Thabo Mbeki
Reflections on 30 Years of Democracy
Thabo Mbeki - Reflections on 30 Years in Democracy
- Well, good evening, everybody, and good morning if you’re in the US, and welcome to this special edition of “Lockdown Universities”, where we’re featuring a series this week and last week, if you’ve joined us for the last two, in fact, on South Africa, ahead of our most important election post-1994. And I just said in some opening remarks to the people behind the scenes that either in South Africa you are up to here with elections and ready for it to be over, or you’re in full flight. The political parties are advertising like mad, posters everywhere, speeches, rallies, town hall meetings, debates. It’s all happening. And I think for a lot of people in South Africa, it is exciting. I think there is an opportunity here for us to really see some serious changes. But one of the things that we’ve spoken about a little bit already in the past episodes, the Constitution, the history of the ANC. Tonight, we’re going to focus on the middle part of the ANC’s history and the middle part of South Africa’s history, and that is under the administration of Thabo Mbeki, who was our president after Nelson Mandela and before Jacob Zuma. Now Thabo Mbeki has a really interesting story. He was certainly our most cerebral president and a man who made an incredible contribution in many ways. It was, for some, the highlight of the last 30 years because he managed to get growth up to just under 6%. All the indications were that he had a competent administration. And while there were criticisms of things like HIV/AIDS and his Zimbabwe policy, largely he was regarded quite highly across the world, and certainly South Africa was punching at that stage above our weight. Tonight, we’ll focus on Thabo Mbeki. Phumi managed to put together the most incredible edits of a speech which he gave just 2.5 weeks ago.
It’s the only occasion on which he has made public comments in a lecture which he delivered with the purpose of kind of not only first and foremost explaining his own legacy, which I know everyone is keen to do once they’ve been a president, but also for him to lay the groundwork for what he thinks might happen in this election. And inadvertently, he’s been pulled into campaigning, which of course is just part of the price. So with that introduction, now let me tell you a little bit about the format of what we’re going to do this evening and how you may find this interesting and relevant.
Yeah, thanks, Garreth. And today, we’ve kind of broken a little bit with the tradition of how “Lockdown” has been because we were lucky enough to shoot this conversation that he had. There was a Q&A. Thabo Mbeki is a very verbose man, very precise with all his words, but we’ve really cut down to the bone the most salient parts of what he spoke about. And the way that we’re going to run the format, and the Q&A is going to be open, I’m going to watch the chat, so please send in your questions send in your comments, more especially. We’re going to have a first part that we’re going to watch where he talks a little bit about himself, about the ANC, how long he’s been there, and the first part of democracy, and then we’ll open up some comments. He did make some inflammatory remarks in this presentation, so brace yourselves. And then, we’ve got three sections of the video. And if we have time at the very end for those of you who are interested, I think one of the things that was most amazing that we got to watch Thabo is when he opened just before they ratified the Constitution in the General Assembly. He did the most incredible speech called “I Am An African.” That speech was 44 minutes long. I’ve cut a little 12-minute clip for you. If we have time at the end, we will go into that too. So please keep your comments and questions coming, and Garreth and I will come in in bits, in strategic bits in the video to facilitate some of that conversation. And we’re ready to go, Jess:
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, comrade chairperson. Let’s please sit down. Let’s sit down. As our chairperson here, Comrade Mavuso Msimanga said, we got a lot of requests to speak about, to say something about South African democracy at 30 years, and then decided that, no, we couldn’t. If we did all of those individual interviews, it would take us six weeks. Rather do one interview, one response, and then perhaps afterwards we can then answer the many questions that people might have. But I honestly didn’t know Jane Mufamadi, our host, that there would be so many people here today. But welcome, welcome to everybody. And I must also say, Jane, thanks a lot for deciding to host us, because I think this must be an introduction to quite a few of us who are present here at Freedom Park. I’m sure it’s an introduction to many of us who are here, because I think it were something that we’ve not done right. It’s really, because I think this is one of the major, major products of the last 30 years, this Freedom Park. But I don’t think enough of our people know about it, what it means, what it contains, and what it projects that Jane Mufamadi was indicating when she spoke earlier. So I’m really very, very glad that we’re here. And I hope all of us, as we leave here, will be propagandists for Freedom Park, to ask people to come and then see for themselves. But this year I celebrate 68 years of membership of the ANC. Having joined the ANC Youth League at 13.5 in 1956, you can therefore imagine what a difference it would make to me and others of my generation if South Africa today looked like the South Africa for which many sacrificed in many ways, including by losing their lives.
That generation of mine includes my friend here, my colleague, and my very good friend, Mavuso Msimanga. The ANC held a victory party at the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg as soon as the results of our very first democratic elections in 1994 were announced. I happened to serve as the master of ceremonies that joyful evening. Our esteemed guest that evening included Mrs. Coretta Scott-King, the wife of the late esteemed leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Almost spontaneously, I repeated the words her husband and comrade cited as he ended his famous, “I Have a Dream” speech, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last.” I’m certain that those words of thanks to the Almighty were uttered by millions throughout our country because indeed these millions were free at last from 350 years of cruel, white minority colonial and Apartheid rules. And that freedom meant that at last, as visualised in the Freedom Charter, we would have a government based on the will of all the people. And this government would lead the protracted but historic process of bringing about the many changes such that in time, our diverse but united nation would proclaim together, again basing themselves on the words of the Freedom Charter, that South Africa truly belongs to all who live in it, black and white. And all of us will recall that the 1994 election manifesto of the ANC was based on the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the RDP. After the elections, the RDP was slightly recast and presented to Parliament by the Government of National Unity as a white paper.
