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Mon, 28 September 1998 00:00 |
Leendert van Oostrum
Boodskappe: 1880
Geregistreer: July 2000
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Die Sunday Times of London skryf:
September 27 1998 AFRICA
A damaged reputation: Mandela's forlorn claims that the bungled South
African invasion of Lesotho was to restore democracy has convinced few at
home or abroad
Lesotho fires reveal Mandela the weak
by R W Johnson
Johannesburg
THE television images could not have been starker. On the one hand the
hallowed figure of Nelson Mandela receiving one award after another on his
triumphal progress across North America, a symbol of liberation and peace;
on the other South African troops meeting furious popular resistance as they
invaded tiny Lesotho, its civilians savagely beaten, and the capital,
Maseru, in flames.
Although South Africa's state-controlled radio and television stations
sought to soften and downplay these images, there was no doubt that popular
opinion was far more critical.
Day after day the opposition-minded Citizen newspaper roundly denounced
Mandela and his deputy, Thabo Mbeki, for refusing to break their long
foreign tours (Mbeki was in Malaysia for the Commonwealth games) during the
crisis.
When Mandela emotionally told President Bill Clinton that he would "never
forget his friends", The Citizen ran a savagely critical cartoon pointing
out that South Africa's commander-in-chief had neglected to mention the
eight South African soldiers who had died in Lesotho.
Even the pro-African National Congress (ANC) Mail and Guardian thundered
furiously that not only were the people of Lesotho owed an apology, but that
the invasion threw into question whether South Africans truly had a
constitutional government or not and whether "the dream of a new South
Africa is to survive the blundering which landed us with this humiliation".
The crisis has, indeed, highlighted fatal flaws in the South African
government. In effect Mandela was being lauded in America for his years in
jail and the liberation of 1990-94. Yet almost from the start Mandela has
been a president only in name - Mbeki has chaired cabinet meetings and run
government business. By 1996, Mandela had begun to speak openly of being "in
semi-retirement."
He has spent an inordinate amount of time abroad, fund-raising for the ANC,
receiving honorary degrees and acting as ambassador extraordinary. Some
journalistic wits have even referred to "President Mandela, who was visiting
South Africa last week".
But while Mandela has had authority, he seldom exercised power. Mbeki had
power but was not held responsible and lacked authority. Moreover, Mbeki
showed the same penchant for lengthy trips abroad, an example speedily
followed by much of the cabinet.
Ministerial attendance in parliament became scandalously rare and the sense
grew that nobody was much in charge of anything. The currency sagged, the
economy wound down.
Big oil companies, for example, found it impossible for a whole year to
secure an interview with a minister of energy. The minister in charge of
privatisation has carried out no privatisations. The health minister has
been pushing a quack Aids cure, Virodene, in which the ANC allegedly has a
financial interest, while one of the world's worst epidemics of the disease
rages through the country.
The minister of education has presided over steadily falling pass rates at
black schools - not surprising when one realises that most black
schoolchildren have had no text books for two years.
Corrupt and incompetent ministers are never fired. They and their civil
servants hire their own political cronies and family members shamelessly.
The sense of drift throughout the government stems, in the final analysis,
from a lack of executive authority at the top.
Mandela will always remain a much-loved icon, but the experiment of having
two heads of government, neither of them fully in charge, has proved a
disaster.
All these chickens have come home to roost over Lesotho. The army unit sent
into Lesotho was not battle-ready, there was inadequate intelligence,
reconnaissance and briefing, and far too few troops were used to achieve
speedy control.
An official communiqu� of September 22 announced that South African and
Botswanan troops had gathered on the South African side of the border before
entering Lesotho together. It was untrue: South Africa went into Lesotho
alone.
The minister of safety and security, not the minister of defence, seemed to
be in charge of the invasion. The foreign minister remained invisible
throughout, just when diplomacy was much in need.
The Commonwealth was not informed that a Commonwealth country was about to
be invaded - something that had provoked the Queen's ire when President
Reagan sent troops into Grenada. South Africa's allies in the Southern
African Development Community (SADC) were not fully consulted about an
invasion taking place in their name.
In Canada, Mandela was visibly annoyed at questions about the invasion. Only
the ignorant were critical of the government, he averred tetchily, for South
Africa had acted in defence of Lesotho's democratically elected government.
This was the most embarrassing gaffe of all. The Lesotho crisis had been
provoked by a bitterly disputed election. South Africa's official inquiry
into it, the Langa report, had found "gross irregularities" and a long chain
of evidence suggesting the election had been badly fiddled in the
government's favour.
First Mbeki and then Mandela sat on this report, which, when finally
released, had been blatantly doctored. Its banal conclusion - that democracy
needed to be "deepened and streamlined" - ignored abundant evidence of
fraud. Everything suggests that South Africa has, in effect, intervened to
prop up an unpopular and illegitimate government.
Mandela also seems to have been wrong when he sought to justify the invasion
as necessary to prevent hordes of refugees pouring into South Africa from
Lesotho. Those who have fled across the border have been mostly foreigners
whose businesses were attacked by vengeful mobs furious at the invasion.
Maseru, which accounted for around half the Lesotho economy, has been
virtually destroyed. There are shortages of fuel and food and epidemics
threaten. South Africa will have a neighbouring basket case on its hands for
the foreseeable future.
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