Thabo Mbeki
Encyclopedia
Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki
is a South Africa
n politician who served two terms as the second post-apartheid President of South Africa
from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008. He is also the brother of Moeletsi Mbeki
. On 20 September 2008, he announced his resignation after being recalled by the African National Congress
's National Executive Committee
, following a conclusion by Judge Nicholson of improper interference in the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA)
, including the prosecution of Jacob Zuma
for corruption. On 12 January 2009, the Supreme Court of Appeal unanimously overturned Judge Nicholson’s judgment but the resignation stood.
Thabo Mbeki was the executive face of government in South Africa from 1994. During his time in office the economy grew at an average rate of 4.5% per annum. Mbeki created employment in the middle sectors of the economy and oversaw a fast growing black middle class with the implementation of BEE
. This growth exacerbated the demand for trained professionals strained by emigration due to violent crime, but failed to address unemployment amongst the unskilled bulk of the population. He attracted the bulk of Africa’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and made South Africa the focal point of African growth. He was the architect of NEPAD whose aim is to develop an integrated socio-economic development framework for Africa. He also oversaw the successful building of economic bridges to BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations with the eventual formation of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum to "further political consultation and co-ordination as well as strengthening sectoral co-operation, and economic relations".
Mbeki has mediated in difficult and complex issues on the African continent including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Ivory Coast, and some important peace agreements. He oversaw the transition from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union
(AU). His 'quiet diplomacy' in Zimbabwe, however, is blamed for protracting the survival of Robert Mugabe
's regime at the cost of thousands of lives and intense economic pressure on Zimbabwe's neighbours. He became a vocal leader of the Non-Aligned Movement
in the United Nations and while leveraging South Africa's seat on the Security Council, agitating for reform of the Security Council.
Mbeki has received worldwide criticism for his AIDS stance. He questions the link between viruses and AIDS and believes that the correlation between poverty and the AIDS rate in Africa was a challenge to the viral theory of AIDS. His fate was not helped by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang
and the overhaul of the pharmaceutical industry in South Africa. The delay in distributing antiretroviral drugs is attributed to the ban he placed on their use in public state hospitals, and is also linked to the estimated deaths of some hundreds of thousands. Thabo Mbeki has also been criticized for responding on negative comments made about governance by accusing them of racism.
(Transkei
), what is now the Eastern Cape
province of South Africa, Mbeki is one of four children of Epainette
and Govan Mbeki
. His father was a stalwart of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party
. He is a native Xhosa
speaker. His parents were both teachers and activists in a rural area of ANC strength, and Mbeki describes himself as "born into the struggle"; a portrait of Karl Marx
sat on the family mantelpiece, and a portrait of Mohandas Gandhi was on the wall.
Mbeki attended primary school in Idutywa and Butterworth and acquired a high school education at Lovedale
, Alice. In 1959, he was expelled from school as a result of student strikes and forced to continue studies at home. In the same year, he sat for matriculation examinations at St. John's High School, Umtata. In the ensuing years, he completed British "A" levels examinations and undertook an economics degree as an external student with the University of London
. During this time, the ANC was banned and Mbeki was involved in underground activities in the Pretoria
-Witwatersrand
area. He was also involved in mobilising students in support of the ANC call for a stay at home to be held in protest of South Africa's becoming a republic.
In December 1961, Mbeki was elected secretary of the African Students' Association. In the following year, he left Africa on instructions of the ANC.
Govan Mbeki had come to the rural Eastern Cape as a political activist after earning two university degrees; he urged his family to make the ANC their family, and of his children, Thabo Mbeki is the one who most clearly followed that instruction, joining the party at age 14 and devoting his life to it thereafter.
, in the United Kingdom
, in 1974.
, working with Walter Sisulu
. After the arrest and imprisonment of Sisulu, Mandela and his father -- and facing a similar fate -- he left South Africa as one of a number of young ANC militants (Umkhonto we Sizwe
cadres) sent abroad to continue their education and their anti-apartheid activities. He ultimately spent 28 years in exile, returning to his homeland only after the release of Nelson Mandela
.
Mbeki spent the early years of his exile in the United Kingdom. In 1962, aged 19, he arrived at the brand-new University of Sussex
, earning first a BA degree in economics, and then remaining to complete a Master's degree
in African studies. While at Sussex he saw himself as a representative of the ANC and helped motivate the university population against apartheid. Still in the UK, he worked in the ANC's London
office on Penton Street. He received military training in the Soviet Union
and lived at different times in Botswana
, Swaziland
and Nigeria
, but his primary base was in Lusaka
, Zambia
, the site of the ANC headquarters.
In 1973, Mbeki was sent to Botswana, where he engaged the Botswana government in discussions to open an ANC office there. He left Botswana in 1974.
In 1975, he became a member of the National Executive Committee
of the ANC. In December 1976, he was sent to Nigeria
as a representative of the ANC.
While in exile, his brother Jama Mbeki, a supporter of the rival Pan Africanist Congress, was killed by agents of the Lesotho
government in 1982 while attempting to assist the Lesotho Liberation Army. His son Kwanda –the product of a liaison in Mbeki's teenage years – was killed while trying to leave South Africa to join his father. When Mbeki finally was able to return home to South Africa and was reunited with his own father, the elder Mbeki told a reporter, "You must remember that Thabo Mbeki is no longer my son. He is my comrade!" A news article pointed out that this was an expression of pride, explaining, "For Govan Mbeki, a son was a mere biological appendage; to be called a comrade, on the other hand, was the highest honour."
Mbeki devoted his life to the ANC and during his years in exile was given increased responsibility. Following the 1976 Soweto riots – a student uprising in the township outside Johannesburg – he initiated a regular radio broadcast from Lusaka, tying ANC followers inside the country to their exiled leaders. Encouraging activists to keep up the pressure on the apartheid regime was a key component in the ANC's campaign to liberate their country. In the late 1970s, Mbeki made a number of trips to the United States
in search of support among U.S. corporations. Literate and funny, he made a wide circle of friends in New York City
. Mbeki was appointed head of the ANC's information department in 1984 and then became head of the international department in 1989, reporting directly to Oliver Tambo
, then President of the ANC. Tambo was Mbeki's long-time mentor.
In 1985, Mbeki was a member of a delegation that began meeting secretly with representatives of the South African business community, and in 1989, he led the ANC delegation that conducted secret talks with the South African government. These talks led to the unbanning of the ANC and the release of political prisoners. He also participated in many of the other important negotiations between the ANC and the government that eventually led to the democratisation of South Africa.
He became a deputy president of South Africa
in May 1994 on the attainment of universal suffrage
(Right To Vote), and sole deputy-president in June 1996. He succeeded Nelson Mandela
as ANC president in December 1997 and as president of the Republic in June 1999 (inaugurated on 16 June); he was subsequently reelected for a second term in April 2004.
(NEPAD) and the African Union
(AU) and has played influential roles in brokering peace deals in Rwanda
, Burundi
, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has also tried to popularise the concept of an African Renaissance
. He sees African dependence on aid and foreign intervention as a major barrier to the continent's being taken seriously in the world of economics and politics, and sees structures like NEPAD and the AU as part of a process in which Africa solves its own problems without relying on outside assistance.
Mbeki, as an ANC insider and while president, was a major force behind the continued neoliberal structure of the South African economy. He drew criticism from the left for his perceived abandonment of state-interventionist social democratic economic policies – such as nationalization, land reform, and democratic capital controls – prescribed by the Freedom Charter
, the ANC's seminal document.
Mbeki has sometimes been characterised as remote and academic, although in his second campaign for Presidency in 2004, many observers described him as finally relaxing into a more traditional campaign mode, sometimes dancing at events and even kissing babies. Yet, the fact that this was remarkable confirms the broader observation that Mbeki values the exercise of centralised policy over demonstrations of grassroots populism.
Mbeki used his weekly column in the ANC newsletter ANC Today
, to produce discussions on a variety of topics. He sometimes used his column to deliver pointed invectives against political opponents, and at other times used it as a kind of professor of political theory, educating ANC cadres on the intellectual justifications for ANC policy. Although these columns were remarkable for their dense prose, they often were used to influence news. Although Mbeki did not generally make a point of befriending or courting reporters, his columns and news events often yielded good results for his administration by ensuring that his message is a primary driving force of news coverage.
Indeed, in initiating his columns, Mbeki stated his view that the bulk of South African media sources did not speak for or to the South African majority, and stated his intent to use ANC Today to speak directly to his constituents rather than through the media.
, he cited Wikipedia
, quoted at length a discussion of Katrina's lessons on American inequality from the Native American publication Indian Country Today
, and then included excerpts from a David Brooks
column in the New York Times in a discussion of why the events of Katrina illustrated the necessity for global development and redistribution of wealth.
His penchant for quoting diverse and sometimes obscure sources, both from the Internet and from a wide variety of books, made his column an interesting parallel to political blogs although the ANC does not describe it in these terms. His views on AIDS
(see below) were supported by Internet searching which led him to so-called "AIDS denialist" websites; in this case, Mbeki's use of the Internet was roundly criticised and even ridiculed by opponents.
's proximity, strong trade links, and similar struggle credentials place South Africa in a unique position to influence politics in Zimbabwe
. Zimbabwe's hyperinflation
since 2000 was a matter of increasing concern to Britain (as the former colonial power) and other donors to that country. High-ranking diplomatic visits to South Africa repeatedly attempted to persuade Mbeki to take a harder line with Robert Mugabe
over violent state-sponsored attacks on political opponents and opposition movements, expropriation of white-owned farms by ZANU-PF allied "war veterans"
, sanctioning against the press, and infringements on the independence of the judiciary.
Rather than publicly criticising Mugabe's government, Mbeki chose 'quiet diplomacy' over 'megaphone diplomacy' - his term for the West's increasingly forthright condemnation of Mugabe's rule. Mbeki is even quoted claiming "there is no crisis" in Zimbabwe, despite increased evidence of political violence and murders, hyperinflation, and the influx of political refugees into South Africa.
To quote Mbeki:
. The run-up was shadowed by a difficult decision to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth
. The full meeting of the Commonwealth had failed in a consensus to decide on the issue, and they tasked the previous, present (at the time), and future leaders of Commonwealth (respectively President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria
, John Howard
of Australia
, and Mbeki of South Africa) to come to a consensus between them over the issue. On 20 March 2002 (10 days after the elections, which Mugabe won) Howard announced that they had agreed to suspend Zimbabwe for a year.
, President Mbeki was quoted as saying: I have no reason to think that anything will happen … that anybody in Zimbabwe will act in a way that will militate against the elections being free and fair. [...] As far as I know, things like an independent electoral commission, access to the public media, the absence of violence and intimidation … those matters have been addressed.
Minerals and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
led the largest foreign observer mission, the SADC Observer Mission, to oversee the Zimbabwe elections. Contrary to other international missions and parts of the SA Parliamentary Mission, the mission congratulated the people of Zimbabwe for holding a peaceful, credible and well-mannered election which reflects the will of the people. The Democratic Alliance delegation (part SA Parliamentary Observer Mission) clashed with the minister and eventually submitted a separate report contradicting her findings. The elections were widely denounced and many accused Zanu-PF of massive and often violent intimidation, using food to buy votes, and large discrepancies in the tallying of votes.
an President Robert Mugabe
and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the face of denials from both parties. A fact-finding mission in 2004 by Congress of South African Trade Unions
to Zimbabwe led to their widely-publicised deportation back to South Africa which reopened the debate, even within the ANC, as to whether Mbeki's policy of 'quiet diplomacy' was constructive.