And among others, that white paper said, and I quote, “At the heart of the Government of National Unity is a commitment effectively to address the problems of poverty and the gross inequality evident in almost all aspects of South African society. And this can only be possible if the South African economy can be firmly placed on the path of high and sustainable growth.” And of great interest, the conclusion of the white paper is headed a national consensus. And it says, and I quote, “The responsibility for the renewal and transformation of our nation is, however, not the responsibility only of the government nor of particular elected officials. It is a joint responsibility of all sections of our nation and calls on all to put their energy and creativity into finding ways of doing things better and differently,” unquote. And beyond setting broad objectives, the white paper includes a very important Annexure One. This annexure lists 18 lead projects, all of them funded significantly by the then RDP fund, with funds actually specified in the document. To select just one third of these lead projects, these were land restitution, the National Urban Reconstruction and Housing Agencies, small-scale farmer development, clinic building, especially in the rural areas and informal settlements, extension of municipal services, and urban renewal projects. And here we must bear in mind that the RDP fund was used to supplement the much larger departmental budgets. However, the fact of these RDP fund allocations specified in the white paper indicated the determination of the government to achieve the socioeconomic objectives stated in that RDP document.
Five years after the adoption of the RDP white paper by Parliament, I delivered my State of the Nation address in 1999 after our second democratic elections. And I said then, “that steadily the dark clouds of despair are lifting, giving way to our season of hope. That our country, which for centuries had bled from a 1000 wounds, is progressing towards its healing. That the continuing process of social and national emancipation to which we’re all subject constitutes an evolving act of self-definition. That at the dawn of a new life, our practical actions must ensure that none can challenge us when we say we are a nation at work to build a better life,” unquote. If viewed in the context of South Africa today, it could be said that these comments were utterly wrong. However, I’m very clad that I was actually not wrong as I uttered those words so optimistic about our country’s future. The actual reality is that during the first 13 to 15 years of our democracy, government and other social partners did match practically to implement a vision and programme contained in the RDP white paper and related socioeconomic development programmes. And here I’m referring to programmes which complement, and then did not replace the RDP, as some have wrongly argued. And these programmes were the Growth, Employment, and Redistribution macroeconomic strategy, GEAR, and the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa, AsgiSA. With your permission here once more, I would again quote from a speech delivered last year by the CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations, Dr. John Endress. To address some of the speculation that has arisen in this regard, I must explain why I keep citing Dr. Endress.
In terms of our country’s political and ideological spectrum, the ANC and the Institute of Race Relations stand at polar opposites. Accordingly, there’s no reason to expect that the CEO of the institute would decide for some inexplicable reason to say anything positive about the ANC. When he does this, his view would be more credible in the eyes of many of our fellow citizens, not tainted by suspicions of self-serving self-praise if what he said were to emanate from a member of the ANC. And therefore, I beg the patience of those among us who have read the remarks by Dr. Endress, to which I will now refer. This is because they are very important in terms of the story I’m trying to narrate about South Africa at 30. In July 2003, Dr. Endress addressed the Cato Institute in Washington, DC in the US, speaking about the future of South Africa under the topic, South Africa’s Third Age: What Lies Ahead. And here is part of what Dr. Endress said. And quote: “The period since the 1994 for transition can be divided into two ages. The first lasted from about 1994 to 2007. The second age started around 2008, and we’re now at the tail end of it. The two ages reveal themselves clearly in South Africa’s development indicators. I will describe for you some of the development indicators and then will speak about what lies ahead for South Africa as it moves out of the second age into its third age.” And he continued: “South Africa’s first age, from 1994 to 2007, was marked by considerable progress across a range of indicators. The GDP grew at an average rate of 3.6%. The number of people with jobs increased from 8 million to 14 million.
And the average GDP per capita increased almost by 40%, from 55,000 per year to 76,000 per year, in real terms, after adjusting for inflation.” Unquote. I will now add further remarks concerning the period Dr. Endress characterises as our country’s first age, and thank Dr. Frans Cronje for his assistance in this regard. Our gross domestic product per capita, measured in real terms, grew from under 65,000 in 1994 to nearly 80,000 towards 2008. The fixed investment rate rose quickly between 1998 and 2008, almost reaching the rising global average. At the same time, our country’s investment competitiveness ranking improved to reach a ranking roughly between 37th and 4th most competitive investment destination in the world. The public debt levels inherited from the Apartheid administration, at just below 45% of GDP, were cut to a low of near 23% by 2007. And accordingly, as interest payments were reduced, the savings were reallocated to service delivery improvements and the very necessary social protection system. And the national data in the period up to 2007 collectively marked progress in advancing living standards that would rival any other post-colonial emerging market. And using various studies, there is little doubt that substantial strides have been made in reducing poverty since 1994, whether using a money measurement or a multidimensional poverty measure. And although South Africa has made progress in reducing poverty since 1994, the trajectory of poverty reduction was reversed between 2011 and 2015, threatening to erode some of the gains made since 1994. And after the 1998 Asian economic crisis, the GDP growth rate rose steadily to average over 5% between 2004 and 2007.
And this was the first time that level of economic growth had been maintained for that number of years since the first half of the 1960s. And one important result of the pursuit of the correct macroeconomic policies was that the government achieved the very first sustained budget surpluses since the formation of the Union in 1910.“ And everything I’ve just said confirms exactly what Dr. Endress said, that South Africa’s first age, from 1994 to 2007, was marked by considerable progress across a range of indicators. And then Dr. Endress went on to say, and I quote: "By contrast, for the period 2008 to 2022, the average GDP growth that was lacklustre at 1.2%. The number of people with jobs increased by merely a million over a period of 14 years, while the population grew by 10 million over the same period. GDP per capita declined by 1,600 rand as people became poorer in real terms. The unemployment rate crept up over the years and now sits, this was last year, at an astonishing 32.9%, up from 22% in 2008. Or 42.4% on the expanded definition that includes discouraged job seekers. Even this bleak employment numbers are generously assessed, as they include both formal and informal employment.” And he went on to say: “Business indicators show a similarly stark divide. The RMB/BER Business Confidence Index registered above the confidence-indicating 50 mark in seven out of the 14 years of the first age on a rising trend. But has been below 50, showing lack in confidence every single year since 2008. Investment trends are downwards, with gross capital formation as share of GDP climbing during the first age, reaching a level of 21.6% in 2008 before declining in the second age, dropping as low as 13.1% in 2022.
