Jonny Steinberg: Why have We Made Thabo Mbeki Our National Ogre?

December 15th, 2009 by Claire

The author of Three-letter Plague – which treats, to a certain degree, the effects of Thabo Mbeki’s universally-condemned approach to HIV/AIDS – is suspicious of Mbeki’s relegation to the role of South Africa’s prime villain, and wonders aloud why this might be so:

A LITTLE more than a year after his departure, former president Thabo Mbeki has become SA’s national ogre. This newspaper has wondered out loud whether he ought to be put on trial, or hauled before a truth commission, if not to have him thrown in jail, then at least that we might get “a bite at understanding (his) madness”. Many ponder how the country went for nearly a decade with a president it did not deserve.

This mood has descended with enormous haste. Only two years ago, on the eve of the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) conference in Polokwane, SA’s well-heeled classes were praying that Mbeki would win his bid for the ANC presidency. Mbeki stood for sanity, his defeat for the prospect of populist madness.
Such rapid mood swings are suspicious. Ogres are always manufactured in haste; we invest in them the things we find uncomfortable and upsetting, and hope that when the ogre is vanquished the bad will die with him. What has SA invested in Mbeki that it wishes to be buried and gone?
It is doubtful that history will be kind to Mbeki, but it might do him the favour of placing him in his rightful context. In hindsight, SA’s second democratically elected president was always going to face an uncomfortable task, not because he had to walk in the shadow of Nelson Mandela, but because he inherited a nation whose character and condition few had foreseen.