On 5 February 2006 Mbeki said in an interview with SABC television that Zimbabwe had missed a chance to resolve its political crisis in 2004 when secret talks to agree on a new constitution ended in failure. He claimed that he saw a copy of a new constitution signed by all parties. The job of promoting dialogue between the ruling party and the opposition was likely made more difficult by divisions within the MDC, splits to which the president alluded when he stated that the MDC were "sorting themselves out." In turn, the MDC unanimously rejected this assertion. (MDC-Mutambara Faction's) secretary general Welshman Ncube
said "We never gave Mbeki a draft constitution - unless it was ZANU PF which did that. Mbeki has to tell the world what he was really talking about."
In May 2007 it was reported that Mbeki had been partisan and taken sides with Zanu-PF in his role as mediator. He had given pre-conditions to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change before the dialogue could resume while giving no conditions to the ZANU-PF government. He required that the MDC accept and recognize Robert Mugabe was the president of Zimbabwe, and the MDC accept the 2002 presidential election results despite wide-spread belief of being unfree, unfair, and fraudulent.
, Sasol
, Nedbank
and Barloworld
, said that government should stop its unsuccessful behind-the-scenes attempts to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis and start vociferously condemning what was happening in that country. Clewlow's sentiments reflected the South African private sector's increasing impatience with Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy" and were echoed by Business Unity South Africa (BUSA), the umbrella body for business organisations in South Africa.
As the company's chairman, he said in Barloworld's latest annual report that SA's efforts to date were fruitless and that the only means for a solution was for SA "to lead from the front. Our role and responsibility is not just to promote discussion... Our aim must be to achieve meaningful and sustainable change."
. He said on 29 July 2007 that Zimbabwe elections
in March 2008 must be 'free and fair'. An article critical of Mbeki's handling of Mugabe appeared in Forbes
and claimed a peaceful transfer of power in Zimbabwe "will not be because of [Mbeki], but in spite of him."
Ebrahim Fakir, a researcher at the Johannesburg-based Centre for Policy Studies, and Susan Booysen, political analyst at the University of the Witwatersrand, say that Mbeki has botched his legacy over his cautious approach to Mugabe. The media has been very critical - The Washington Post
published a commentary describing Mbeki as a bankrupt democrat and accused him of complicity in "stealing" the Zimbabwean election. The Economist
called Mbeki's actions "unconscionable".
, Thabo Mbeki, announced in Harare
that Robert Mugabe
of ZANU-PF, professor Arthur Mutambara
of MDC-M
and Morgan Tsvangirai
of MDC-T
finally signed the power-sharing agreement – "memorandum of understanding." Mbeki stated: "An agreement has been reached on all items on the agenda ... all of them [Mugabe, Tsvangirai, Mutambara] endorsed the document tonight, and signed it. The formal signing will be done on Monday 10 am. The document will be released then. The ceremony will be attended by the SADC
and other African regional and continental leaders. The leaders will spend the next few days constituting the inclusive government to be announced on Monday. The leaders will work very hard to mobilise support for the people to recover. We hope the world will assist so that this political agreement succeeds." In the signed historic power deal, Mugabe, on 11 September 2008 agreed to surrender day-to-day control of the government and the deal is also expected to result in a de facto
amnesty
for the military and ZANU-PF party leaders. Opposition sources said "Tsvangirai will become prime minister
at the head of a council of ministers, the principal organ of government, drawn from his party
and the president's ZANU-PF party; and Mugabe will remain president and continue to chair a cabinet that will be a largely consultative body, and the real power will lie with Tsvangirai. South Africa’s Business Day
reported, however, that Mugabe was refusing to sign a deal which would curtail his presidential powers. The New York Times said Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for MDC-T
, announced: “This is an inclusive government. The executive power would be shared by the president, the prime minister and the cabinet. Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara have still not decided how to divide the ministries. But Jendayi E. Frazer, the American assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said: “We don’t know what’s on the table, and it’s hard to rally for an agreement when no one knows the details or even the broad outlines”
On 15 September 2008, the leaders of the 14-member Southern African Development Community witnessed the signing of the power-sharing agreement, brokered by Mbeki. With symbolic handshake and warm smiles at the Rainbow Towers hotel, in Harare
, Mugabe and Tsvangirai signed the deal to end violent political crisis provides. As provided, Mugabe will remain president, Morgan Tsvangirai will become prime minister, the MDC will control the police, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF will command the Army, and Arthur Mutambara becomes deputy prime minister.
Mbeki's views on the causes of AIDS
, and in particular the link between HIV and AIDS, and the treatment of AIDS were also much criticised.
In 1995 the International Conference for People Living with HIV
and AIDS was held in South Africa, the first time that the annual conference had been held in Africa. At the time Mbeki was Deputy President and in his official capacity acknowledged the seriousness of the epidemic. The South African Ministry of Health announced that some 850,000 people – 2.1% of the total population – were believed to be HIV-positive. In 2000 the Department of Health outlined a five-year plan to combat AIDS, HIV and sexually transmitted infections. A National AIDS Council was established to oversee the implemenation of the plan.
However, after becoming President, Mbeki changed tack and represented the views of a small group of dissident scientists who claimed that AIDS was not caused by HIV. On 9 July 2000, at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, President Mbeki made a speech that attracted much criticism in that he avoided references to HIV and instead focused mainly on poverty as a powerful co-factor in AIDS diagnosis. His administration was repeatedly accused of failing to respond adequately to the AIDS epidemic, and including failing to authorise and implement an overall national treatment program for AIDS that included anti-retroviral medicines, and in particular an anti-retroviral programme to prevent HIV transmission from pregnant mothers to babies while in the womb.
Mbeki's government did, however, introduce a law allowing cheaper locally-produced generic medicines, and in April 2001 succeeded in defending a legal action brought by transnational pharmaceutical companies to set aside the law. AIDS activists, particularly the Treatment Action Campaign
and its allies, thought that the law was intended to support a cheap antiretroviral drugs programme and applauded Mbeki's government.
However, the Treatment Action Campaign
and its allies were eventually forced to resort to the South African Courts which in 2002 ordered the government to make the drug nevirapine available to pregnant women to help prevent mother to child transmission of HIV. Notwithstanding and despite international drug companies offering free or cheap antiretroviral drugs, until 2003, South Africans with HIV who used the public sector health system could only get treatment for opportunistic infections they suffered because of their weakened immune systems, but could not get antiretrovirals designed to specifically target HIV. In November 2003, the government finally approved a plan to make antiretroviral treatment publicly available. It appears that this was only after the Cabinet had overruled the President.
In November 2008, The New York Times
reported that due to Thabo Mbeki's rejection of scientific consensus
on AIDS and his embrace of AIDS denialism, an estimated 365,000 people had perished in South Africa
.
(who became president of South Africa in 2009) went on trial for allegedly raping an HIV-positive woman. He argued that she had consented to sex and he was eventually found not guilty, but attracted controversy when he stated that he had showered after sex in the belief that this would reduce his chances of becoming infected with HIV. Criticism of the government's response to AIDS heightened, with UN special envoy Stephen Lewis
attacking the government as "obtuse and negligent" at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto. At the end of the year, the government announced a draft framework to tackle AIDS and pledged to improve antiretroviral drug access.
, who had served as health minister since June 1999, and was promoting nutritional approaches (the infamous "African potatoes and garlic") to AIDS while highlighting the toxicities of antiretroviral drugs. This led critics to question whether the same leadership that opposed ARV treatment would effectively carry out the treatment plan. Implementation was slow requiring a court judgement to eventually force government to distribute ARV's. Delivery was further improved when Thabo Mbeki was ousted, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang re-deployed as the Minister of the Presidency, and Barbara Hogan
deployed to Minister of Health.
which later proved to be ineffective; the episode appeared to have increased his skepticism about the scientific consensus that quickly condemned the drug.
After he assumed the Presidency, he appears to have articulated more clearly his understanding that poverty is a significant co-factor in the prevalence of AIDS and other health problems. He urged political attention be directed to addressing poverty generally rather than only against AIDS specifically. Some speculate that the suspicion engendered by a life in exile and by the colonial domination and control of Africa led Mbeki to react against a portrayal of AIDS as another Western characterisation of Africans as promiscuous and Africa as a continent of disease and hopelessness. For example, speaking to a group of university students in 2001, he struck out against what he viewed as the racism underlying how many in the West characterised AIDS in Africa:
Additionally, his views dovetailed with some broader themes in African politics. Many Africans find it suspicious that black Africans bear the largest share of the AIDS burden, and that the drugs to treat it are expensive and sold mainly by Western pharmaceutical companies. The history of malicious and manipulative health policies of the colonial and apartheid governments in Africa, including biological warfare programs set up by the apartheid state, also help to fuel views that the scientific discourse of AIDS might be a tool for European and American political, cultural or economic agendas.
ANC rules and Mbeki's commitment to the idea of party discipline mean that he may not publicly criticise the current government policy that HIV causes AIDS and that antiretrovirals should be provided. Some critics of Mbeki continued to assert that notwithstanding he continued to influence AIDS policy through his personal views behind the scenes, a charge which his office regularly denies. However, in a 2007 published biography "Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred", author Mark Gevisser
describes how the president, knowing that he was writing the biography, contacted him earlier in 2007. This was to ask whether the author had seen a 100-page paper secretly authored by Mr. Mbeki and distributed anonymously among the ANC leadership six years ago. This paper compared orthodox AIDS scientists to latter-day Nazi concentration camp doctors and portrayed black people who accepted orthodox AIDS science as "self-repressed" victims of a slave mentality. It described the "HIV/AIDS thesis" as entrenched in "centuries-old white racist beliefs and concepts about Africans". In the published biography Mr Gevisser describes the president's view of the disease as apparently shaped by an obsession with race, the legacy of colonialism and "sexual shame".
Since release of the biography, President Mbeki's defenders have tried hard to clarify his position as being an AIDS "dissident" as opposed to an AIDS "denier". That is, he accepts that HIV causes AIDS but is a dissident in that he is at odds with prevailing AIDS-focused public health policies, stating that it is only one of many immune deficiency diseases, many of which are associated with poverty, and that political attention and resources should be directed to poverty and immune deficiency diseases generally rather than AIDS specifically.
