Madiba’s precedent must prevail in cabinet appointments

When it comes to records of South Africa’s major historical moments, the SABC’s archives are unrivalled among media organisations. 

While decades of censorship under apartheid mean even the SABC has gaps in its records, some of the most important footage and audio from that period exists today thanks to the national broadcaster.  

After all, it had a monopoly over broadcasting for most of that era.

So there would probably be no audio or video record of people and events that the SABC decided to ignore, unless a foreign broadcast service, such as the BBC, had made that record.

Take for instance Robert Sobukwe, the PAC founder.

He was Nelson Mandela’s contemporary and, although they once both belonged to the ANC and its youth league, a political rival. Sobukwe broke away from the ANC in the late 1950s to form the PAC after disagreements over the ANC’s adoption of the Freedom Charter.

Although the PAC never grew to be as big as the ANC, it quickly became a formidable force, largely because of Sobukwe’s charismatic leadership. The apartheid government considered Sobukwe such a threat that, when it sent him to Robben Island, he was mostly kept in solitary confinement. 

Yet important as he was, there is apparently no video or radio recording of the man.

So while we can listen to the utterances of Mandela and other activists from the late 1950s, and hear from their own mouths what they said before being banned or incarcerated, we do not have that privilege when it comes to Sobukwe. 

Incidentally, on the day his political followers will be celebrating Sobukwe’s 99th birthday, the country will be marking 10 years to the day Mandela died. 

As has become custom, and rightly so, December 5 is the day when South Africans reflect on the lessons to be gleaned from the illustrious life of the country’s most famous freedom fighter and its first democratic president. 

‘Over my dead body! You want to sacrifice ability for popularity? Because all that would happen is that popular chaps would then be returned to the national executive

—  Nelson Mandela

Many books and articles have been written about the man and quotes from his speeches — some fake — are all over the internet. We also benefit immensely from the fact he became probably the most visually recorded political figure after leaving prison in 1990 and winning the presidency in 1994.

Much of that footage is courtesy of the SABC.

In one video clip, which the SABC has put on YouTube as part of its series on the history of the ANC, Mandela addresses the party’s 51st national conference in Stellenbosch in December 2002. He had long since retired from active politics and felt less constrained in discussing some of the political decisions he had taken.

In the video he explains how his 1994 cabinet was put together. Essentially, he tasked Thabo Mbeki with compiling a list of candidates because he knew most of the party’s leaders and their shortcomings. 

Happy with the list, Mandela took it to the alliance partners.

“I took that list as it was. I took it to the Communist Party and Raymond Suttner [then an SACP political commissar] … said ‘No, no, no, you are making a mistake because the [ANC] policy conference in May 1992 decided that the national executive should be decided by conference.’ 

“I said: ‘Over my dead body! You want to sacrifice ability for popularity? Because all that would happen is that popular chaps would then be returned to the national executive and the competent people would be sidelined.’” 

When the SACP’s leadership continued to object, Mandela adds in the video, he made it clear that he was merely consulting them “but the decision is mine”.

In subsequent years, especially after the 2007 Polokwane conference, the cabinet became severely weakened because ministers were appointed largely by virtue of having made it onto the ANC national executive committee — and not necessarily because they were the most suitable. 

To use Mandela’s words, “popular chaps” made it at the expense of “competent people”. 

With the ANC widely expected to fall short of an absolute majority next year, it is unlikely that the next cabinet will be a carbon copy of the current ANC NEC.

But there is a real danger that the next president, needing to satisfy coalition partners, will ignore Mandela’s warning about popularism and choose a politically expedient national executive that is not fit for purpose. 

Such a confederation of ministers, to borrow a phrase from another former president, would be as disastrous as the current arrangement. 

Whoever gets elected president by parliament must insist on the prerogative to select their own cabinet, coalition government or not.