This number should be around 24% for an emerging market like South Africa. And the government’s 2012 National Development Plan specified the target for 30%.” And he continues that: “The lack of investment by the private and public sector has started affecting the infrastructure that forms the backbone of the country’s economic activity. While dramatic deterioration being recorded in road, rail, ports, and water infrastructure, the sector that has attracted the greatest attention is, of course, electricity generation. While the total amount of electricity produced rose from 170 terawatt-hours in 1994 to 253 terawatt-hours in 2007 during the first age, an increase of 49%, it declined from there to barely 209 terawatt-hours in 2020, a drop of almost 18%.” Unquote. This sharp difference, I must say, colleagues, I’m sorry to have read you all of these figures. You will see that when you see the document, you will be able to manage them, to cope with all of them. But this sharp difference between Dr. Endress’ ages one and two poses the question, why? An answer to this question becomes especially important because, during both ages, the ANC was the major governing party.
So can we stop here for a second before we start the second part? So, Garreth, this was the first part of him talking to us just generally about himself. At the time, first, he was deputy president, right? Like, for almost 25 minutes, he’s just waxing lyrical, but which is true. All of the stuff that he talks about, we lived through it. And when you hear all of this development like this, knowing where we are today, what’s your biggest take? And if anybody in the chat has questions or comments, please do share them with us. So what’s your take? Do you remember this time and how good life was?
Well, yes, I do, but I think most people don’t. People have a very short memory. And I think a big part of it was Thabo Mbeki making sure that his legacy is protected and kind of reminding us of what a capable state looks like under the ANC. Because people have forgotten, you know, since Jacob Zuma took over and state capture, and the, in inverted commas, nine wasted years they keep talking about. There was actually a competent bureaucracy. There were people in charge who had expectations and goals and values and a desire to achieve a vision. You know, we had a very capable ministry. I mean, there were a couple of ministers who are obviously not great, but that happens in every cabinet all over the world. Largely, the word competence can be used to describe much of what was going on, particularly in the economic sector of the cabinet. You know, Tito Mboweni in Reserve Bank, we had Trevor Manuel in treasury, and we had Thabo Mbeki setting the policy and the tone. We also had, while we made some very odd and still quite questionable alliances all over the world, we had a foreign affairs department which was really taken quite seriously. You know, we had friends and allies from all over the world. We were able largely to stay non-aligned, even across very, very fractious international relations boundaries.
And interestingly, he says nothing about the bad stuff, right? So he says nothing about the health issues, he says health and HIV pandemic, and we know how that went. He says absolutely nothing about foreign policy, particularly with regards to our direct neighbour, Zimbabwe. None of that. He just talks about all of the stuff, and that’s a lot of numbers that he talks about.
But all right. And thankfully, you know, we have someone who’s keeping track of these things, whether it’s Dr. Endress at the IRR or whether it’s Thabo Mbeki, because again, I think that very many people who are looking at this now will go, oh, that’s right, there was actually economic growth. They were building clinics in rural areas. There was an RDP housing programme. And all of that was achieved largely under this man’s leadership. I think that it’s also convenient that he’s been asked to make an appearance here and there, and perhaps he’s done it voluntarily, who knows, because this stuff is not bad for the ANC that’s trying to convince people that it hasn’t been 30 years of decline.
To give it one more chance. So I think we’re going to move to the second session, right? And I think the second session also talks a little bit about some of the institutes that he put in. It talks a little bit about the economic changes. And interestingly, he does a thing where he talks a lot about before ‘94 and how that still plays a role today. So we can move to the next.
But I would like briefly to refer to a central issue which Dr. Endress does not discuss. And during his age one, our country adopted two constitutions in 1993 and 1996. It was therefore during this age one, between 1994 and 2007, that especially the executive and the legislature, supported by the judiciary, set about establishing the institutions prescribed by these two constitutions. And these institutions include the Constitutional Court, the Independent Electoral Commission, Public Protector, the Gender Commission, and other chapter nine institutions. This also means that the necessary statutes were passed legally to establish these institutions. And other legislation was also approved to repeal a wide spectrum of Apartheid laws, and thus establish a truly democratic, non-racial and non-sexist national statutory framework. In summary, in addition to the socio-economic progress made during Dr. Endress’ age one, we also owe to the democratic order we enjoy today to the work that was done during the same period, 1994 to 2007. This bring us back to what I said earlier, “The sharp difference between Dr. Endress’ ages one and two poses the question, why?” And the answer to this question becomes especially important because, during both ages, the ANC was a major governing party. Two important changes took place during the period 2007/2008, one economic and exogenous, and the other political and endogenous.