. On 25 January 2008 the country's deepening power crisis was such that South Africa's (and the world's) largest gold
and platinum
mining companies were forced to shut down operations. Eskom
(the national power supplier) and the government both apologized for the blackouts and in his next-to-last State of the Nation speech Mbeki devoted nearly three pages to the electricity crisis, repeating the apologies of Eskom and the government. Mbeki blamed the power shortages on increased demand caused by years of economic growth and the provision of electricity to black townships that were not connected in the apartheid era. But Mbeki also admitted the government had failed to heed warnings from Eskom (the earliest 10 years previously) that without new power stations Eskom might not be able to meet demand by 2007. Each year over the preceding 10 years, Eskom had produced annual Integrated Strategic Electricity Plans each setting out scenarios of future investment requirements to cope with projected increased demand, but although projections of average demand growth in the period 2001–2005 had been accurate, no investment had been forthcoming. Mbeki failed to respond to allegations that the government’s black empowerment strategy had been a root cause of the problem in that small and medium sized black entrepreneurs, in preference to large corporations, had been awarded coal
supply tenders. The policy of giving preference to small suppliers had caused problems in securing reliable supplies of coal, and had also, because small suppliers did not have the capital to invest in rail or conveyor belts infrastructure but used coal trucks, accelerated the wear and tear damage to the roads around the power stations. Warnings highlighted in several of Eskom's annual reports, starting in 2003, had been ignored not only by the Eskom board but also its political masters, Mbeki’s government.
The power problems were further exacerbated by Mbeki's government policy of attracting energy-intensive industry (such as Aluminium
smelters) through the carrot of cheap electricity. This meant that, as Eskom’s excess capacity ran out and became a deficit, the South African government finds itself contractually bound to provide power to energy-intensive industries. Despite this meaning the rest of the country experienced traffic problems and business disruption due to the blackouts. For South Africa to remain a desirable foreign investment destination the country must be seen to honour its contractual obligations. To shut down the smelters is not a simple process, said one analyst. Government would be paying the cost of effects all through the relevant parties aluminium value chain – its aluminium refineries and bauxite ore mines in other countries.
In January 2007, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM)
draft report on South Africa was released. This noted that South Africa had the world's second-highest murder rate, with about 50 people a day being killed, and that although serious crime was reported as falling, security analysts said that the use of violence in robberies, and rape, were more common. Mbeki in response said in an interview that fears of crime were exaggerated.
In December 2007 the final African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) report on South Africa, again suggested that there was an unacceptably high level of violent crime in the country. President Mbeki said the suggestion of unacceptably high violent crime appeared to be an acceptance by the panel of what he called "a populist view". He challenged some of the statistics on crime, which he noted may have resulted from a weak information base, leading to wrong conclusions. Although rape statistics had been obtained from the South African Police Service, "this only denotes the incidents of rape that were reported, some of which could have resulted in acquittals" Mbeki indicated.
attacks on foreigners, mainly Zimbabweans who had fled their country following the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy. The migrants were blamed for high levels of unemployment, housing shortages and crime.
Following the riots Mbeki was criticised for ignoring the scale of the problem and failing to deal with the causes of it. The Zimbabwe Exiles Group accused him of being "more concerned with appeasing Mr. Mugabe than recognising the scale of the problem caused by the flood of Zimbabweans into South Africa."
In response to the violence President Mbeki announced he would set up a panel of experts to investigate the riots, and authorized military force against rioters. This is the first time that such an authorization of military force was used by the government since the end of apartheid.
Emeritus
of Cape Town
, Desmond Tutu
, criticised President Mbeki for surrounding himself with "yes-men", not doing enough to improve the position of the poor and for promoting economic policies that only benefited a small black elite. He also accused Mbeki and the ANC of suppressing public debate. Mbeki responded that Tutu had never been an ANC member and defended the debates that took place within ANC branches and other public forums. He also asserted his belief in the value of democratic discussion by quoting the Chinese slogan "let a hundred flowers bloom", referring to the brief Hundred Flowers Campaign
within the Chinese Communist Party in 1956–57.
The ANC Today newsletter featured several analyses of the debate, written by Mbeki and the ANC. The latter suggested that Tutu was an "icon" of "white elites", thereby suggesting that his political importance was overblown by the media; and while the article took pains to say that Tutu had not sought this status, it was described in the press as a particularly pointed and personal critique of Tutu. Tutu responded that he would pray for Mbeki as he had prayed for the officials of the apartheid government.
from his post as Deputy President of South Africa
, after Zuma was implicated in a corruption scandal. In October 2005, some supporters of Zuma (who remained deputy president of the ANC) burned T-shirt
s portraying Mbeki's picture at a protest. In late 2005, Zuma faced new rape charges, which dimmed his political prospects. There was visible split between Zuma's supporters and Mbeki's allies in the ANC.
In February 2006, Mbeki told the SABC that he and the ANC had no intention to change the Constitution of the country in order to permit him a third term in office. He stated, "By the end of 2009, I will have been in a senior position in government for 15 years. I think that's too long."
Mbeki, although barred by the Constitution of South Africa from seeking a third term as president of the country, in 2007 entered the race to be President of the ANC (no term limit exists for the position of ANC president), for a third term, in a close battle with Jacob Zuma. He lost this vote against Jacob Zuma on the 18 December 2007 at the ANC conference in Polokwane
. Zuma went on to be the ANC's presidential candidate in the 2009 general election
.
High Court Judge Chris Nicholson
ruled that Zuma's corruption charges were unlawful on procedural grounds, adding there was reason to believe the charges against Zuma had been politically motivated, thereby clearing the way for Zuma to run for president. Mbeki filed affidavit
and applied to the Constitutional Court to appeal
this ruling: "It was improper for the court to make such far-reaching 'vexatious, scandalous and prejudicial' findings concerning me, to be judged and condemned on the basis of the findings in the Zuma matter. The interests of justice, in my respectful submission would demand that the matter be rectified. These adverse findings have led to my being recalled by my political party, the ANC—a request I have acceded to as a committed and loyal member of the ANC for the past 52 years. I fear that if not rectified, I might suffer further prejudice." Tlali Tlali, National Prosecuting Authority
spokesman, stated by phone from Pretoria
, on 23 September: "We have received the papers. It's under consideration."
Having "made it a point not to contest this decision" of the ANC NEC that Mbeki was no longer fit to lead South Africa, he formally announced his resignation on 21 September 2008, at 19:30 South African time (17:30 UTC
), as a result of the ANC National Executive Committee
's decision no longer to support him in parliament. This came a few days after the dismissal of a trial against ANC President Jacob Zuma
on charges of corruption due to procedural errors. Allusions were made in the ruling to possible political interference by Mbeki and others in his prosecution. Parliament convened on 22 September and accepted his resignation with effect from 25 September; however, because an MP for the Freedom Front opposition party declared his objection to the resignation, a debate was set to take place the following day.
In cases of such a void in the presidency, the constitution regulates the replacement to serve as the interim president: either the deputy president, the speaker of parliament or any MP (Member of Parliament), as chosen by parliament, can take the role of president of the country until the next election. ANC president Jacob Zuma, who was elected president after the next general election, was not eligible as he was at the time none of these.
The current deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
was unlikely to be chosen either, apparently due to her close ties to Mbeki and because her husband, Bulelani Ngcuka
was involved in the decision to charge Zuma with corruption. As a result the Speaker of Parliament, Baleka Mbete
, had been cited as the likely caretaker president; however, speaking on behalf of the ANC, Zuma strongly hinted at ANC Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, who is an MP, becoming Mbeki's replacement for the remainder of the current term of parliament, which ended in early 2009. Although Zuma could put pressure on the government and his party to choose Motlanthe, the replacement president had to be decided by parliament.
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
, Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad
and Minister of Science and Technology Mosibudi Mangena
all announced their intentions of resigning.
Nathi Mthethwa, Chief Whip
of the ruling African National Congress
(ANC) stated that Mbeki's resignation would take effect on 25 September 2008. ANC President Jacob Zuma said that his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe, would become acting president until 2009 general elections: "I am convinced – if given that responsibility – he (Motlanthe) would be equal to the task." The ANC confirmed that "Kgalema Motlanthe is to become caretaker president until 2009 elections, with Baleka Mbete being appointed deputy president."
confirmed on his Facebook
page that "i [sic] liked TM's message". It was noted, though, that, despite having been invited, Mbeki had failed to attend a COPE rally the week before.
, Boston
, in 1994. In 1995, he received honorary doctorate from the University of South Africa
and an honorary doctorate of laws from Sussex University. Mbeki was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rand Afrikaans University
in 1999. In 2000 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws from Glasgow Caledonian University
. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in commercial sciences by the University of Stellenbosch.
, Dora Bakoyannis
, awarded Mbeki with the City of Athens Medal of Honour in 2005. During Mbeki's official visit to Sudan
in 2005, he was awarded Sudan's Insignia of Honour in recognition of his role in resolving conflicts and working for development in the Continent. In 2007, Mbeki was made a Knight of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem
at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town
by the current grand prior, Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester
(born 18 June 1942).
. He received the Newsmaker of the year award from Pretoria News Press Association in 2000 and repeated the honour in 2008, this time under the auspices of media research company Monitoring South Africa. In honour of his commitment to democracy in the new South Africa, Mbeki was awarded the Oliver Tambo
/ Johnny Makatini Freedom Award in 2000. Mbeki was awarded the Peace and Reconciliation Award at the Gandhi Awards for Reconciliation in Durban
in 2003. In 2004, Mbeki was awarded the Good Brother Award by Washington, D.C.
's National Congress of Black Women for his commitment to gender equality and the emancipation of women in South Africa. In 2005, he was also awarded the Champion of the Earth Award
by the United Nations
. During the European-wide Action Week Against Racism in 2005, Mbeki was awarded the Rotterdamse Jongeren Raad (RJR) Antidiscrimination Award by the Netherlands. In 2006, he was awarded the Presidential Award for his outstanding service to economic growth and investor confidence in South Africa and Africa and for his role in the international arena by the South African Chambers of Commerce and Industry. In 2007 Mbeki was awarded the Confederation of African Football
's Order of Merit for his contribution to football on the continent.
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is a South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n politician who served two terms as the second post-apartheid President of South Africa
President of South Africa
The President of the Republic of South Africa is the head of state and head of government under South Africa's Constitution. From 1961 to 1994, the head of state was called the State President....
from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008. He is also the brother of Moeletsi Mbeki
Moeletsi Mbeki
Moeletsi Mbeki is a political economist and the deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs, an independent think tank based at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is the younger brother of former President Thabo Mbeki and son of ANC leader Govan Mbeki...
. On 20 September 2008, he announced his resignation after being recalled by the African National Congress
African National Congress
The African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
's National Executive Committee
National Executive Committee (African National Congress)
The ANC National Executive Committee is the chief executive organ of the South African political party, the African National Congress. It is elected at every National Conference; the executive committee, in turn, elects a National Working Committee for day-to-day decision-making responsibilities.On...
, following a conclusion by Judge Nicholson of improper interference in the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA)
National Prosecuting Authority
The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa , created a single National Prosecution Authority , which is governed by the National Prosecuting Authority Act...
, including the prosecution of Jacob Zuma
Jacob Zuma
Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is the President of South Africa, elected by parliament following his party's victory in the 2009 general election....
for corruption. On 12 January 2009, the Supreme Court of Appeal unanimously overturned Judge Nicholson’s judgment but the resignation stood.
Thabo Mbeki was the executive face of government in South Africa from 1994. During his time in office the economy grew at an average rate of 4.5% per annum. Mbeki created employment in the middle sectors of the economy and oversaw a fast growing black middle class with the implementation of BEE
Black Economic Empowerment
Black Economic Empowerment is a programme launched by the South African government to redress the inequalities of Apartheid by giving previously disadvantaged groups economic opportunities previously not available to them...
