[Marxism] (Fwd) Tricky marxists Motlanthe and Mantashe

[Patrick Bond]

Sunday Times

The rise of a reluctant leader
Published:Sep 28, 2008

SA’s new president advocates collective leadership, but he may well be 
covertly ambitious, writes Mpumelelo Mkhabela

Shortly after signing on the dotted line, undertaking to lead the 
Republic faithfully, Kgalema Motlanthe walked towards the front row of 
the audience, shook hands with opposition leaders, and hugged Jacob Zuma 
before taking a seat next to the ANC president.

With some murmuring in the room, and probably his own recollection that 
he was no longer an ordinary ANC leader, he walked back towards the 
podium where Chief Justice Pius Langa was calling on him to return to 
shake hands with the chiefs of the security forces.

It was a minor protocol slip, but it could well have signified 
Motlanthe’s reluctance to ascend to higher office.

He has jokingly said that he would rather be Bafana Bafana’s talent 
scout or conduct political education classes. He had a point — the 
recent rise of thuggish behaviour in the ANC needs no less a solution 
than the psyche tormenter that is our national soccer side today.

When the party’s national executive committee said Motlanthe would be 
appointed as cabinet minister to “smooth” the transition from the Thabo 
Mbeki administration to that of Jacob Zuma, he baulked before accepting, 
saying there were ministers, also NEC members, who were well suited for 
the post. In two separate in-depth interviews with the Sunday Times last 
year, Motlanthe denied having any ambition for higher office.

In one sense, and perhaps fittingly, Motlanthe could be described as a 
reluctant leader. But in another, he may well be the embodiment of an 
archaic ANC school of thought which holds that one needs not overtly 
display an insatiable desire for a higher position to actually secure it.

Once a protégé of Robben Island prisoner and Marxist intellectual Govan 
Mbeki, Motlanthe has taken over from his mentor’s son, who, in a brutal 
political irony, was unceremoniously toppled a few months before the end 
of his presidential term.

Motlanthe was imprisoned on Robben Island in 1977 for waging “terrorist 
acts” against the apartheid regime.

“... Kgalema Motlanthe and Harry Gwala had followed Govan Mbeki on 
Robben Island ... ” writes Anthony Butler in Cyril Ramaphosa, a 
biography of the businessman and ANC leader. Ramaphosa, who was 
secretary-general of the National Union of Mineworkers, employed 
Motlanthe, then regarded as a young intellectual, to head the union’s 
education department soon after his release from Robben Island in 1987. 
He would later succeed Ramaphosa, both as secretary-general of NUM and 
the ANC .

“His attention (in the NUM), in reality, was focused on fulfilling the 
instructions that his (prison) mentor, Govan, had given him when he left 
prison. He was told to create a new underground internal structure of 
the ANC,” writes Butler. Indeed, in his educational prisons writings, 
published in 1991 under the title Learning From Robben Island, Govan 
converted Jesus Christ’s injunction to his disciples, “Go ye into the 
wilderness and make the way of the Lord straight”, to “Go to the masses 
of the oppressed ... people of our land ... Go. Organise.”

At the centre of Govan’s political theory of liberation was the 
instruction to simultaneously spread socialism and ANC politics to all 
societal organisations, including trade unions. Motlanthe was well 
placed at the NUM, but his administration suffered as a result. Butler 
quotes former activist Rams Ramashia as having said that Motlanthe 
accomplished little as head of NUM’s education department, leaving posts 
unfilled and not spending funds raised by Ramaphosa . This criticism 
notwithstanding , Motlanthe passed Govan’s Marxist teachings on to Gwede 
Mantashe during his stint as an educator in 1987 — the year in which 
Mantashe, then the NUM’s organiser, joined the SA Communist Party.

Another cruel political irony is that Mantashe would become the ANC 
secretary-general — and thus the public dispenser of bad news to Govan’s 
son.

Motlanthe was influential on Mantashe’s political orientation. Mantashe 
told me last year: “Two people introduced us to socialism. They had just 
been released from prison. One was Stan (Nkosi), Motlanthe’s prison mate 
working at the (NUM) legal unit, and Kgalema Motlanthe in the education 
unit.” He added: “They saw in us key activists ... they built on the 
distribution of party (SACP) publications.”