The political change was more important of these. During the years 2008/2009, the world economy suffered a recession as a result of the banking crisis which started in the United States in 2008 with the collapse of the major bank, Lehman Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy on the 15th of September 2008. And that global crisis resulted in our countries losing a million jobs and the damage could have been worse. And fortunately, during this period, we were investing in infrastructure in good measure to prepare for the 2010 Soccer World Cup. In addition, we had the budget surpluses which enabled government to engage in counter-cyclical measures. Other things being equal. Like other emerging economies, our country could have recovered from the economic recession fairly quickly. However, other things were not equal, centrally because of the endogenous political changes to which I have referred. As recently as two years ago, in April 2022, the online journal “Politicsweb” published an article by the eminent Afrikaner academic and intellectual, Hermann Giliomee, entitled “When the ANC lost its brain”. And this provides a clue to the political change I have mentioned. All of us are familiar with the concept of die rooi gevaar, which was strongly advanced by the Apartheid regime and establishment. In his treaties, Afrikaner anti-communist history production in South African historiography, Wessel Visser, has written that in the 1950s, Piet Meyer published a pamphlet containing a concise history of communist activity in South Africa.
The cover page displayed an ominous spectre of a Bolshevist looming like a giant over a Christian city in South Africa. Wielding a hammer and a sickle, the giant went about destroying the city. And Meyer illustrated how this South African Communist Party policy was repeatedly defined and dictated by Moscow. And in his book, “The Red Trap: Communism and Violence in South Africa”, Chris Vermaak, a South African security police officer, asserted that a Soviet-inspired communist plot was being hatched to foster anti-apartheid sabotage, subversion, and revolution in South Africa. And he said agents of the SACP infiltrated organisations like the National Union of South African Students, the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe, South African Congress of Trade Unions, and even the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. And according to this historiography, the objectives of the Freedom Charter, quote, “carried the unmistakable stamp of communism as SAP acted in international cohesion with Russia.” And this document went on to say, “From the 1970s on, South Africa was now being perceived by the West from its strategic global position vis-a-vis Soviet and Chinese strategic intentions.” And the discourse of the anti-communist publications of this period shifted accordingly from the “Red Peril” inside South Africa to the “Soviet” and “Red Chinese Menace” and expansionism in African states bordering white South Africa. And elsewhere, Tarynn Halsall and Johan Wasserman wrote that in the apartheid era textbooks, in line with the political ideology of the National Party and within the context of the Cold War, Russia and communism was a red peril.
Communism was foregrounded as a threat to especially capitalism and the white way of life. And Wessel Visser said that the average white South African, especially during the period 1974 to ‘84, was imbued with the psychosis of a fear of a worldwide communist threat. In January 2010, the “Financial Times” published an article by Alec Russell entitled “Lunch with the FT: F.W. de Klerk”. And the article said that, “encouraged by the fall of the Berlin Wall, which took away the rooi gevaar or fear of a communist takeover, de Klerk was emboldened to press ahead with changes which led to the end of Apartheid rule,” unquote. The hard reality, however, is that not everybody in the Apartheid establishment took this position concerning the rooi gevaar. For instance, in his book “The Afrikaners: Biography of a People”, Hermann Giliomee writes, and I quote, “To preserve its image as a national movement, the ANC, as distinct from the South African Communist Party, did not commit itself to a socialist state. Instead, nationalists and communists alike propounded the theory of a national democratic revolution. In the first stage of this revolution, the goal was to take charge of the political and economic system, and from this basis create the conditions for the transfer to socialism, which was to be the second stage.” The author then says that wanting to put all his efforts into the NDR’s first phase, they could, quote, “postpone the introduction of socialism indefinitely,” unquote. These comments communicate the convictions of those, unlike F.W. de Klerk, who never believed that the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the Soviet Union meant an end to the rooi gevaar in South Africa.
To the contrary, South Africa still had the SACP-dominated ANC intent to advance from the NDR to socialism regardless of the fact that it was experiencing some paralysis because it had lost its real brain, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and was therefore without guidance because of the cessation of the flow of expert advice from Moscow. And this threat had to be defeated. And it was exactly to realise the strategic objective that the group emerged from among especially the erstwhile Apartheid security forces centred on the former military intelligence division of the SADF, whose objective was to ensure the defeat of the ANC whose NDR and other policies continued to perpetuate die rooi gevaar. And this group was a leader in practical expression of the counter-revolution whose activities we will now discuss. And one of the important decisions taken by the counter-revolution was that to achieve its objective of defeating the ANC was to ensure that it fails in its task properly to govern our country. The second important and directly related decision was that the ANC had to be so weakened that it would not be able successfully to frustrate the realisation of the first counter-revolutionary task that we have just mentioned. So in December 2007, the ANC held its 52nd National Conference in Polokwane, in Limpopo. One of the tasks of the National Conference, like all others, was to elect the National Executive Committee, the NEC, which was done.
Having taken the decision to weaken the ANC, the counter-revolution started already in 2002 to work on the task to change its leadership. The 2007 National Conference presented the counter-revolution with the opportunity to implement its plans in this regard. It therefore participated both in the preparations and the conference itself to ensure the success of those it favoured as members of the NEC, National Executive Committee. In this regard, I must mention a very important matter concerning the reality about South Africa, which we are discussing. This is that the Apartheid regime had paid a lot of attention to the task to infiltrate as many of its agents as possible into the ANC and the rest of the broad democratic movement. Though much was done by the ANC to discover and expose this enemy agents, the hard reality is that a considerable number of these remained undetected within our ranks. So quite early after the formation of the 1994 Government of National Unity, we approached the heads of the SADF, the Defence Force, South African Police and the NIS, National Intelligence Service, to request that they give us a list of these agents so that we could discuss with and demobilise them. And effectively, all three services turned down our request. The counter-revolution used these agents in the ranks of the ANC to intervene in the Polokwane National Conference as it did. And later, we’ll return to this important matter of the place of the ANC in the context of the-
Is it meant to have just stopped there?
No, it’s meant to have continued. I don’t know if- Maybe while we figure out what happening at the back there, 'cause I don’t see anyone besides us.
No, I see everyone else is still on the-
Oh. I’m talking about the background. I don’t see “Lockdown” at the top of Jess.