. This growth exacerbated the demand for trained professionals strained by emigration due to violent crime, but failed to address unemployment amongst the unskilled bulk of the population. He attracted the bulk of Africa’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and made South Africa the focal point of African growth. He was the architect of NEPAD whose aim is to develop an integrated socio-economic development framework for Africa. He also oversaw the successful building of economic bridges to BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations with the eventual formation of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum to "further political consultation and co-ordination as well as strengthening sectoral co-operation, and economic relations".
Mbeki has mediated in difficult and complex issues on the African continent including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Ivory Coast, and some important peace agreements. He oversaw the transition from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union
African Union
The African Union is a union consisting of 54 African states. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established on 9 July 2002, the AU was formed as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity...
(AU). His 'quiet diplomacy' in Zimbabwe, however, is blamed for protracting the survival of Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...
's regime at the cost of thousands of lives and intense economic pressure on Zimbabwe's neighbours. He became a vocal leader of the Non-Aligned Movement
Non-Aligned Movement
The Non-Aligned Movement is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2011, the movement had 120 members and 17 observer countries...
in the United Nations and while leveraging South Africa's seat on the Security Council, agitating for reform of the Security Council.
Mbeki has received worldwide criticism for his AIDS stance. He questions the link between viruses and AIDS and believes that the correlation between poverty and the AIDS rate in Africa was a challenge to the viral theory of AIDS. His fate was not helped by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang
Manto Tshabalala-Msimang
Dr. Mantombazana 'Manto' Edmie Tshabalala-Msimang was a South African politician. She was Deputy Minister of Justice from 1996 to 1999 and controversially served as Minister of Health from 1999 to 2008 under President Thabo Mbeki...
and the overhaul of the pharmaceutical industry in South Africa. The delay in distributing antiretroviral drugs is attributed to the ban he placed on their use in public state hospitals, and is also linked to the estimated deaths of some hundreds of thousands. Thabo Mbeki has also been criticized for responding on negative comments made about governance by accusing them of racism.
Early life
Born and raised in IdutywaIdutywa
Dutywa is a town in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, formerly part of the Transkei bantustan. It is the birthplace of Thabo Mbeki, who became President of South Africa in 1999. It is 35 kilometres north of Gcuwa on the N2 road...
(Transkei
Transkei
The Transkei , officially the Republic of Transkei , was a Bantustan—an area set aside for members of a specific ethnicity—and nominal parliamentary democracy in the southeastern region of South Africa...
), what is now the Eastern Cape
Eastern Cape
The Eastern Cape is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are Port Elizabeth and East London. It was formed in 1994 out of the "independent" Xhosa homelands of Transkei and Ciskei, together with the eastern portion of the Cape Province...
province of South Africa, Mbeki is one of four children of Epainette
Epainette Mbeki
Epainette Mbeki , commonly known as "MaMbeki", is the mother of former South African president Thabo Mbeki and widow of political activist Govan Mbeki. She lives in Ngcingwane, a rural hamlet near Dutywa, one of South Africa's poorest municipalities...
and Govan Mbeki
Govan Mbeki
Govan Archibald Mvuyelwa Mbeki was a South African politician, and father of the former South African president Thabo Mbeki and political economist Moeletsi Mbeki...
. His father was a stalwart of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party is a political party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H...
. He is a native Xhosa
Xhosa language
Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said...
speaker. His parents were both teachers and activists in a rural area of ANC strength, and Mbeki describes himself as "born into the struggle"; a portrait of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
sat on the family mantelpiece, and a portrait of Mohandas Gandhi was on the wall.
Mbeki attended primary school in Idutywa and Butterworth and acquired a high school education at Lovedale
Lovedale (South Africa)
Lovedale was a mission station and educational institute in the VictoriaEast division of the Cape Province, South Africa...
, Alice. In 1959, he was expelled from school as a result of student strikes and forced to continue studies at home. In the same year, he sat for matriculation examinations at St. John's High School, Umtata. In the ensuing years, he completed British "A" levels examinations and undertook an economics degree as an external student with the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
. During this time, the ANC was banned and Mbeki was involved in underground activities in the Pretoria
Pretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...
-Witwatersrand
Witwatersrand
The Witwatersrand is a low, sedimentary range of hills, at an elevation of 1700–1800 metres above sea-level, which runs in an east-west direction through Gauteng in South Africa. The word in Afrikaans means "the ridge of white waters". Geologically it is complex, but the principal formations...
area. He was also involved in mobilising students in support of the ANC call for a stay at home to be held in protest of South Africa's becoming a republic.
In December 1961, Mbeki was elected secretary of the African Students' Association. In the following year, he left Africa on instructions of the ANC.
Govan Mbeki had come to the rural Eastern Cape as a political activist after earning two university degrees; he urged his family to make the ANC their family, and of his children, Thabo Mbeki is the one who most clearly followed that instruction, joining the party at age 14 and devoting his life to it thereafter.
Marriage and family
Mbeki married his wife Zanele (née Dlamini) at Farnham CastleFarnham Castle
Farnham Castle is a castle in Farnham, Surrey, England .First built in 1138 by Henri de Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror, Bishop of Winchester, the castle was to become the home of the Bishops of Winchester for over 800 years. The original building was demolished by Henry II in 1155 after...
, in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, in 1974.
Exile and return
After leaving the Eastern Cape, Thabo Mbeki lived in JohannesburgJohannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
, working with Walter Sisulu
Walter Sisulu
Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu was a South African anti-apartheid activist and member of the African National Congress .-Family and Education:...
. After the arrest and imprisonment of Sisulu, Mandela and his father -- and facing a similar fate -- he left South Africa as one of a number of young ANC militants (Umkhonto we Sizwe
Umkhonto we Sizwe
Umkhonto we Sizwe , translated "Spear of the Nation," was the armed wing of the African National Congress which fought against the South African apartheid government. MK launched its first guerrilla attacks against government installations on 16 December 1961...
cadres) sent abroad to continue their education and their anti-apartheid activities. He ultimately spent 28 years in exile, returning to his homeland only after the release of Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
.
Mbeki spent the early years of his exile in the United Kingdom. In 1962, aged 19, he arrived at the brand-new University of Sussex
University of Sussex
The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....
, earning first a BA degree in economics, and then remaining to complete a Master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in African studies. While at Sussex he saw himself as a representative of the ANC and helped motivate the university population against apartheid. Still in the UK, he worked in the ANC's London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
office on Penton Street. He received military training in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and lived at different times in Botswana
Botswana
Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana , is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. The citizens are referred to as "Batswana" . Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966...
, Swaziland
Swaziland
Swaziland, officially the Kingdom of Swaziland , and sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique...
and Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, but his primary base was in Lusaka
Lusaka
Lusaka is the capital and largest city of Zambia. It is located in the southern part of the central plateau, at an elevation of about 1,300 metres . It has a population of about 1.7 million . It is a commercial centre as well as the centre of government, and the four main highways of Zambia head...
, Zambia
Zambia
Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....
, the site of the ANC headquarters.
In 1973, Mbeki was sent to Botswana, where he engaged the Botswana government in discussions to open an ANC office there. He left Botswana in 1974.
In 1975, he became a member of the National Executive Committee
National Executive Committee
The National Executive Committee or NEC is the chief administrative body of the UK Labour Party. Its composition has changed over the years, and includes representatives of affiliated trade unions, the Parliamentary Labour Party and European Parliamentary Labour Party, Constituency Labour Parties,...
of the ANC. In December 1976, he was sent to Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
as a representative of the ANC.
While in exile, his brother Jama Mbeki, a supporter of the rival Pan Africanist Congress, was killed by agents of the Lesotho
Lesotho
Lesotho , officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a landlocked country and enclave, surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. It is just over in size with a population of approximately 2,067,000. Its capital and largest city is Maseru. Lesotho is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The name...
government in 1982 while attempting to assist the Lesotho Liberation Army. His son Kwanda –the product of a liaison in Mbeki's teenage years – was killed while trying to leave South Africa to join his father. When Mbeki finally was able to return home to South Africa and was reunited with his own father, the elder Mbeki told a reporter, "You must remember that Thabo Mbeki is no longer my son. He is my comrade!" A news article pointed out that this was an expression of pride, explaining, "For Govan Mbeki, a son was a mere biological appendage; to be called a comrade, on the other hand, was the highest honour."
Mbeki devoted his life to the ANC and during his years in exile was given increased responsibility. Following the 1976 Soweto riots – a student uprising in the township outside Johannesburg – he initiated a regular radio broadcast from Lusaka, tying ANC followers inside the country to their exiled leaders. Encouraging activists to keep up the pressure on the apartheid regime was a key component in the ANC's campaign to liberate their country. In the late 1970s, Mbeki made a number of trips to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in search of support among U.S. corporations. Literate and funny, he made a wide circle of friends in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Mbeki was appointed head of the ANC's information department in 1984 and then became head of the international department in 1989, reporting directly to Oliver Tambo
Oliver Tambo
Oliver Reginald Tambo was a South African anti-apartheid politician and a central figure in the African National Congress .-Biography:Oliver Tambo was born in Bizana in eastern Pondoland in what is now Eastern Cape...
, then President of the ANC. Tambo was Mbeki's long-time mentor.
In 1985, Mbeki was a member of a delegation that began meeting secretly with representatives of the South African business community, and in 1989, he led the ANC delegation that conducted secret talks with the South African government. These talks led to the unbanning of the ANC and the release of political prisoners. He also participated in many of the other important negotiations between the ANC and the government that eventually led to the democratisation of South Africa.
He became a deputy president of South Africa
Deputy President of South Africa
The Deputy President of South Africa is the acting President of South Africa when the President is outside the country's borders, unable to fulfill the duties of the office, or when the Presidency is vacant. The Deputy President is also a member of the National Assembly and the Cabinet...
in May 1994 on the attainment of universal suffrage
Universal suffrage
Universal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and non-citizens...
(Right To Vote), and sole deputy-president in June 1996. He succeeded Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
as ANC president in December 1997 and as president of the Republic in June 1999 (inaugurated on 16 June); he was subsequently reelected for a second term in April 2004.
Role in African politics
Mbeki has been a notably powerful figure in African politics, positioning South Africa as a regional power broker and also promoting the idea that African political conflicts should be solved by Africans. He headed the formation of both the New Partnership for Africa's DevelopmentNew Partnership for Africa's Development
The New Partnership for Africa's Development is an economic development program of the African Union. NEPAD was adopted at the 37th session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in July 2001 in Lusaka, Zambia...
(NEPAD) and the African Union
African Union
The African Union is a union consisting of 54 African states. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established on 9 July 2002, the AU was formed as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity...
(AU) and has played influential roles in brokering peace deals in Rwanda
Rwanda
Rwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...
, Burundi
Burundi
Burundi , officially the Republic of Burundi , is a landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Its capital is Bujumbura...
, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has also tried to popularise the concept of an African Renaissance
African Renaissance
The African Renaissance is the concept that African people and nations overcome the current challenges confronting the continent and achieve cultural, scientific, economic, etc. renewal. This concept has been popularized by South African President Thabo Mbeki during his term of office...
