charges of murder and drug smuggling.

This has all led to a party and an administration that has more than a whiff of excess, impropriety and unaccountability about it.

But his aloof machiavellianism has come back to bite him as many in the ANC and its political allies turn to anyone other than Mr Mbeki.

The ANC requires profound regeneration if it is to regain its previous high standing in South Africa and across the world, which it needs if it is to fulfil its commitment to significantly improving the lives of the poorest in the country.