Oh, there it is. Maybe they can-
Yeah, connecting again. I think they had an issue.
It’s probably an appropriate place to stop it because this is the incendiary part of the speech. This is where Thabo Mbeki very openly calling Jacob Zuma and the party that took over at Polokwane, the Coalition of the Wounded as some people call them. He’s calling them the counter-revolutionaries, and you know, Phumi, and I know, and people who are familiar with South Africa will know that probably the rudest thing you can say about someone in the ANC-
Is call them a counter-revolutionary. And I see Antega here, is saying that is there any evidence of any effective infiltration by the communists in the Board of Deputies? And this appears to be a slur that Mbeki tries to slip into his analysis for anti-Semitic reasons. We were supporting refuse clinics, I don’t know what that’s supposed to be, from communist Russia. Maybe refugees?
Refuseniks, so the people who didn’t want to accept the end of communism.
Oh, okay. But I do think that, you know, and unfortunately because the video cut and we’ll probably carry on, I think it’s important to hear the rest of what he says, because it’s actually not what you think it is. I don’t think that it is anti-Semitic. But for him, and he is painting a picture, because he also says that to this day, you know, we never got the list of who those people were that were brought in by the government, the Asgaries, the this. You know, we never got that list, so we couldn’t decommission them, and they remain undetected to this day, you know? And that was very, I mean, you could hear, you were there, you heard the gasp in the room as he said that.
Well, I think that probably also to just pick up-
Hey, we’ve got the video back. Yeah?
Ah, okay. Well, let’s carry on with that.
Let’s play. Let’s carry on with the video.
You will recall that earlier I said that there were two reasons for the radical change between Dr. Endress’ ages one and two, the one economic and exogenous, and the other political and endogenous. In terms of the latter, I was referring to the change in the leadership of the ANC engineered by the counter-revolution, one of the major events during this first 30 years of our democracy. I will now discuss another important event which occurred during this 30-year period. I’d like to believe that nobody would contest the assertion that governance in any country would face serious challenges if denied access to state revenues, electricity, and a properly functioning economy. The South African Revenue Service, SARS, accounts for 95 to 98% of state revenues. From age one into age two, Dr. Endress’ ages, SARS had outperformed itself in terms of revenue collection, with each year being better than the one before. However, this changed from the 2014/2015 financial year, with SARS underperforming in an ascending manner in the following years. Alarmed at this development, which meant an ever-shrinking pool of state revenues, President Ramaphosa appointed a judicial commission of inquiry into SARS, empowered to make the necessary recommendation to address whatever shortcomings the commission might have unearthed. Led by Justice Robert Nugent, this became known as the Nugent Commission. It submitted its final report to the president in December 2018. To cut to the bone, the Nugent Commission made the startling finding that some people had set out to destroy SARS, and it explained in detail how this was done.
And obviously, the destruction of SARS would mean the destruction of the democratic state, given its unique place in terms of the provision of state revenues. It was exactly the success of this process of destruction which had resulted in the escalating underperformance of SARS from the financial year 2014/15, which set off the alarm, obviously contrary to the wishes of those who wanted to destroy the service. And one of the things which stood out in the Nugent Commission report was the role that well-known US business consultancy, Bain and Company, had played in planning and participating in the attempted destruction of SARS. The commission also detailed the extensive process of consultation which had taken place between Bain and then-President Jacob Zuma. President Zuma himself had appointed the judicial commission of inquiry into state capture which was led by Justice Raymond Zondo, and was therefore called his Zondo Commission. This commission also looked into SARS, building on the work already done by the Nugent Commission. And here let me quote some of what the Zondo Commission says, quote, “The SARS evidence is a clear example of how the private sector colluded with the executive, including President Zuma, to capture an institution that was highly regarded internationally and render it ineffective.
All his actions and events aimed at dismantling SARS cannot be coincidental. This is especially so in the light of the planning document which the commission has been shown. The only feasible conclusion is that the organisation was deliberately captured, and President Zuma and Mr. Moyane, Moyane who was the CEO of SARS, the head of SARS, the only feasible conclusion is that the organisation was deliberately captured and President Zuma and Mr. Moyane played critical roles in the capture of SARS and dismantling it in the way it was done during Mr. Moyane’s term as commissioner. It is a notable feature of the SARS evidence, in contrast to the rest of the evidence which the commission had, that this is one of the few instances where President Zuma was himself directly and personally involved in the activities and plans to take over a government entity, namely SARS. Another was Eskom, which is discussed elsewhere in this report,” unquote. Obviously, this confronts us with a conundrum. Here, according to the judicial commissions, we have a head of government who joins a process to reduce the very revenues he needs to enable the government to discharge its responsibilities up to the point of the possible collapse of that government. So how do we explain this puzzle? The only logical way to explain it is that challenging as it might be even to comprehend, here we are dealing with a wolf in sheep’s skin.
Accordingly, in terms of this, I said it’s only logical way to explain it. Accordingly, in terms of this logic, the involvement of such a wolf, so to speak, in the effort to destroy SARS would not be surprising as it would represent the discharge of his responsibilities as part of the counter-revolution, and time will tell whether this logical deduction is in fact correct. Virtually, no country in the world, including ours, can function properly without electricity. It would therefore be obvious that to realise its objective to ensure the failure of an ANC-led government, the counter-revolution would do its best to compromise the supply of electricity to democratic South Africa. There is a particular false narrative that has attended the electricity crisis which has affected our country for some years. And that narrative says that Eskom warned the government as early as 1998 that if no immediate steps were taken to build new generation capacity, the country would suffer from serious load shedding from 2007. It is then said that the government ignored this alert and that it is this failure on the part of the government which lies at the base of the energy crisis that has affected our country for some time. As I’ve said, this is a false proposition advanced to hide the reality of what has negatively affected the availability of electricity at various moments. Some among us will recall that in 2007, speaking as a then head of government, I apologised on behalf of the government for the instances of localised load shedding which had taken place and continued in the same vein in 2008 after the first instance of national load shedding in January of that year.
