?Shock? and ?uncertainty? are just two of the wordsProfessor Pieter Fourie uses when describing the current situation in SouthAfrica, where citizens yesterday watched their president give a televisionaddress in which he announced he?d soon leave office.
Fourie, the author of a number of books on Mr. Mbeki andhis policies, says such a momentous and unprecedented event in the country?shistory has ?understandably? given South Africans cause for concern about theirfuture.
?Opposition parties, especially, are saying that Mbeki?ssacking?by his party has been a big mistake. Then again, some regular, normalSouth Africans on the street are saying that it?s a good thing and that thepresident had it coming,? says the head of the University of Johannesburg?spolitical science department.
Headds that the manner of Mr. Mbeki?s resignation ? effectively being ?forced?from office by the party he?s supported since boyhood ? is indeed anignominious end to Mr. Mbeki?s reign as the president of one of the mostpowerful countries in the developing world, with the continent?s largesteconomy.
Mr.Mbeki is praised for presiding over economic growth in South Africa but isaccused by many South Africans of creating a new black economic elite anddistancing himself from the country?s poor majority. Analysts say while theeconomy has undoubtedly grown under Mbeki, this growth hasn?t filtered down tothe masses of people who continue to live in dilapidated shack-lands andstruggle for daily survival.
Zuma is accused by state prosecutors of accepting numerousbribes from foreign companies in connection with an arms deal. Fourie says it?simportant to remember that, as Zuma?s supporters revel in Mr. Mbeki?s fall fromgrace, that high court judge Chris Nicholson, who last Friday dismissed thecorruption case against their hero, did so on a technicality and did notabsolve Zuma. Nevertheless, says Fourie, it?s now increasingly likely that theANC leader will escape prosecution for corruption and will eventually becomeSouth Africa?s next president.
Mr. Mbeki is in many respects the architect of his owndemise, says the analyst.
He explains, ?When Mr. Mbeki fired Zuma from his post asSouth Africa?s deputy president in 2005, after one of Zuma?s advisors was foundguilty of soliciting bribes on his behalf, the president set the scene for deeppolitical conflict and unwittingly created a precedent for his own removal fromoffice.?
In now deciding to pressure Mr. Mbeki to go, he says, theANC has ?ironically? used the same argument against him that he used againstZuma three years ago.
?There was no legal case against Jacob Zuma; his financialadvisor was simply accused and found guilty of fraud. And then Mbeki himselfsaid it would be inappropriate for Zuma to stay on as deputy president. Now theZuma camp (in the ANC) says that as the judge implicated Mbeki in politicalconspiracies?it is now inappropriate for Mbeki to remain as president of thecountry.?
South Africa?s Archbishop Desmond Tutu has criticized such?tit-for-tat? and ?retributive? politics.
However, Fourie is convinced that ?we should look to Mbekiand the flaws of the man himself? when analyzing the present situation in SouthAfrica.
?We had in Mbeki a supposedly intellectually brilliantleader, but someone who came to be completely out of touch with people ? notonly in the rest of the country, but throughout his ruling party. He has beenaccused of being intellectually conceited and so self-assured that he expectsthe people to trust him implicitly (no matter what). In the process, he lostcontact with grassroots support.?
Fourie says there?s evidence of this in a ?series ofdenialist (sic) tendencies? that Mr. Mbeki has demonstrated.
The South African president has been widely condemned fordisagreeing with mainstream scientific opinion that the human immunodeficiencyvirus (HIV) causes AIDS. As a direct result of this conviction, the president?spolicies denied anti-retroviral treatment to South Africans. Mr. Mbeki alsoemployed a health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who advocated a dietconsisting of fresh vegetables rather than anti-retroviral drugs to treat HIV.AIDS activists have thus accused Mr. Mbeki of being responsible for thepremature deaths of thousands of South Africans, by either denying them treatmentor misinforming them about the possible benefits of certain medication.