. He sees African dependence on aid and foreign intervention as a major barrier to the continent's being taken seriously in the world of economics and politics, and sees structures like NEPAD and the AU as part of a process in which Africa solves its own problems without relying on outside assistance.
Economic policies
The CIA World Factbook says: "South African economic policy is fiscally conservative, but pragmatic, focusing on targeting inflation and liberalising trade as means to increase job growth and household income."Mbeki, as an ANC insider and while president, was a major force behind the continued neoliberal structure of the South African economy. He drew criticism from the left for his perceived abandonment of state-interventionist social democratic economic policies – such as nationalization, land reform, and democratic capital controls – prescribed by the Freedom Charter
Freedom Charter
The Freedom Charter was the statement of core principles of the South African Congress Alliance, which consisted of the African National Congress and its allies - the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats and the Coloured People's Congress...
, the ANC's seminal document.
Political style
Mbeki used his weekly column in the ANC newsletter ANC Today
ANC Today
ANC Today is a weekly web-based newsletter that is published by the African National Congress. It mainly consists of updates on current programmes and initiatives of the ANC, and usually features a column by the ex-president of the ANC, Thabo Mbeki. It is one of the few major online publications...
, to produce discussions on a variety of topics. He sometimes used his column to deliver pointed invectives against political opponents, and at other times used it as a kind of professor of political theory, educating ANC cadres on the intellectual justifications for ANC policy. Although these columns were remarkable for their dense prose, they often were used to influence news. Although Mbeki did not generally make a point of befriending or courting reporters, his columns and news events often yielded good results for his administration by ensuring that his message is a primary driving force of news coverage.
Indeed, in initiating his columns, Mbeki stated his view that the bulk of South African media sources did not speak for or to the South African majority, and stated his intent to use ANC Today to speak directly to his constituents rather than through the media.
Mbeki and the Internet
Mbeki appears to have been at ease with the Internet and willing to quote from it. For instance, in a column discussing Hurricane KatrinaHurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
, he cited Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, quoted at length a discussion of Katrina's lessons on American inequality from the Native American publication Indian Country Today
Indian Country Today
Indian Country Today Media Network is a weekly U.S. newsmagazine that is the primary national news source for Natives, American Indians, and Tribes in the U.S. and Alaska. The ICT Media Network revealed their new online multi-media news platform in January 2011; it is a daily, hourly, or "as news...
, and then included excerpts from a David Brooks
David Brooks (journalist)
David Brooks is a Canadian-born political and cultural commentator who considers himself a moderate and writes for the New York Times...
column in the New York Times in a discussion of why the events of Katrina illustrated the necessity for global development and redistribution of wealth.
His penchant for quoting diverse and sometimes obscure sources, both from the Internet and from a wide variety of books, made his column an interesting parallel to political blogs although the ANC does not describe it in these terms. His views on AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
(see below) were supported by Internet searching which led him to so-called "AIDS denialist" websites; in this case, Mbeki's use of the Internet was roundly criticised and even ridiculed by opponents.
Global apartheid
Mbeki has used his position on the world stage to call for an end to global apartheid, a term he uses to describe the disparity between a small minority of rich nations and a great number of impoverished states in the world, arguing that a "global human society based on poverty for many and prosperity for a few, characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable".Zimbabwe
South AfricaSouth Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
's proximity, strong trade links, and similar struggle credentials place South Africa in a unique position to influence politics in Zimbabwe
Politics of Zimbabwe
Politics of Zimbabwe takes place in a framework of a semi-presidential republic, whereby the President is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government...
. Zimbabwe's hyperinflation
Hyperinflation
In economics, hyperinflation is inflation that is very high or out of control. While the real values of the specific economic items generally stay the same in terms of relatively stable foreign currencies, in hyperinflationary conditions the general price level within a specific economy increases...
since 2000 was a matter of increasing concern to Britain (as the former colonial power) and other donors to that country. High-ranking diplomatic visits to South Africa repeatedly attempted to persuade Mbeki to take a harder line with Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...
over violent state-sponsored attacks on political opponents and opposition movements, expropriation of white-owned farms by ZANU-PF allied "war veterans"
Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association
Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association is a Zimbabwean organization ostensibly made up of veterans of the 1970s bush war against the government of Ian Smith. In 2005, the government looked into ways to make members of the organization part of the army of Zimbabwe.- History :The...
, sanctioning against the press, and infringements on the independence of the judiciary.
Rather than publicly criticising Mugabe's government, Mbeki chose 'quiet diplomacy' over 'megaphone diplomacy' - his term for the West's increasingly forthright condemnation of Mugabe's rule. Mbeki is even quoted claiming "there is no crisis" in Zimbabwe, despite increased evidence of political violence and murders, hyperinflation, and the influx of political refugees into South Africa.
To quote Mbeki:
- "The point really about all this from our perspective has been that the critical role we should play is to assist the Zimbabweans to find each other, really to agree among themselves about the political, economic, social, other solutions that their country needs. We could have stepped aside from that task and then shouted, and that would be the end of our contribution...They would shout back at us and that would be the end of the story. I'm actually the only head of government that I know anywhere in the world who has actually gone to Zimbabwe and spoken publicly very critically of the things that they are doing."
2002 Presidential elections
Mugabe faced a critical presidential election in 2002Elections in Zimbabwe
The Zimbabwe government consists of an elected head of state, the president, and a legislature. The presidential term lasts for 6 years. Parliament is bicameral, consisting of the House of Assembly and Senate. The House of assembly has 210 members 200 elected for five-year terms by single-member...
. The run-up was shadowed by a difficult decision to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
. The full meeting of the Commonwealth had failed in a consensus to decide on the issue, and they tasked the previous, present (at the time), and future leaders of Commonwealth (respectively President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, John Howard
John Howard
John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....
of Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and Mbeki of South Africa) to come to a consensus between them over the issue. On 20 March 2002 (10 days after the elections, which Mugabe won) Howard announced that they had agreed to suspend Zimbabwe for a year.
2005 Parliamentary Elections
In the face of laws restricting public assembly and freedom of the media, restricting campaigning by the MDC for the 2005 Zimbabwe parliamentary electionsZimbabwe parliamentary elections, 2005
A parliamentary election was held in Zimbabwe on March 31, 2005 to elect members to the Zimbabwe House of Assembly. All of the 120 elected seats in the 150-seat House of Assembly were up for election. A parliamentary election was held in Zimbabwe on March 31, 2005 to elect members to the Zimbabwe...
, President Mbeki was quoted as saying: I have no reason to think that anything will happen … that anybody in Zimbabwe will act in a way that will militate against the elections being free and fair. [...] As far as I know, things like an independent electoral commission, access to the public media, the absence of violence and intimidation … those matters have been addressed.
Minerals and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is a South African politician who was Deputy President of South Africa from 2005 to 2008. She was the first woman to hold the position and was the highest ranking woman in the history of South Africa...
led the largest foreign observer mission, the SADC Observer Mission, to oversee the Zimbabwe elections. Contrary to other international missions and parts of the SA Parliamentary Mission, the mission congratulated the people of Zimbabwe for holding a peaceful, credible and well-mannered election which reflects the will of the people. The Democratic Alliance delegation (part SA Parliamentary Observer Mission) clashed with the minister and eventually submitted a separate report contradicting her findings. The elections were widely denounced and many accused Zanu-PF of massive and often violent intimidation, using food to buy votes, and large discrepancies in the tallying of votes.
Dialogue between Zanu-PF and MDC
Mbeki attempted to restore dialogue between ZimbabweZimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
an President Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...
and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the face of denials from both parties. A fact-finding mission in 2004 by Congress of South African Trade Unions
Congress of South African Trade Unions
The Congress of South African Trade Unions is a trade union federation in South Africa. It was founded in 1985 and is the biggest of the country’s three main trade union federations, with 21 affiliated trade unions, altogether organising 1.8 million workers.-Establishment:COSATU was established in...
to Zimbabwe led to their widely-publicised deportation back to South Africa which reopened the debate, even within the ANC, as to whether Mbeki's policy of 'quiet diplomacy' was constructive.
On 5 February 2006 Mbeki said in an interview with SABC television that Zimbabwe had missed a chance to resolve its political crisis in 2004 when secret talks to agree on a new constitution ended in failure. He claimed that he saw a copy of a new constitution signed by all parties. The job of promoting dialogue between the ruling party and the opposition was likely made more difficult by divisions within the MDC, splits to which the president alluded when he stated that the MDC were "sorting themselves out." In turn, the MDC unanimously rejected this assertion. (MDC-Mutambara Faction's) secretary general Welshman Ncube
Welshman Ncube
Welshman Ncube is a Zimbabwean politician. He is the President of the Movement for Democratic Change – Mutambara, and since February 2009 has been the Minister of Industry and Commerce. He was elected as a member of the House of Assembly of Zimbabwe for Bulawayo North East in the 2000 election and...
said "We never gave Mbeki a draft constitution - unless it was ZANU PF which did that. Mbeki has to tell the world what he was really talking about."
In May 2007 it was reported that Mbeki had been partisan and taken sides with Zanu-PF in his role as mediator. He had given pre-conditions to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change before the dialogue could resume while giving no conditions to the ZANU-PF government. He required that the MDC accept and recognize Robert Mugabe was the president of Zimbabwe, and the MDC accept the 2002 presidential election results despite wide-spread belief of being unfree, unfair, and fraudulent.
Business response
On 10 January 2006, businessman Warren Clewlow, on the board of four of the top-10 listed companies in SA, including Old MutualOld Mutual
Old Mutual plc is an international long-term savings group. Established in 1845 in South Africa, it is now a FTSE100 listed company operating in 33 countries.-History:...
, Sasol
Sasol
Sasol Ltd. is a South African company involved in mining, energy, chemicals and synfuels. In particular, they produce petrol and diesel profitably from coal and natural gas using Fischer-Tropsch process...
, Nedbank
Nedbank
Nedbank is one of the largest banks in South Africa; however it is one of the newest banks to be incorporated in South Africa. It is headquartered in Johannesburg...
and Barloworld
Barloworld Limited
Barloworld Limited is an industrial brand management company, founded in South Africa. Once a large conglomerate with many unrelated businesses, ranging at various times from mining, information technology and building materials to motor vehicles, it has repositioned itself as an industrial brand...
, said that government should stop its unsuccessful behind-the-scenes attempts to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis and start vociferously condemning what was happening in that country. Clewlow's sentiments reflected the South African private sector's increasing impatience with Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy" and were echoed by Business Unity South Africa (BUSA), the umbrella body for business organisations in South Africa.
As the company's chairman, he said in Barloworld's latest annual report that SA's efforts to date were fruitless and that the only means for a solution was for SA "to lead from the front. Our role and responsibility is not just to promote discussion... Our aim must be to achieve meaningful and sustainable change."