With regard to the latter, it was only 11 years later, in 2019, that we discovered that our apology had been misplaced. This was because the January 2008 national load shedding was completely unnecessary and had been deliberately engineered from within Eskom, and had absolutely nothing to do with any failures on the part of government. In 2017, a special investigation unit, an SIU, submitted a report to then-President Jacob Zuma entitled: On the Investigation into the Affairs of Eskom Holdings SOC Limited. And among others, this SIU report said: “that Eskom’s executive management and board of directors did not heed warnings from the employees of Eskom that Eskom was facing a potential shortage of coal by December 2007. The declaration of an emergency could thus have been avoided with the exercise of reasonable care. The board of directors did not respond to warnings that the coal stocks were reaching dangerously low levels prior to January 2008, and that the threat of load shedding was a strong possibility,” unquote. In other words, the national load shedding of January 2008 took place because the managers of the power stations did not replenish coal despite warnings from inside Eskom to do so. Simply, the Eskom station managers had defied instructions to replenish their coal stocks until they literally ran out of coal at many of the power stations. This was a deliberate attempt to compromise the supply of electricity. At the beginning of 2004, the government issued the directive that Eskom had to build new power stations, and two of these were Medupi and Kusile. And over the years, regular Eskom communications have reported that it started building Medupi in 2007, three years after the government directive. This report is incorrect and tries to hide some bitter truth.
The reality is that Eskom started building Medupi much earlier than 2007. And the truth is that the company or companies commissioned to prepare the site for the building of the power station did not do its geotechnical work properly. The result is that when construction started, the building sank into the soil. Construction had to stop, what had been built had to be destroyed, and work had to start afresh to prepare the site for construction. At some point, Eskom appointed the law firm Dentons to carry out a forensic investigation of the company to help it overcome its challenges. And with regard to this matter of failure to prepare the building site properly, this is what Dentons says, quote, “This led to changes in the foundations which caused significant cost increases and substantial delays of the order of 12 to 18 months.” So the building of this new generating capacity was delayed by that period of time because of the wrong things that were done with regard to preparing the site for construction. Here was a deliberate attempt to delay the building of a new generating capacity. And during February 2023, last year, the then Eskom CEO, Mr. Andre de Ruyter, submitted an affidavit to the Pretoria High Court, the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, and among others said correctly, quote, “In 2005, Eskom had not built a new power station for approximately 16 years. Eskom had significantly reduced its skills and capacity to execute mega construction projects such as Kusile and Medupi.
Strangely, however, instead of awarding turnkey contracts for the building of the new power stations, Medupi, Kusile, and Ingula, Eskom awarded 34 contract packages at Medupi, 46 contract packages at Kusile, and 27 such packages at Ingula. This means that there was no load shedding for at least six years after the 2008 incident. The question is what happened to end this happy situation? And once again, Dentons answers this question, saying that Eskom had been underspending on capital expenditure to maintain its generating equipment since 1999 to 2000. And that during the same period, Eskom had deprioritized maintenance, that Eskom paid no attention to the fact that generation plant of similar age in other parts of the world was very significantly outpacing its own, demonstrating that it was not age which caused the underperformance of the Eskom plant, but the manner in which the generating plant had been operated, maintained, and refurbished.” That was Dentons. And the Eskom engineers knew very well that failure to do the right thing about the maintenance and refurbishment of generating plant would result in power failure. The practical result is that this failure contributed directly to the counter-revolutionary objective to compromise the supply of electricity to our country. The major business leader Mr. Johan Rupert reflected on this investment environment when he said in December 2018, and I quote, “We let President Mbeki down because he created a perfect scenario for business to invest.
But you know what? I think we could not believe our luck. We should have invested more from the private sector during that period. Before foreigners invest, they look at us,” unquote. Of course, there are other instances we can discuss concerning this destruction visited on our country by the counter-revolution in its determined effort to defeat die rooi gevaar represented by the ANC and its NDR. I’m talking here about such institutions as the South African Police Service, SAPS, National Prosecuting Authority, the NPA, Department of Health and others across the board, including the state-owned enterprises. Before I conclude my remarks about the specific role of the counter-revolution, I must cite what a former deputy head of the Apartheid South African Army, General Roland de Vries, said recently about the mayhem which took place in July 2021, largely in KZN and in Gauteng. And during an interview earlier this month, General de Vries was asked a question about what would happen in a situation where the state loses control of the stability of this country. And here is part of what he said, quote, “In a sense, I would like to relate that to what happened in KZN in July 2021. On the 11th and 12th of July, if I can remember correctly, after Zuma was incarcerated, KZN started burning overnight, and brand new Range Rovers and BMWs without number plates, and people dressed in red T-shirts and caps just driving into the rural areas and the cities, and the plundering started overnight. And it was, to my mind, a well-orchestrated revolutionary threat which materialised as if by signal, as if by magic.”
Because he says, “It was, to my mind, a well-orchestrated revolutionary threat. I think it’s counter-revolutionary threat which materialised as if by signal, as if by magic. My question is what is the capacity of the present government to contain a serious threat if security and stability are threatened?” And the general says, “The government and the police don’t have control over the security situation in our country,” unquote. I must also speak about the critically important decision adopted by the last two ANC national conferences that the ANC must renew itself as an absolute and urgent priority and for its very survival. The ANC conferences took this position as an acknowledgment that the organisation itself was not in good health, and has been said repeatedly. Essentially, during the years since it assumed state power, the ANC has drawn into it’s ranks people who were only interested in getting into positions of power in government and abusing those positions for self-enrichment at all costs. And in time, some of those older members of the organisation also adopted this stance. This represented a serious corrosion in the quality of some of the members of the ANC, leading to abhorrent behaviour such as embezzlement of public funds and other forms of corruption. And of course, we’re talking here about the governing party. Therefore, it was inevitable that those who ended up in positions of state authority without the value system which was fundamental to the ANC would engage in activities directly opposed to the objective to serve the people.
