Explaining Mandela’s Strategy in 1994

Explaining Mandela’s Strategy in 1994

By Ben Turok

Nigeria is in crisis and there are as many propositions on the way out as there are the proponents. There are those who would say let’s fight to finish or break up. In social science, they are known as anarchists. They assume that God made a mistake by putting nearly 200 million all black population under one government, the biggest ever in human history. They are on their own. There are also those who would say the situation will sort itself out. Psychologists call those ones nihilists. There are those who say let us restructure the country into territorial apart-hood. The law of intended and unintended consequences does not support them. The level of integration so far has even made nonsense of this. There are those ones who would say God would soon take care of the situation. They have a point but they are guilty of selfishness and particularism. There are hundreds of places and human beings deserving of God’s attention a hundred times more than Nigeria. Not after endowing Nigeria with the human and material resources and not after intervening one time too many to get Nigeria out of hell hole. There are those who are heard shouting for social justice and equity. They are the closest to the answer but the only way to get that is to decide who exercises power.

President Mandela re-enacting his prison experience with Bill Clinton

That is the point at which an interesting voice is being heard. It is the indigenous Junior Mandela discourse. It is to the effect that the cure for Nigeria’s permanent crisis lies in a deliberate action by political, business, religious, traditional and youth leaders to locate an indigenous junior Mandela. The argument is that the leadership of such a person identified on the basis of ability to saturate the nation with extra-ordinary virtues, high culture and political wisdom and diffuse divisiveness as for such a fellow to become the ultimate unifying force for the people. But, what was the essential Mandela, especially at the turning point in 1994 when the racial divide could have imploded into war and tragedy? Find out in this piece that a Nigerian activist friend of the late Madiba drew Intervention’s attention to. Ben Turok, the author is an ANC member, an anti-apartheid activist, a professor of Economics, an author, a parliamentarian and now, the  Editor of New Agenda, S A Journal of Social and Economic Policy.  It was originally published in Daily Maverick, (February 19^th, 2017) and has been reproduced without editing as follows:

Prof Ben Turok

In my earlier article on the inadequacies of the ANC government performance after it took power in 1994, I did not offer any explanation for the weaknesses. I want to try to remedy that here. These days it is sometimes suggested that Nelson Mandela and his comrades “sold out” in order to take office. Those of us who take politics seriously reject this view because it flies in the face of the conduct of the ANC prior to the transition and is out of character with the personality of Mandela himself. 

The true picture of his personality is portrayed by his arch opponent Neil Barnard, South Africa’s head of intelligence, in his book Secret Revolution where he reports that he had numerous meetings with Mandela as prisoner and found that he was hugely impressive, dignified, rational and highly principled. He clearly was no pushover.  So why did the ANC make large concessions in 1994 and in the following years?

First, the ANC has defined the transition as a “democratic breakthrough”, a rather modest characterisation of what I believe was a political revolution. It was actually a negotiated settlement with concessions on both sides leading to a government of national unity which was a constraint on change. Should the ANC have held out for more radical measures? Some of us believe that to be the case, especially with respect to the economy, but we may be wrong.

What were the limiting conditions ?

1. Although the ANC had done some work on a future programme for government in the Reconstruction and Development Programme and Ready To Govern, these were only broad policy documents. There was no plan of how an ANC government would actually take over the administration of the country, nor did it have trained personnel to run the country. Consequently it took over most of the personnel from the apartheid regime and only replaced them incrementally in the following years. Hence the actual arrangements of transition were carried out by apartheid officials, especially in the Treasury.
2. Some people believe that the ANC leadership were fearful of a white counter-revolution in the early years of the transition, which imposed limits on any more radical measures. In his book, Barnard discloses how close the country came to a holocaust. We have to acknowledge that there were substantial forces in existence at the time which could have caused havoc and did so at times with the forces of security still in the hands of apartheid personnel.
3. While the ANC enjoyed huge mass support and parts of the country were ungovernable, the forces which benefitted from apartheid remained extremely powerful, especially – but not only – in the economy.
4. Since the economy was in poor shape, the need to improve its image internationally seemed to be vital. And, since the ANC was often portrayed as a communist-led movement, intent on revolution, the new government hastened to appoint internationally acceptable personalities to run the Reserve Bank, Ministry of Finance and other key economic posts. The ANC and government leadership went to great pains to reassure the IMF and World Bank that they would not introduce economic and financial policies which would depart from orthodoxy.
5. It has to be conceded that there were some in the ANC leadership who were impatient for power and for the fruits it would bring. These individuals showed their intentions ever more clearly as the ANC control became more sure of itself. Indeed, the new class of black businessbpeople saw great opportunities for personal enrichment and continue to do so now.
6. What is remarkable is that while all and sundry in the ANC camp condemned apartheid as a system of colonial exploitation based on cheap labour and a huge army of unemployed which made the low wages possible for ever, many of the same people have not used their power within the state to change the system fundamentally. Instead they are happy to derive their wealth from the same system. The result is that we remain one of the most unequal societies in the world and there are no indications that black business wants it otherwise.
7. To return to the debates in 1994, there were indeed critical voices which sought to introduce more radical economic and social policies which were rejected by the top leadership. The RDP was one such voice which was soon closed down on spurious grounds such as budget allocation difficulties. And there were others such as Merg (Macro Economic Research Groups). The main problem seemed to be that the leadership did not have a sense of what economic development meant and how it could be promoted. It often referred to people participation and bottom-up development in documents, but these concepts were not introduced into actual programmes. Even much later in drafting the National Development Plan, the focus was on “a capable state” and references to development were resisted.
   

   Mandela and the Queen

   It is time for a proper review of the performance of the ANC government since 1994, taking into account the whole context and setting out the reasons for what has happened. I hope someone does this soon.