Position on Mugabe
Mbeki was frequently criticised for having failed to exert pressure on Mr. Mugabe to relinquish power, but chaired meetings in which the Zimbabwean leader's departure from power is being negotiated. He rejected calls in May 2007 for tough action against Zimbabwe ahead of a visit by the then-UK Prime Minister Tony BlairTony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
. He said on 29 July 2007 that Zimbabwe elections
Politics of Zimbabwe
Politics of Zimbabwe takes place in a framework of a semi-presidential republic, whereby the President is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government...
in March 2008 must be 'free and fair'. An article critical of Mbeki's handling of Mugabe appeared in Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
and claimed a peaceful transfer of power in Zimbabwe "will not be because of [Mbeki], but in spite of him."
Ebrahim Fakir, a researcher at the Johannesburg-based Centre for Policy Studies, and Susan Booysen, political analyst at the University of the Witwatersrand, say that Mbeki has botched his legacy over his cautious approach to Mugabe. The media has been very critical - The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
published a commentary describing Mbeki as a bankrupt democrat and accused him of complicity in "stealing" the Zimbabwean election. The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
called Mbeki's actions "unconscionable".
SADC facilitator of Zimbabwe power-sharing agreement
At the end of the fourth day of negotiations, South African President and mediator to ZimbabweZimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
, Thabo Mbeki, announced in Harare
Harare
Harare before 1982 known as Salisbury) is the largest city and capital of Zimbabwe. It has an estimated population of 1,600,000, with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area . Administratively, Harare is an independent city equivalent to a province. It is Zimbabwe's largest city and its...
that Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...
of ZANU-PF, professor Arthur Mutambara
Arthur Mutambara
Arthur Guseni Oliver Mutambara is a Zimbabwean politician. He became the President of the Movement for Democratic Change-Mutambara faction in February 2006. He has worked as the Managing Director and CEO of Africa Technology and Business Institute since September 2003...
of MDC-M
Movement for Democratic Change – Mutambara
The Movement for Democratic Change — Mutambara is a Zimbabwean political party led by Welshman Ncube.-Foundation:The Movement for Democratic Change was founded in 1999 as an opposition party to the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front party led by President Robert Mugabe...
and Morgan Tsvangirai
Morgan Tsvangirai
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai is the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. He is the President of the Movement for Democratic Change - Tsvangirai and a key figure in the opposition to President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe on 11 February 2009...
of MDC-T
Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai
The Movement for Democratic Change Zimbabwe is a political party and the largest party in the House of Assembly of Zimbabwe. It is the main formation formed from the split of the original Movement for Democratic Change in 2005.-Foundation:...
finally signed the power-sharing agreement – "memorandum of understanding." Mbeki stated: "An agreement has been reached on all items on the agenda ... all of them [Mugabe, Tsvangirai, Mutambara] endorsed the document tonight, and signed it. The formal signing will be done on Monday 10 am. The document will be released then. The ceremony will be attended by the SADC
Southern African Development Community
The Southern African Development Community is an inter-governmental organization headquartered in Gaborone, Botswana. Its goal is to further socio-economic cooperation and integration as well as political and security cooperation among 15 southern African states...
and other African regional and continental leaders. The leaders will spend the next few days constituting the inclusive government to be announced on Monday. The leaders will work very hard to mobilise support for the people to recover. We hope the world will assist so that this political agreement succeeds." In the signed historic power deal, Mugabe, on 11 September 2008 agreed to surrender day-to-day control of the government and the deal is also expected to result in a de facto
De facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...
amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
for the military and ZANU-PF party leaders. Opposition sources said "Tsvangirai will become prime minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
at the head of a council of ministers, the principal organ of government, drawn from his party
Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai
The Movement for Democratic Change Zimbabwe is a political party and the largest party in the House of Assembly of Zimbabwe. It is the main formation formed from the split of the original Movement for Democratic Change in 2005.-Foundation:...
and the president's ZANU-PF party; and Mugabe will remain president and continue to chair a cabinet that will be a largely consultative body, and the real power will lie with Tsvangirai. South Africa’s Business Day
Business Day (South Africa)
Business Day is a daily national business newspaper published in Johannesburg, South Africa....
reported, however, that Mugabe was refusing to sign a deal which would curtail his presidential powers. The New York Times said Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for MDC-T
Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai
The Movement for Democratic Change Zimbabwe is a political party and the largest party in the House of Assembly of Zimbabwe. It is the main formation formed from the split of the original Movement for Democratic Change in 2005.-Foundation:...
, announced: “This is an inclusive government. The executive power would be shared by the president, the prime minister and the cabinet. Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara have still not decided how to divide the ministries. But Jendayi E. Frazer, the American assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said: “We don’t know what’s on the table, and it’s hard to rally for an agreement when no one knows the details or even the broad outlines”
On 15 September 2008, the leaders of the 14-member Southern African Development Community witnessed the signing of the power-sharing agreement, brokered by Mbeki. With symbolic handshake and warm smiles at the Rainbow Towers hotel, in Harare
Harare
Harare before 1982 known as Salisbury) is the largest city and capital of Zimbabwe. It has an estimated population of 1,600,000, with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area . Administratively, Harare is an independent city equivalent to a province. It is Zimbabwe's largest city and its...
, Mugabe and Tsvangirai signed the deal to end violent political crisis provides. As provided, Mugabe will remain president, Morgan Tsvangirai will become prime minister, the MDC will control the police, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF will command the Army, and Arthur Mutambara becomes deputy prime minister.
AIDS
Mbeki's views on the causes of AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, and in particular the link between HIV and AIDS, and the treatment of AIDS were also much criticised.
In 1995 the International Conference for People Living with HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
and AIDS was held in South Africa, the first time that the annual conference had been held in Africa. At the time Mbeki was Deputy President and in his official capacity acknowledged the seriousness of the epidemic. The South African Ministry of Health announced that some 850,000 people – 2.1% of the total population – were believed to be HIV-positive. In 2000 the Department of Health outlined a five-year plan to combat AIDS, HIV and sexually transmitted infections. A National AIDS Council was established to oversee the implemenation of the plan.
However, after becoming President, Mbeki changed tack and represented the views of a small group of dissident scientists who claimed that AIDS was not caused by HIV. On 9 July 2000, at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, President Mbeki made a speech that attracted much criticism in that he avoided references to HIV and instead focused mainly on poverty as a powerful co-factor in AIDS diagnosis. His administration was repeatedly accused of failing to respond adequately to the AIDS epidemic, and including failing to authorise and implement an overall national treatment program for AIDS that included anti-retroviral medicines, and in particular an anti-retroviral programme to prevent HIV transmission from pregnant mothers to babies while in the womb.
Mbeki's government did, however, introduce a law allowing cheaper locally-produced generic medicines, and in April 2001 succeeded in defending a legal action brought by transnational pharmaceutical companies to set aside the law. AIDS activists, particularly the Treatment Action Campaign
Treatment Action Campaign
The Treatment Action Campaign is a South African AIDS activist organization which was founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid background of its founder...
and its allies, thought that the law was intended to support a cheap antiretroviral drugs programme and applauded Mbeki's government.
However, the Treatment Action Campaign
Treatment Action Campaign
The Treatment Action Campaign is a South African AIDS activist organization which was founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid background of its founder...
and its allies were eventually forced to resort to the South African Courts which in 2002 ordered the government to make the drug nevirapine available to pregnant women to help prevent mother to child transmission of HIV. Notwithstanding and despite international drug companies offering free or cheap antiretroviral drugs, until 2003, South Africans with HIV who used the public sector health system could only get treatment for opportunistic infections they suffered because of their weakened immune systems, but could not get antiretrovirals designed to specifically target HIV. In November 2003, the government finally approved a plan to make antiretroviral treatment publicly available. It appears that this was only after the Cabinet had overruled the President.
In November 2008, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reported that due to Thabo Mbeki's rejection of scientific consensus
Scientific consensus
Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the...
on AIDS and his embrace of AIDS denialism, an estimated 365,000 people had perished in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
.
2006 Zuma rape trial
In 2006 Jacob ZumaJacob Zuma
Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is the President of South Africa, elected by parliament following his party's victory in the 2009 general election....
(who became president of South Africa in 2009) went on trial for allegedly raping an HIV-positive woman. He argued that she had consented to sex and he was eventually found not guilty, but attracted controversy when he stated that he had showered after sex in the belief that this would reduce his chances of becoming infected with HIV. Criticism of the government's response to AIDS heightened, with UN special envoy Stephen Lewis
Stephen Lewis
Stephen Henry Lewis, is a Canadian politician, broadcaster and diplomat. He was the leader of the social democratic Ontario New Democratic Party for most of the 1970s. During many of the those years as leader, his father David Lewis was simultaneously the leader of the Federal New Democratic Party...
attacking the government as "obtuse and negligent" at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto. At the end of the year, the government announced a draft framework to tackle AIDS and pledged to improve antiretroviral drug access.
Mbeki and the Cabinet
The South African Constitution allows the Cabinet to override the President. The secret ballot appears to have gone against the president when Cabinet policy declared that HIV is the cause of AIDS. Again in August 2003, Cabinet promised to formulate a national treatment plan that would include ARVs. At the time the Health Ministry was still headed by Dr. Manto Tshabalala-MsimangManto Tshabalala-Msimang
Dr. Mantombazana 'Manto' Edmie Tshabalala-Msimang was a South African politician. She was Deputy Minister of Justice from 1996 to 1999 and controversially served as Minister of Health from 1999 to 2008 under President Thabo Mbeki...
, who had served as health minister since June 1999, and was promoting nutritional approaches (the infamous "African potatoes and garlic") to AIDS while highlighting the toxicities of antiretroviral drugs. This led critics to question whether the same leadership that opposed ARV treatment would effectively carry out the treatment plan. Implementation was slow requiring a court judgement to eventually force government to distribute ARV's. Delivery was further improved when Thabo Mbeki was ousted, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang re-deployed as the Minister of the Presidency, and Barbara Hogan
Barbara Hogan
Barbara Hogan is the former Minister of Public Enterprises in the Cabinet of South Africa.-Early life:Hogan attended St Dominic's Catholic School for Girls, Boksburg and gained a degree at the University of the Witwatersrand....
deployed to Minister of Health.
AIDS denialist connections
Mbeki's more inclusive stance led some to connect him to AIDS denialism. While serving as deputy President, AIDS was in his portfolio, and he customarily wore a red ribbon while specifically promoting AIDS prevention measures. He did preside over a controversial and brief embrace of a South African experimental drug called VirodeneVirodene
Virodene is a controversial AIDS drug developed in South Africa, but rejected by the scientific community. Controversy surrounds the research procedures, political interference and the safety and efficacy of the drug itself, the main active ingredient of which is the industrial solvent...
which later proved to be ineffective; the episode appeared to have increased his skepticism about the scientific consensus that quickly condemned the drug.
After he assumed the Presidency, he appears to have articulated more clearly his understanding that poverty is a significant co-factor in the prevalence of AIDS and other health problems. He urged political attention be directed to addressing poverty generally rather than only against AIDS specifically. Some speculate that the suspicion engendered by a life in exile and by the colonial domination and control of Africa led Mbeki to react against a portrayal of AIDS as another Western characterisation of Africans as promiscuous and Africa as a continent of disease and hopelessness. For example, speaking to a group of university students in 2001, he struck out against what he viewed as the racism underlying how many in the West characterised AIDS in Africa:
- Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust.