It would therefore be dishonest not to mention that some of the negative developments during our country’s governance during the past 30 years were a result of negative actions taken by members of the ANC. Fortunately, the ANC itself has recognised the validity of the observation I’ve just made. In its latest and very important policy statement, the 2024 Election Manifesto, it makes some important and relevant commitments. Among others, it said, and I quote, “We admit we made mistakes as ANC, with some members and leaders undermining institutes of the democratic state and advancing selfish personal interests. We’re now raising the level, the intellectual capacity, and enhancing the moral and ethical orientation of our membership. And the living embodiment of a renewed ANC will be members who show exemplary conduct in society by upholding the core values and principles of selfless public service, discipline, and integrity,” unquote. During the 30-year period we’re discussing, the ANC has remained the single largest party, and I believe that whatever the outcome of the forthcoming elections, the ANC will still remain the largest political formation in our country as we begin our next 30-year period.
This reality emphasises the point that the ANC has an obligation truly to be guided by the principles of Batho Pele, whatever role it plays in the public domain. And that ways and means have to be made to make it genuinely accountable in this regard. I believe that one of the most important lessons we must learn from this first 30 years of democracy in our country is that any political party given the responsibility to govern in any sphere of government must practically be held accountable in terms of such good governance, principles and policies as the ANC has listed in its election manifesto. And I’m convinced that is one of the common objectives we must carry forward as a people as we take whatever steps to define the South Africa we want. And during his address to the nation a few days ago on Freedom Day, 27th of April, President Ramaphosa pointed to some of the major challenges our country continues to confront. At the same time, our combined efforts must continue to focus on nation-building, nationally and social cohesion. The South Africa which is visualised in our constitution truly belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.
Yeah, can we stop it there? Can we pause it here? Because this is his “I am an African” speech. But I think, Garreth, a lot of inflammatory things. And it’s seven minutes past, so maybe for another three minutes or so we can just- So many things that were said there, but also so many things we’ve never heard anyone else say publicly from the ANC.
Well, I mean, chief among them, and it becomes, you know, such a source of ire in South Africa that it could very well have more effect than any other dereliction of duty, is this Eskom situation. And here the president, the former President, Thabo Mbeki, saying very clearly that he thinks there was sabotage and that this was a planned and well-executed plan in order to destabilise the government. And he puts the blame fairly and squarely at the feet of these, in inverted commas, counter-revolutionaries, chief among them former President Jacob Zuma. So he’s not splitting any hairs and he’s making it very clear that he’s pointing directly at the former administration.
In the next session, with Colin Bundy, we are going to talk about state capture in more detail and we’re going to talk about Jacob Zuma specifically with regard to that state capture. But the thing that, as I was listening to him say all these things, that kept running in my mind is I wonder if he would’ve said these things had Jacob Zuma not started the MK party and come directly for the ANC’s base and come out to say that Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC of Cyril Ramaphosa have completely failed.
Perhaps not. I don’t know the answer to that question and we will never know, it’s too late to speculate. But now we see MK as a real player on the field, in especially KwaZulu-Natal, and, you know, we’ll see how many votes they get. But it’s a succession plan for the Zuma family if nothing else.
And also interestingly for me, the talk of the counter-revolutionaries and how they are these unnamed people, other than Jacob Zuma, these completely unnamed people that are unknown and unknowable, who may or may not still be within the ANC’s ranks, are the ones who like doing their damnedest to make the ANC fail was also for me quite a- I was just like, “hmm, I don’t know if we can buy that story.” Not at this stage, you know?
You know, the nice thing about a lecture like this is that Thabo Mbeki is allowed to say things and there isn’t anyone allowed to interrupt him or corroborate a different set of facts which, you now, might come up, maybe making him not look quite so innocent and clean.
You know, he did do a Q&A a little bit. He opened up for a Q&A at the end of that session, and I was lucky enough to get to ask one of the questions. And my question was really around this counter-revolutionary issue because, remember, going into that 2007 there was so much talk of uncertainty of whether Thabo Mbeki was going to stand for a third term, who would the next person be? And I asked the question. Quite genuinely, I’d love to hear the answer. And I’ll tell you what he said: “Whether his lack of planning for somebody to succeed him and standing for a third term opened the door to the counter-revolutionaries.”
Oh yeah?
And he just said, you know, the problem he said with succession planning, the way it works in corporations, is it also opens the door for ambitious politics, you know? And people are just busy fighting to be the next person, and you don’t get to see them work and serve the people, which is what they should be doing, serving the people, and therefore be elected because people see the good works that they do. But it was still an incredibly fascinating thing. The whole presentation that he made was about 90 minutes long. We could only get in what we could get in. But still very fascinating. And maybe I’ll ask if we can put up the longer version as a click-through on one of these.
That would be great. I mean, otherwise this has only really been seen in snippets on the news and by people who were actually present at that lecture, so I think it might be interesting to a great many more people.
And yeah, we shot this specifically for “Lockdown” because we were one of the people that requested that he come and talk with us, and then they said we can come and shoot this, so we’ve got it. Let me see if there’s anything. Address audience questions. So here are some questions quickly. and I think we can carry on for another four minutes.