The latter was apparently a strategy which Govan advocated in his prison 
essay, Notes on Leafletting and Pamphleteering.

Unlike Thabo and Zuma, who allowed their SACP membership to lapse amid 
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Motlanthe kept his membership, 
serving in the party’s top decision-making body, the central committee, 
until as recently as 1998. And unlike Mantashe, who is also the SACP’s 
chairman, Motlanthe’s membership has since lapsed, although the party’s 
spokesman, Malesela Maleka, could not say exactly when that had occurred.

However, the 59-year-old son of working-class parents, who was born in 
Alexandra, still borrows from socialist literature to illustrate points 
about problems facing the ANC.

For example, last year he cited the circumstances of the fall of the 
Communist Party of the Soviet Union to illustrate the importance of a 
party’s leadership collective — as opposed to an individual leader — 
connecting with members. When CPSU secretary-general Mikhail Gorbachev 
disbanded the party in 1991, none of the 21 million members protested. 
“What that means is that there was no party anymore,” Motlanthe 
explained. “Principle was no longer followed, but members depended on 
the relationship with the party secretary in determining their social 
standing.”

He also used this to justify his reluctance to openly campaign ahead of 
the Polokwane conference. At that conference, he sought to illustrate 
the extent of corrupt elements within the ANC, quoting from communist 
leader Vladimir Lenin’s March 1921 address to his party to illustrate 
the point. “No profound and popular movement in all history has taken 
place without its share of filth, without adventurers and rogues, 
without boastful and noisy elements. A ruling party inevitably attracts 
careerists.”

Motlanthe’s ideological outlook appears to be centre left, if not social 
democratic. Even within a market economy, Motlanthe is an idealistic 
egalitarian.

In 2004, amid criticism that BEE deals were only benefiting a small 
coterie, Motlanthe proposed a one-person, one-BEE-deal policy.

Addressing Afrikaner opinion makers recently, he sparked controversy 
when he called for a debate on possibly phasing out affirmative action 
gradually.

Initially among the sceptics of the government’s unpopular neo-liberal 
economic policy, Gear, which stressed fiscal discipline, Motlanthe was 
part of a small group of left-wing leaders who were converted by Thabo 
Mbeki to accept the dictates of the global capitalist economy during the 
so-called “under the tree” policy discussions.

“He did the sums for us, he used logic to convince us, and it worked. 
Once I listened to him, my position changed,” Motlanthe is quoted in 
Mark Gevisser’s authoritative biography, Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred.

He has since told me about the importance of consulting widely when a 
“conservative” or unpopular decision is taken, citing the ANC’s support 
for abortion and same-sex marriages as having been inadequately explained.

A reluctant disciplinarian, he is seen by Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi as 
being “less assertive”. Motlanthe reportedly once called on ANC leaders 
who found themselves in breach of the law to “use their conscience” on 
whether or not to participate in ANC activities.

After his election as president on Thursday, Motlanthe promised a stable 
government and country. Earlier in the day, Freedom Front Plus leader 
Pieter Mulder threw a tricky question to him and a visibly amused Zuma, 
asking whether the elevation of Motlanthe would not result in him being 
the unwitting “harnessed lion” within the oxen herd, which, in Afrikaner 
legend, turned out to be a threat to the trekkers who later faced the 
challenge of unharnessing it.

It remains to be seen whether the covertly ambitious leader, whose 
private life is closely guarded and who is known for choosing his meals 
carefully, could be the lion among those trekking to the Union Buildings.

Or will he reluctantly pounce by default — again?

He said it...

‘It is intemperate and reckless for anyone to say any such thing, 
especially after the recent (xenophobic) killings’ — On Julius Malema’s 
statement that he would ‘kill for Jacob Zuma’

‘The ANC only intervenes when your own conscience fails to guide you’ — 
On why the ANC was not taking disciplinary action against Tony Yengeni 
after his fraud conviction in 2003

‘This is a nonsensical argument — 50% of Mbeki’s cabinet members are 
leaders of the ANC; they are national executive committee members. What 
is the expectation? That we exclude these people from the ANC?’ — 
Reacting to renewed agitation for Mbeki’s removal

‘We must appreciate that these institutions of the judiciary must have a 
life way beyond their current incumbents’ — On criticism of the judiciary