Additionally, his views dovetailed with some broader themes in African politics. Many Africans find it suspicious that black Africans bear the largest share of the AIDS burden, and that the drugs to treat it are expensive and sold mainly by Western pharmaceutical companies. The history of malicious and manipulative health policies of the colonial and apartheid governments in Africa, including biological warfare programs set up by the apartheid state, also help to fuel views that the scientific discourse of AIDS might be a tool for European and American political, cultural or economic agendas.
ANC rules and Mbeki's commitment to the idea of party discipline mean that he may not publicly criticise the current government policy that HIV causes AIDS and that antiretrovirals should be provided. Some critics of Mbeki continued to assert that notwithstanding he continued to influence AIDS policy through his personal views behind the scenes, a charge which his office regularly denies. However, in a 2007 published biography "Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred", author Mark Gevisser
Mark Gevisser
Mark Gevisser is a South African author and journalist best known for his biography of Thabo Mbeki, his country's second democratically-elected president....
describes how the president, knowing that he was writing the biography, contacted him earlier in 2007. This was to ask whether the author had seen a 100-page paper secretly authored by Mr. Mbeki and distributed anonymously among the ANC leadership six years ago. This paper compared orthodox AIDS scientists to latter-day Nazi concentration camp doctors and portrayed black people who accepted orthodox AIDS science as "self-repressed" victims of a slave mentality. It described the "HIV/AIDS thesis" as entrenched in "centuries-old white racist beliefs and concepts about Africans". In the published biography Mr Gevisser describes the president's view of the disease as apparently shaped by an obsession with race, the legacy of colonialism and "sexual shame".
Since release of the biography, President Mbeki's defenders have tried hard to clarify his position as being an AIDS "dissident" as opposed to an AIDS "denier". That is, he accepts that HIV causes AIDS but is a dissident in that he is at odds with prevailing AIDS-focused public health policies, stating that it is only one of many immune deficiency diseases, many of which are associated with poverty, and that political attention and resources should be directed to poverty and immune deficiency diseases generally rather than AIDS specifically.
Electricity crisis
In January 2008 the South African government announced that it would introduce electricity rationingRationing
Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, or services. Rationing controls the size of the ration, one's allotted portion of the resources being distributed on a particular day or at a particular time.- In economics :...
. On 25 January 2008 the country's deepening power crisis was such that South Africa's (and the world's) largest gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
and platinum
Platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...
mining companies were forced to shut down operations. Eskom
Eskom
Eskom is a South African electricity public utility, established in 1923 as the Electricity Supply Commission by the government of South Africa in terms of the Electricity Act . It was also known by its Afrikaans name Elektrisiteitsvoorsieningskommissie . The two acronyms were combined in 1986 and...
(the national power supplier) and the government both apologized for the blackouts and in his next-to-last State of the Nation speech Mbeki devoted nearly three pages to the electricity crisis, repeating the apologies of Eskom and the government. Mbeki blamed the power shortages on increased demand caused by years of economic growth and the provision of electricity to black townships that were not connected in the apartheid era. But Mbeki also admitted the government had failed to heed warnings from Eskom (the earliest 10 years previously) that without new power stations Eskom might not be able to meet demand by 2007. Each year over the preceding 10 years, Eskom had produced annual Integrated Strategic Electricity Plans each setting out scenarios of future investment requirements to cope with projected increased demand, but although projections of average demand growth in the period 2001–2005 had been accurate, no investment had been forthcoming. Mbeki failed to respond to allegations that the government’s black empowerment strategy had been a root cause of the problem in that small and medium sized black entrepreneurs, in preference to large corporations, had been awarded coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
supply tenders. The policy of giving preference to small suppliers had caused problems in securing reliable supplies of coal, and had also, because small suppliers did not have the capital to invest in rail or conveyor belts infrastructure but used coal trucks, accelerated the wear and tear damage to the roads around the power stations. Warnings highlighted in several of Eskom's annual reports, starting in 2003, had been ignored not only by the Eskom board but also its political masters, Mbeki’s government.
The power problems were further exacerbated by Mbeki's government policy of attracting energy-intensive industry (such as Aluminium
Aluminium
Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....
smelters) through the carrot of cheap electricity. This meant that, as Eskom’s excess capacity ran out and became a deficit, the South African government finds itself contractually bound to provide power to energy-intensive industries. Despite this meaning the rest of the country experienced traffic problems and business disruption due to the blackouts. For South Africa to remain a desirable foreign investment destination the country must be seen to honour its contractual obligations. To shut down the smelters is not a simple process, said one analyst. Government would be paying the cost of effects all through the relevant parties aluminium value chain – its aluminium refineries and bauxite ore mines in other countries.
Crime
In 2004 President Thabo Mbeki made an attack on commentators who argued that violent crime was out of control in South Africa, calling them white racists who want the country to fail. He said crime was falling but some journalists distorted reality by depicting black people as "barbaric savages" who liked to rape and kill. Annual statistics published in September 2004 showed that most categories of crime were down, but some had challenged the figures' credibility and said that South Africa remained extremely dangerous, especially for women. In a column for the African National Congress website, the president rebuked the doubters. Mr Mbeki did not name journalist Charlene Smith who had championed victims of sexual violence since writing about her own rape, but quoted a recent article in which she said South Africa had the highest rate of rape and referred (apparently sarcastically) to her as an "internationally recognised expert on sexual violence". He said: "She was saying our cultures, traditions and religions as Africans inherently make every African man a potential rapist ... [a] view which defines the African people as barbaric savages." Mr Mbeki also described the newspaper The Citizen, and other commentators who challenged the apparent fall in crime, as pessimists who did not trust black rule.In January 2007, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM)
African Peer Review Mechanism
The African Peer Review Mechanism is a mutually agreed instrument voluntarily acceded to by the member states of the African Union as a self-monitoring mechanism...
draft report on South Africa was released. This noted that South Africa had the world's second-highest murder rate, with about 50 people a day being killed, and that although serious crime was reported as falling, security analysts said that the use of violence in robberies, and rape, were more common. Mbeki in response said in an interview that fears of crime were exaggerated.
In December 2007 the final African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) report on South Africa, again suggested that there was an unacceptably high level of violent crime in the country. President Mbeki said the suggestion of unacceptably high violent crime appeared to be an acceptance by the panel of what he called "a populist view". He challenged some of the statistics on crime, which he noted may have resulted from a weak information base, leading to wrong conclusions. Although rape statistics had been obtained from the South African Police Service, "this only denotes the incidents of rape that were reported, some of which could have resulted in acquittals" Mbeki indicated.
2008 Xenophobia attacks
In May 2008 a series of riots took place in a number of townships, mainly in Gauteng Province, which left 42 dead, several hundred injured and several thousand displaced. The root cause of the riot was xenophobicXenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
attacks on foreigners, mainly Zimbabweans who had fled their country following the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy. The migrants were blamed for high levels of unemployment, housing shortages and crime.
Following the riots Mbeki was criticised for ignoring the scale of the problem and failing to deal with the causes of it. The Zimbabwe Exiles Group accused him of being "more concerned with appeasing Mr. Mugabe than recognising the scale of the problem caused by the flood of Zimbabweans into South Africa."
In response to the violence President Mbeki announced he would set up a panel of experts to investigate the riots, and authorized military force against rioters. This is the first time that such an authorization of military force was used by the government since the end of apartheid.
Debate with Archbishop Tutu
In 2004 the ArchbishopArchbishop
An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...
Emeritus
Emeritus
Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...
of Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
, Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu is a South African activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid...
, criticised President Mbeki for surrounding himself with "yes-men", not doing enough to improve the position of the poor and for promoting economic policies that only benefited a small black elite. He also accused Mbeki and the ANC of suppressing public debate. Mbeki responded that Tutu had never been an ANC member and defended the debates that took place within ANC branches and other public forums. He also asserted his belief in the value of democratic discussion by quoting the Chinese slogan "let a hundred flowers bloom", referring to the brief Hundred Flowers Campaign
Hundred Flowers Campaign
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement, refers mainly to a brief six weeks in the People's Republic of China in the early summer of 1957 during which the Communist Party of China encouraged a variety of views and solutions to national policy issues, launched...
within the Chinese Communist Party in 1956–57.
The ANC Today newsletter featured several analyses of the debate, written by Mbeki and the ANC. The latter suggested that Tutu was an "icon" of "white elites", thereby suggesting that his political importance was overblown by the media; and while the article took pains to say that Tutu had not sought this status, it was described in the press as a particularly pointed and personal critique of Tutu. Tutu responded that he would pray for Mbeki as he had prayed for the officials of the apartheid government.
Mbeki, Zuma, and succession
In 2005 Mbeki removed Jacob ZumaJacob Zuma
Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is the President of South Africa, elected by parliament following his party's victory in the 2009 general election....
from his post as Deputy President of South Africa
Deputy President of South Africa
The Deputy President of South Africa is the acting President of South Africa when the President is outside the country's borders, unable to fulfill the duties of the office, or when the Presidency is vacant. The Deputy President is also a member of the National Assembly and the Cabinet...
, after Zuma was implicated in a corruption scandal. In October 2005, some supporters of Zuma (who remained deputy president of the ANC) burned T-shirt
T-shirt
A T-shirt is a style of shirt. A T-shirt is buttonless and collarless, with short sleeves and frequently a round neck line....
s portraying Mbeki's picture at a protest. In late 2005, Zuma faced new rape charges, which dimmed his political prospects. There was visible split between Zuma's supporters and Mbeki's allies in the ANC.
In February 2006, Mbeki told the SABC that he and the ANC had no intention to change the Constitution of the country in order to permit him a third term in office. He stated, "By the end of 2009, I will have been in a senior position in government for 15 years. I think that's too long."
Mbeki, although barred by the Constitution of South Africa from seeking a third term as president of the country, in 2007 entered the race to be President of the ANC (no term limit exists for the position of ANC president), for a third term, in a close battle with Jacob Zuma. He lost this vote against Jacob Zuma on the 18 December 2007 at the ANC conference in Polokwane
52nd National Conference of the African National Congress
The 52nd National Conference of the African National Congress was held in Polokwane, Limpopo from December 16 to December 20, 2007. It elected Jacob Zuma and supporters to the party's top leadership and National Executive Committee , representing a significant defeat for Thabo Mbeki, then the...
. Zuma went on to be the ANC's presidential candidate in the 2009 general election
South African general election, 2009
South Africa held national and provincial elections to elect a new National Assembly as well as the provincial legislature in each province on 22 April 2009....
.
Appeal
On 12 September 2008, PietermaritzburgPietermaritzburg
Pietermaritzburg is the capital and second largest city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was founded in 1838, and is currently governed by the Msunduzi Local Municipality. Its "purist" Zulu name is umGungundlovu, and this is the name used for the district municipality...