Q&A and Comments:
Q - “Josie Atlases. If we remember that it took 40 years in the desert before getting into Canaan, maybe there’s still time for more patience. But I know that the leaders are all in BMWs, Mercs, and Range Rovers, maybe it could be a bit faster.” That’s just a statement. “It’s quite hard for a government-” This is from Professor Lucy Huberman. “It’s quite hard for any government, even in much more established countries, to last more than 15 years. Okay. Bernard says, "how the rooi gevaar replaced to current dereliction of governance.” I don’t know. Can you maybe understand what that means?
A - No, but I think, you know, the point is well made. And in fact, you and I have interviewed Anthea Jeffery about this, where she’s convinced that the-
The rooi gevaar is alive.
Right. I mean she says that the ANC’s economic policies are absolutely, you know, textbook socialist. And there are lots of people all over the world who believe that that’s true for the ANC. And Thabo Mbeki very, I think, cogently says that that was not his agenda. It may be the agenda of some, but he can say with vigour that it wasn’t something he was pursuing. I just thought it was also interesting he finished the speech, and you didn’t get this bit in because we couldn’t include everything, but I think to that agreement that all the Afrikaners have made, and he read from that, and I thought it was such an interesting way because, you know, we’ve forgotten that Thabo Mbeki was one of the nation builders, as opposed to the people who separate us all by class, and race, and age, and poverty, and/or wealth. And he said, quoting from that Afrikaans traktaat which they’ve all drawn up under Teens Eloff, basically that these are people who want to be a part of the future of this country. These are the people who have a vested interest in the success of South Africa. And he said that we should now join hands and build the country that he had started building and renew our promise to each other. And I thought it was a very positive note to end on. A lot of these politicians would take every opportunity to separate people along various lines, to appeal to the base and primitive instincts, to associate only with those that they look like, sound like, feel like, behave like. And I think that this was quite a move by him. And it doesn’t go unnoticed, I think, by many South Africans who were looking for that.
Q - And he has said. He said it at this speech, but he also has said it almost everywhere I’ve seen him campaigning, that he thinks after the elections, when all of the excitement has died down, we need to, like, as a country, we need to get together and talk it out, right? Figure it out.
A - A national dialogue.
Q - What do we want this country to look like and what are we prepared to do to get it to that place? Maybe that’s a good place to end.
A - That’s a great place to end, and I do hope that we take him up on that and that he is one of the people who puts it together.
So thank you to everybody that tuned in today. Thank you to everybody that tuned in. I hope to see you again in the next session, because it then will actually complete the picture of really the biggest chunk of what the past 30 years has been. These are the two men that were at the helm of the past.
One last thing. That was the perfect ending, but then John says, “could you please post the ‘I am an African’ speech,” and I think we’ve got it.
Okay, can we play it? We’ve got 10 minutes. Can we play it? I don’t know. Let’s ask, because I’ve got the 10 minutes.
If you want to leave-
Let’s just play it. If you want to leave, you can leave.
Here it is for the rest of the people. Thank you so much, everybody.
“I am an African”. I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas, and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land. My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightning have been a cause both of trembling and of hope. The fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild blooms of the citizens of the veld. The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil coloured waters of the Lekoa, iGqili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi have all been panels of the set on the natural stage on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of the day. At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba, and the pestilential mosquito. A human presence among all of these, a feature on the face of our native land just defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say I am an African. I owe my being to the Khoi and the San, whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape.
They who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen. They were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and independence. And they, who, as a people, perished in the result. Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of the former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence, which in its remembering should teach us not and never to be inhuman again. I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still part of me. In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture, a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done. I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom. My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians, as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.
I am the grandchild who lays flowers on the Boer graves at St. Helena, the Bahamas, and the Vrouemonument, who sees in the minds eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk; death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins. I’m the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which our stomachs yearn. I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the fact solely that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence. Being part of all of these people, and in the knowledge that none dares contest that assertion, I shall claim that I’m an African. I have seen our country torn asunder as these, all of whom are my people, engaged one another in a titanic battle, the one to redress a wrong that had been caused by one to another, and the other to defend the indefensible. I have seen what happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the injunction that God created all men and women in his image. I know what it signifies when race and colour are used to determine who is human and who subhuman. I have seen the destruction of all sense of self-esteem, the consequence striving to be what one is not simply to acquire some of the benefits which those who had imposed themselves as masters had ensured that they enjoy.
I have experience of the situation in which race and colour is used to enrich some and impoverish the rest. I have seen the corruption of minds and souls as a result of the pursuit of an ignoble effort to perpetrate a very terrible crime against humanity. I have seen concrete expression of the denial of the dignity of a human being emanating from the conscious, systemic, and systematic oppressive and repressive activities of other human beings. They’re the victims parade with no mask to hide the brutish reality: the beggars, the prostitutes, the street children, those who seek solace in substance abuse, those who have to steal to assuage hunger, those who have to lose their sanity because to be sane is to invite pain. Perhaps the worst among these, who are my people, are those who have learned to kill for a wage. To these, the extent of death is directly proportional to their personal welfare. And so, like pawns in the service of demented souls, they kill in furtherance of the political violence in KwaZulu-Natal. They murder the innocent in the taxi wars. They kill slowly or quickly in order to make profit from the illegal trade in narcotics. They are available for hire when husband wants to murder a wife, and wife husband. Among us, proud the products of our immoral and amoral past, killers who have no sense of the worth of human life, rapists who have absolute disdain for the women of our country, animals who would seek to benefit from the vulnerability of the children, the disabled, and the old, the rapacious who brook no obstacle in their quest for self-enrichment. All this I know, and I know to be true because I’m an African.
Shall we pause it here.
Thank you so much.
[Phumi] Thank you so much. Bye-Bye.