‘We will not allow the stability of our democratic order to be 
compromised. And we will not allow the confidence that our people have 
in the ability of the state to respond to their needs to be undermined’ 
— Opening address in parliament this week

‘You can’t have police who also have powers to prosecute. You need 
checks and balances’ — On the Scorpions

‘The primary crime of Iraq is the fact that it floats on oil. Because we 
are endowed with several rich minerals, if we don’t stop this unilateral 
action against Iraq today, tomorrow they will come for us’ — At a march 
against the looming US-led war on Iraq in 2003

‘If some countries decide to absent themselves from this critically 
important dialogue, to feed their celebration of their holiness, 
regrettable as it is, we surely have the liberty to repeat what the 
Economist said — “so be it”’ — On British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s 
decision not to attend the EU Africa summit, because Robert Mugabe was 
allowed to attend.

***

Sunday Independent

'I'm not an ANC whipcracker'

September 28, 2008 Edition 1

Maureen Isaacson

Gwede Mantashe, the ANC secretary-general, reiterated in an interview in 
Luthuli House on Wednesday that there was no need to panic; change 
brought opportunity.

Following the high drama of the ANC's rapid change of guard and 
unrealised threats of resignation by Trevor Manuel, the finance 
minister, Mantashe said the markets had settled. The six ministers who 
had resigned would be replaced "with no problem".

He had said the ANC would "take the punches". Now, he said, the country 
was in transition. After elections it would be "brought back to normality".

The ANC had taken time to make the decision to recall Thabo Mbeki, he 
said. "In the NEC, it took us 14 hours to discuss one item."

He wanted to ensure that I understood the "whole story" - about the two 
slates of opposition, the decision taken at the Polokwane conference to 
close ranks behind a single leadership and, nonetheless, the continued 
polarisation of the nation by the Mbeki and Zuma camps.

The case against Jacob Zuma is central to that division, he said. They 
(Zuma's supporters) thought the debate over whether Mbeki was within his 
rights to act against Zuma had been settled, first by the Herbert Q 
Msimang judgment in Pietermaritzburg in September 2006 and then by the 
recent Chris Nicholson judgment.

"But the Nicholson judgment gave credence to a conspiracy theory we 
thought was closed. Mbeki's decision to appeal took us back to square 
one, because the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) can have the right 
to charge us - the ANC - and signalled a longer conflict ahead. It 
became clear to us we had to move with speed to close that chapter."

Were you perturbed by your public role as the hatchet man who broke the 
news to Mbeki that he was to be "recalled"?

If you can't stand the heat, you have to walk out of the kitchen.

Some say that the firing of Mbeki was ill-timed and thuggish…

I don't know thuggish.

A bit brutal, harsh…

I always tell people, you take action now, you can only evaluate the 
result down the line. You cannot evaluate this decision now.

Mbeki's farewell speech was anyway quite moving…

Yes it was.

Do you still believe that the public announcement by the presidency of 
the resignation of 11 cabinet members, a number later reduced to six, 
was designed to shock?

I still say it was mischievous.

Did you have to deal with such politics and intrigues when you were 
general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM)?

A lot of things happened. It's nice.

It's nice?

Yes it's nice. That is the fun of politics.

It is fun when you are on top. You once tried unsuccessfully to get on 
to the National Executive Committee…

Yes but I did not whinge and complain. I moved on with my life. That is 
the fun of politics.

Do you think the incident this week has dented the ANC's image?

You must balance that reaction with the positive reaction. The talk 
about a new political party has been in the air for close to a year and 
is not a manifestation of this week's events.

Gwede Mantashe was born in Cala City in the Eastern Cape and he is the 
third NUM general secretary - after Cyril Ramaphosa and Kgalema 
Motlanthe - to be elected secretary-general of the ANC.

Mantashe left the NUM in May 2006, more than 30 years after he had 
joined. Zwelenzima Vavi, the general secretary of Cosatu, said that 
Mantashe was one of the movement's finest trade unionists.

In our interview, Mantashe refused to discuss "profile" issues such as 
his postgraduate education, but he reiterated his views on the Scorpions 
- he believes they "hate the ANC with a passion".

He cited the plea bargains struck with Glenn Agliotti and Clinton Nassif 
in exchange for the implication of ANC cadres such as Jackie Selebi, the 
police commissioner. He said they had investigated Zuma for eight years 
and Mac Maharaj for 10 years without charging Maharaj.

