Dear Cyril Ramaphosa and Thabo Mbeki, I had a once-in-a-lifetime dream yesternight. (Though as a marxist social scientist I do not believe dreams are divine revelations on the road to a Damascene emancipation. I think most dreams are latent thoughts buried in one's subconscious. They come in handy when one who is fast asleep needs to be alerted to empty one's urinary tract.)
I dreamt I was sitting between the two of you at some important conference whose character I could not properly visualise - possibly because I was so overwhelmed by the exalted opportunity of being sandwiched between your two shoulders.
Mr Mbeki, I turned and I whispered into your ear: "Chief, would you by any chance consider coming back and actively getting involved in reviving the political life of the ANC?" You turned gingerly towards me and frowned, your grey eyelashes almost meeting. I think I saw you taking a glance past me and towards Ramaphosa. You turned and looked straight ahead without saying a word.
I proceeded: "Chief, I mean, let us look ahead. The first prize would be getting you elected as the chairperson of the ANC in the next conference. Comrade Gwede Mantashe is politically mature enough to give space and vie for another position in the leadership. The groundwork could be laid firmly in the coming policy conference if you agree to take up this political cudgel now. We really need to strengthen the top leadership of the movement. There is a need to inject political integrity and political maturity into our leadership."
You continued to look ahead without uttering a word.
President Ramaphosa, I turned and whispered into your ear: "Mr President, would you consider drawing Mr Mbeki actively into your political platform and agenda?" You looked at me with a bewildered face and a hesitant smile. I proceeded: "Mr President, I know you are astute enough to understand that Mbeki would not want to be seen gravitating towards the political centre stage of the movement without you pulling him towards it.
"Mr President, your political leadership is exposed to vicious winds within and without the ANC. You need not only committed ANC leaders to support your platform and agenda, you need ANC leaders with political and moral integrity and maturity to buttress your political mast. Sadly, Mr President, ANC leaders with political and moral integrity are now in short supply."
You leaned back and stole a glance at Mbeki.
Disappointingly, gentlemen, neither of you answered my questions. What I remember well is that when I realised I was sitting between you, I recalled what political capital the two of you brought to the ANC and the country.
I remembered that it was under you, Mr Mbeki, that the ANC registered a two-thirds majority in our parliament. I remembered that it was under your stewardship that the economy of our country clocked a 5% growth rate.
I acknowledge that your economic policies were liberal, to the chagrin of your leftist allies. The reality, however, is that there was nothing fundamentally fatal about your economic policies. What was absent was a rigorous programme driven by your government to transform the apartheid racial and class structure and patterns of the economy.
You needed more robust intervention to restructure patterns of the apartheid economy. Black economic empowerment merely tinkered with these, creating a handful of wealthy African individuals. The economic means of production remained overwhelmingly in white hands. The liberal policies, left on their own, actually accentuated both the macro and micro apartheid economic racial patterns, even as the economic cake was growing. White capital became super-wealthy and the majority of the African poor became poorer. I am sure you remember the "two economies" rendition.
Chief, you needed to be bolder if you wanted to challenge the patterns that Madiba inherited. The starting point was the dire need to transform the education system. The large majority of African people were uneducated and those who were educated did not have the appropriate skills to help you transform the racial economic patterns.
Bantu Education persisted after 1994, and yet we thought African children could acquire a better education. African educators were Bantu Education graduates. The consequence is that 26 years after political liberation, the majority of Africans are still uneducated and ill-educated. How do we racially transform the economy, how do African people take over the commanding heights of the economy, if they are ill-educated? Even agriculture, on a grand scale, needs mathematics, chemistry, agronomy, etcetera.
When Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping realised China's education system and its industry lagged behind those of developed countries, he sent thousands and thousands of Chinese students to Japan, France, the US, Singapore and other countries. He knew the Chinese education system was flawed and the majority of the population uneducated, and he could not transform the economy with uneducated people.
One of the things the ANC should have done was wrest education structures from the clutches of Cosatu and teachers' union Sadtu. Among the biggest culprits in the failure to transform our education system are the trade unions. They have defended and protected degeneracy and apartheid inertia in the name of protecting their members. They did it at the expense of the African child, the transformation of the economy and the country. It is a great disservice.
President Ramaphosa, there will always be a debate as to what would have happened to the ANC and the subsequent national elections if you had not won at Nasrec. I don't want to enter that debate, but I am one of those delegates who cast my vote in your favour. I think your success gave the ANC a breather, an important opportunity to review itself. I know you have tried against all the odds and machinations within and without the ANC. Regrettably, the transformation of the ANC has not happened, because it is being stalled by elements that benefit from the status quo.
While I understand your political and organisational constraints, Mr President, what you cannot run away from is that there is an urgent need to transform the racial structure of the economy. The future survival and wellbeing of the country, and indeed the legacy of the ANC, depend on visible progress on that front. You need to bite the bullet and responsibly forge ahead with the task of transformation. The majority in the ANC and the country will support you.
But again, Mr President, you need an educated population to fully transform the country.
It is also the case that you do not have a good number of ANC leaders around you with the political and moral integrity to sustain the hope of the people. It is for that reason that I mastered the guts to whisper in Mbeki's ear, Mr President. I did that because there is a dearth of integrity and political morality both in our parliament and the political leadership of the country as a whole.
Gentlemen, then I woke up. I was sad to realise that it was only a dream that was reminding me that my kettle was full and it needed to be emptied.
I wish both of you well!
Mavimbela, SA's ambassador to Egypt, is a former director-general in the presidencies of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. He writes in his personal capacity
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