High Court Judge Chris Nicholson
Christopher Robert Nicholson
Christopher Robert Nicholson is a South African high court judge and a former cricketer, who played one first-class match for South African Universities in 1967...
ruled that Zuma's corruption charges were unlawful on procedural grounds, adding there was reason to believe the charges against Zuma had been politically motivated, thereby clearing the way for Zuma to run for president. Mbeki filed affidavit
Affidavit
An affidavit is a written sworn statement of fact voluntarily made by an affiant or deponent under an oath or affirmation administered by a person authorized to do so by law. Such statement is witnessed as to the authenticity of the affiant's signature by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public...
and applied to the Constitutional Court to appeal
Appeal
An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....
this ruling: "It was improper for the court to make such far-reaching 'vexatious, scandalous and prejudicial' findings concerning me, to be judged and condemned on the basis of the findings in the Zuma matter. The interests of justice, in my respectful submission would demand that the matter be rectified. These adverse findings have led to my being recalled by my political party, the ANC—a request I have acceded to as a committed and loyal member of the ANC for the past 52 years. I fear that if not rectified, I might suffer further prejudice." Tlali Tlali, National Prosecuting Authority
National Prosecuting Authority
The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa , created a single National Prosecution Authority , which is governed by the National Prosecuting Authority Act...
spokesman, stated by phone from Pretoria
Pretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...
, on 23 September: "We have received the papers. It's under consideration."
Resignation
Note: Unless otherwise specified, the terms "president" and "deputy president" refer to roles in government, whereas "ANC president" or "ANC deputy president" refer to roles in the ANC political party.Having "made it a point not to contest this decision" of the ANC NEC that Mbeki was no longer fit to lead South Africa, he formally announced his resignation on 21 September 2008, at 19:30 South African time (17:30 UTC
Coordinated Universal Time
Coordinated Universal Time is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is one of several closely related successors to Greenwich Mean Time. Computer servers, online services and other entities that rely on having a universally accepted time use UTC for that purpose...
), as a result of the ANC National Executive Committee
National Executive Committee (African National Congress)
The ANC National Executive Committee is the chief executive organ of the South African political party, the African National Congress. It is elected at every National Conference; the executive committee, in turn, elects a National Working Committee for day-to-day decision-making responsibilities.On...
's decision no longer to support him in parliament. This came a few days after the dismissal of a trial against ANC President Jacob Zuma
Jacob Zuma
Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is the President of South Africa, elected by parliament following his party's victory in the 2009 general election....
on charges of corruption due to procedural errors. Allusions were made in the ruling to possible political interference by Mbeki and others in his prosecution. Parliament convened on 22 September and accepted his resignation with effect from 25 September; however, because an MP for the Freedom Front opposition party declared his objection to the resignation, a debate was set to take place the following day.
In cases of such a void in the presidency, the constitution regulates the replacement to serve as the interim president: either the deputy president, the speaker of parliament or any MP (Member of Parliament), as chosen by parliament, can take the role of president of the country until the next election. ANC president Jacob Zuma, who was elected president after the next general election, was not eligible as he was at the time none of these.
The current deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is a South African politician who was Deputy President of South Africa from 2005 to 2008. She was the first woman to hold the position and was the highest ranking woman in the history of South Africa...
was unlikely to be chosen either, apparently due to her close ties to Mbeki and because her husband, Bulelani Ngcuka
Bulelani Ngcuka
Bulelani T Ngcuka was the first national Director of Public Prosecutions in South Africa, and is the husband of former Deputy President of South Africa Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. He was embroiled in controversy after being accused of being an apartheid spy...
was involved in the decision to charge Zuma with corruption. As a result the Speaker of Parliament, Baleka Mbete
Baleka Mbete
Baleka Mbete is the former Deputy President of South Africa. She was previously Speaker of the National Assembly of South Africa from 2004 to 2008....
, had been cited as the likely caretaker president; however, speaking on behalf of the ANC, Zuma strongly hinted at ANC Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, who is an MP, becoming Mbeki's replacement for the remainder of the current term of parliament, which ended in early 2009. Although Zuma could put pressure on the government and his party to choose Motlanthe, the replacement president had to be decided by parliament.
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is a South African politician who was Deputy President of South Africa from 2005 to 2008. She was the first woman to hold the position and was the highest ranking woman in the history of South Africa...
, Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad
Essop Pahad
Essop Goolam Pahad is a South African politician. He was Minister in the Presidency from 1999 to September 2008.-Early life:...
and Minister of Science and Technology Mosibudi Mangena
Mosibudi Mangena
Mosibudi Mangena is a South Africa politician and the President of the Azanian People's Organisation . He was the Minister of Science and Technology from 2004 to 2008....
all announced their intentions of resigning.
Nathi Mthethwa, Chief Whip
Chief Whip
The Chief Whip is a political office in some legislatures assigned to an elected member whose task is to administer the whipping system that ensures that members of the party attend and vote as the party leadership desires.-The Whips Office:...
of the ruling African National Congress
African National Congress
The African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
(ANC) stated that Mbeki's resignation would take effect on 25 September 2008. ANC President Jacob Zuma said that his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe, would become acting president until 2009 general elections: "I am convinced – if given that responsibility – he (Motlanthe) would be equal to the task." The ANC confirmed that "Kgalema Motlanthe is to become caretaker president until 2009 elections, with Baleka Mbete being appointed deputy president."
2009 general election
The direction of Mbeki's vote in South Africa's 2009 general election was a matter of moot discussion amongst press and public alike. Although Mbeki had completely disassociated himself from party politics subsequent to his resignation, many suggested that COPE, composed in large part of Mbeki loyalists, would secure his mark on the ballot paper. On Election Day, 22 April, having done the deed, Mbeki announced that his vote was a secret and called on the electorate to exercise its democratic right not out of fear or historical loyalty, but for a future that it desired and a party that would further its ends. These sentiments were widely interpreted as pro-COPE; indeed, the party's First Deputy President Mbhazima ShilowaMbhazima Shilowa
Mbhazima Samuel Shilowa is a South African politician. A former Premier of Gauteng province while a member of the African National Congress, Shilowa left the party to help form the opposition Congress of the People, with whom he is the Deputy President...
confirmed on his Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
page that "i [sic] liked TM's message". It was noted, though, that, despite having been invited, Mbeki had failed to attend a COPE rally the week before.
Honorary degrees
Mbeki has received many honorary degrees from South African and foreign universities. Mbeki received an honorary doctorate in business administration from the Arthur D Little InstituteHult International Business School
Hult International Business School is a business school with operations in the Boston area, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai, offering several business-related degree programs, including MBA, Master and undergraduate degrees.The school is accredited by the New England Association of...
, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, in 1994. In 1995, he received honorary doctorate from the University of South Africa
University of South Africa
The University of South Africa is a distance education university, with headquarters in Pretoria, South Africa. With approximately 300 000 enrolled students, it qualifies as one of the world's mega universities.-History:...
and an honorary doctorate of laws from Sussex University. Mbeki was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rand Afrikaans University
Rand Afrikaans University
The Rand Afrikaans University ' was a prominent South African institution of higher education and research that served the greater Johannesburg area and surrounds in from 1967 to 2004...
in 1999. In 2000 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws from Glasgow Caledonian University
Glasgow Caledonian University
Glasgow Caledonian University is a public university in Glasgow, Scotland.The university was constituted by an Act of Parliament on 1 April 1993 as a result of a merger between Glasgow Polytechnic and The Queen's College, Glasgow....
. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in commercial sciences by the University of Stellenbosch.
Orders and decorations
During Mbeki's official visit to Britain in 2001, he was made an honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB). The Mayor of AthensAthens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, Dora Bakoyannis
Dora Bakoyannis
Dora Bakoyannis , born Theodora Mitsotaki , is a Greek politician. From 2006 to 2009 she was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, the highest position ever held by a woman in the Cabinet of Greece; she was also Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in...
, awarded Mbeki with the City of Athens Medal of Honour in 2005. During Mbeki's official visit to Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
in 2005, he was awarded Sudan's Insignia of Honour in recognition of his role in resolving conflicts and working for development in the Continent. In 2007, Mbeki was made a Knight of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem
Venerable Order of Saint John
The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem , is a royal order of chivalry established in 1831 and found today throughout the Commonwealth of Nations, Hong Kong, Ireland and the United States of America, with the world-wide mission "to prevent and relieve sickness and...
at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
by the current grand prior, Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester
Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester
Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester is a member of the British Royal Family. Prince Richard is the youngest grandchild of King George V and Queen Mary. He has been Duke of Gloucester since his father's death in 1974. He is currently 20th in the line of succession...
(born 18 June 1942).
Awards
Mbeki was awarded the Good Governance Award in 1997 by the US-based Corporate Council on AfricaCorporate Council on Africa
The Corporate Council on Africa is a trade association focusing on strengthening commercial relationships between the United States and the African continent.-Background:...
. He received the Newsmaker of the year award from Pretoria News Press Association in 2000 and repeated the honour in 2008, this time under the auspices of media research company Monitoring South Africa. In honour of his commitment to democracy in the new South Africa, Mbeki was awarded the Oliver Tambo
Oliver Tambo
Oliver Reginald Tambo was a South African anti-apartheid politician and a central figure in the African National Congress .-Biography:Oliver Tambo was born in Bizana in eastern Pondoland in what is now Eastern Cape...
/ Johnny Makatini Freedom Award in 2000. Mbeki was awarded the Peace and Reconciliation Award at the Gandhi Awards for Reconciliation in Durban
Durban
Durban is the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal and the third largest city in South Africa. It forms part of the eThekwini metropolitan municipality. Durban is famous for being the busiest port in South Africa. It is also seen as one of the major centres of tourism...
in 2003. In 2004, Mbeki was awarded the Good Brother Award by Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
's National Congress of Black Women for his commitment to gender equality and the emancipation of women in South Africa. In 2005, he was also awarded the Champion of the Earth Award
Champions of the Earth
The United Nations Environment Programme established Champions of the Earth in 2004 as an annual awards programme to recognize outstanding environmental leaders at a policy level...
by the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
. During the European-wide Action Week Against Racism in 2005, Mbeki was awarded the Rotterdamse Jongeren Raad (RJR) Antidiscrimination Award by the Netherlands. In 2006, he was awarded the Presidential Award for his outstanding service to economic growth and investor confidence in South Africa and Africa and for his role in the international arena by the South African Chambers of Commerce and Industry. In 2007 Mbeki was awarded the Confederation of African Football
Confederation of African Football
The Confederation of African Football is the administrative and controlling body for African association football.CAF represents the national football associations of Africa, runs continental, national, and club competitions, and controls the prize money, regulations and media rights to those...
's Order of Merit for his contribution to football on the continent.
Biographies
- "A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream," by Mark GevisserMark GevisserMark Gevisser is a South African author and journalist best known for his biography of Thabo Mbeki, his country's second democratically-elected president....
, 2009
External links
- South African Government profile on Thabo Mbeki
- Mbeki: ANC official page His party's collection of Mbeki documents, biography and portrait.
- "Thabo Mbeki – a man of two faces" "The Economist" magazine profiles Mbeki. pay/member link
- The Guardian Profile The Guardian (UK) profiles Mbeki.
- A critical Zimbabwean view. Editorial comment from Zimbabwean website.
- AFP Profile Thabo Mbeki as seen by Agence France-Presse.
- "Today it feels good to be an African" – Thabo Mbeki, Cape Town, 8 May 1996
- http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mbeki/ The Mbeki page
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