He reportedly attacked the judiciary in July, a month after the 
constitutional court lodged a complaint with the Judicial Service 
Commission about the alleged attempts by John Hlophe, the Western Cape 
judge president, to influence improperly the court's judges in relation 
to cases involving Zuma.

Mantashe insisted that he had been misquoted by a journalist who wrote 
that he had said the judiciary was counter-revolutionary.

He reiterated his belief that Julius Malema, the ANC Youth League 
president famous for his "kill for Zuma" statement, "must be nurtured".

"What is the point of saying he must keep quiet? He is the president of 
the Youth League. I don't know how we are going to silence him."

Mantashe shrugged off a question about the ambitions of the NUM top 
dogs. Trade unionists I spoke to described him as a modest, 
non-materialistic pragmatist.

He drives a big silver Nissan Pathfinder; so what? He wears a red shirt; 
for good reason. This year he was made the chairman of the South African 
Communist Party. He heads Jipsa, the joint initiative in priority skills 
acquisition, which addresses the skills crisis, and is an executive of 
the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

In July, he reassured a group of asset managers that the ANC's economic 
policy would not change, although the interests of the poor would be 
taken into account.

Vavi has described him as "a peasant, a worker, an organic intellectual, 
a Marxist and an Africanist". Mantashe referred my question about his 
several hats to a paper on "the many hats debate", written by Jeremy 
Cronin in the 1990s.

In the mid-1990s Cronin said that Cheryl Carolus and Geraldine 
Fraser-Moleketi would be the SACP's watchdogs in the ANC.

I don't want to be a communist watchdog in the ANC.

Neither did Geraldine; she evidently wanted to be an ANC whipcracker.

I don't want to be an ANC whipcracker. I want to be myself.

Are you a composite of all your many hats?

Yes. I spent years in the trade union movement and became a communist 
before the unbanning of the movements. I have always been in the ANC. I 
was an ANC councillor in 1995.

Some say Mbeki was ousted by communists…

That accusation undermines the intelligence of the delegates.

In your address in Cape Town in July, "On Polokwane and After", you 
said, some see this leadership as a group of leftists endangering the 
country's solid foundation.

I am not apologising for being left.

Will the principles you have taken from your years at the NUM translate 
into policy?

The policy of the ANC actually is left.

As it stands?

Yes, the policy is left.

And the macroeconomic policy?

Yes. The macroeconomic policy of the ANC is left.

What does that mean?

It means it is left. There is nothing right-wing about the economic 
transformation resolution from Polokwane. The economic policy is about 
creating decent jobs. All we should be doing is implementing those policies.

How do you respond to criticism about the neoliberal policies 
implemented by Manuel?

If they are neoliberal, that is why we are changing them. And, actually, 
they have been changed; that is why there is Asgisa [the accelerated 
shared growth initiative for South Africa]. The ANC realised it needed 
to shift to an expansionary fiscal policy.

If you ask me whether there will be change, I will say there will be 
change and continuity. If you ask me if we are going to change the 
massive investment in the infrastructure, I will say no, because if we 
invest we will count in private sector investment and the economy is 
likely to grow. But there will be a time lapse between that investment 
and investment by the private sector.

When I asked Vavi what was so special about Zuma, he said, "nothing … 
but he is prepared to listen to labour".

We are not listening to Cosatu because they are labour but but because 
they are our allies.

You were among the leaders who did not deny that the attacks in May 
against non-South African nationals were caused by xenophobia.

I called it Afrophobia, but many South Africans were killed in those 
attacks, which means they were not only about xenophobia.

Has your rousing call to action against xenophobia in all fairness not 
been sidetracked by the political clash in the ANC?

We do mass political work; when we launch a street committee you are 
also dealing with safety and security and xenophobia.

There have been tens of thousands of protests in recent years about 
service delivery failure.

The anger exists because there is delivery. You see people benefiting 
but you are not close enough in the queue to get your own.

Will there be less corruption under the new regime?

Crime is on top of the list, with education, health and land and 
agrarian reform.

Have you resolved your issues with capitalism?

Capitalism is a brutal system. You have multibillionaires and poverty. 
Many Marxists have wished capitalism would disappear but I am not sure I 
can live by wishes as a Marxist. I must live by science.

That was a tricky answer.

Do you think so?