ANC now a 'motley crew of know-it-alls'

As Thabo Mbeki hands over the reins to Kgalema Motlanthe on Thursday, the curtain will come down on an era of the African National Congress that has spanned the past 96 years.

"He will switch off the lights, so to speak," says his younger brother and political commentator Moeletsi.

Although not banished from the party's ranks, Thabo Mbeki's departure from the government just months after the heated Polokwane race draws a line in the sand between the ANC as we know it, and the ANC as it is emerging.

"We used to look to the ANC for stability," Moeletsi notes. "Now it's a source of instability for the country."

For more than a week, Moeletsi has closely followed the movements of the comrades, for the most part with growing unease, disagreeing with their every step.

Recalling his brother from the Union Buildings was a violation of the constitution on the party's part, he argues, the consequences of which are still unknown.

Moeletsi got whiff of what was coming several days before the president's forced resignation. He was travelling in Europe when he heard about the national working committee's strong recommendation to the party's decision-making national executive committee that Thabo had to go.

It came as no surprise. That the comrades "would get carried away" in this manner is in keeping with the "triumphalist attitude" that runs through the Zuma camp today, Moeletsi believes. "I now expect anything from the ANC; nothing surprises me."

The problem, however, is that the new leaders know no bounds. "It's like a jersey. Once you pull a thread and it starts running, it keeps going and you don't know where it will end.

You may end up with no jersey, or with a big hole in it. The problem is that the person cutting the thread doesn't know how to make a jersey. They don't know how to stop the thread running, as it rapidly unravels."

And that is the problem with the events of the past two weeks, in his view. Anyone who felt Mbeki was violating the country's constitution should have reported it to parliament and let parliament initiate a process of investigation, Moeletsi reckons.

An impeachment may have followed had there been solid enough grounds to do so. "And then we would have had a public hearing, like what happened to Bill Clinton when he was found to be in violation of his office. And then the public can judge."

Had he had the opportunity to advise his brother, "I would have told him to say 'impeach me and then prove it to parliament. Provide the evidence'. I think that would have been the right and honourable thing to do."

At party level, Mbeki's voice could also have been heard through a disciplinary hearing, he argues. The ANC is a private organisation.

Many people forget that. And a private organisation holds private trials behind closed doors to get to the bottom of a dispute."

Instead, the ANC chose to recall the incumbent president based on inferences drawn in Judge Nicholson's judgment - "a recipe for disaster for the country", in Moeletsi's view.

That's the problem with taking unconstitutional actions. There's no knowing where it will lead. We need look no further than Harare for the worst example of anti-constitutional politics, or cast our minds back to Kenya, to see it in its extreme.

"If you start to entertain unconstitutional actions, you are really inviting trouble when the constitution is ignored by political parties."

A bit of modesty at the leadership level of the ANC would do no harm these days. "But they don't have the modesty to know what they know and what they don't know," Moeletsi adds.

"I think the comrades don't really know what the real world is made of and they are doing things which are way out of their league."

The ANC is "overreaching themselves and could do a lot of harm to this country".

Some suggest that the latest moves would make their father, Govan Mbeki, turn in his grave. Like father, like son, he too devoted a lifetime to the struggle in the name of the ANC. But Moeletsi believes his father would barely have raised an eyebrow at the recent happenings, "because the old man saw the demise of the old ANC long before we did".

"I remember, a few months before he died, I was complaining to him about what I called the behaviour of the right wing. And he amused me, because he said he could no longer tell which is the right wing and which is the left wing in the ANC."

Why Thabo Mbeki did not pursue an impeachment process is unclear. Instead, he resigned and lodged an appeal against the Nicholson judgment at the Constitutional Court, which is still pending.

"I suspect he also realised that the era is over, because this is the end of an era." Even if the outgoing president was able to avoid an impeachment, the liberation movement as we know it is gone, says Moeletsi.

"I don't know where the ANC is going, but it is not going to be the one that was there for the past 96 years".

ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe still likes to call his political house a broad church.

To Moeletsi it's no more than "a pretty ill-defined group", of which he is still a member but no longer represents all that he stands for.

Gone is the old black elite which guided black society for nearly 100 years. The Fort Hare graduates are nowhere to be seen in motley crew.

No legal minds like those of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo. No more powerful individuals. Not nearly as much intellectual muscle.

Not quite the moral authority of yesteryear, with the party now headed by a man still fighting court challenges. "They (the old leadership) would never have thought they could lead the ANC with that track record," Moeletsi adds.

"There is a new era now and anything is possible. It's unpredictable.

"Are there any lawyers in the group that's there now? How many economists are in the NEC? How many engineers? How many doctors? How many PhD holders? How many people with master's degrees? I haven't heard much about those. This is a totally different ANC."

It was the old ANC that Thabo encountered as a youth and went on to serve for 52 years of his life, rising up from the ranks of the Youth League to the upper echelons of the movement, where he was groomed for leadership later in life, a position that was taken from him at Polokwane.

"Thabo has been an activist all his life," Moeletsi says, "for as long as I can remember. In primary school, I remember when he was expelled from Lovedale High School for his opposition activities."

What his older brother will turn his hand to next is unclear. The idea of a leadership institute was mooted several months ago. However, as he steps into the twilight, it is no longer his performance, but his legacy, that will come under scrutiny.

"He has made his contributions to this country," his brother says, as he looks back on the Thabo Mbeki era. He sees the 1989 Harare Declaration as his single most important contribution.

It was an agreement brokered by himself and Tambo, and which paved the way for negotiations with the apartheid regime to begin.

"But the ANC didn't just get up and start negotiating. He had to persuade the Organisation of African Unity that this was the right time to do it and had to get their approval before he could start negotiations."

Tambo was not in good health at that time, "so Thabo was carrying that particular torch".

Securing the 2010 Fifa World Cup is without a doubt the Mbeki government's greatest achievement, he believes. "It was a massive recognition by the world community of South Africa's ability."

The opening of the African Union can't be discounted, nor his brother's outlook on the continent. "He was way ahead of everyone on Africa.

"And he has made his mistakes," Moeletsi says, "no doubt." The Aids debacle is the one that stands out most in his mind.

To the world back then, it was denialism. To Moeletsi it was "the wrong policy for such a big problem affecting our country".

The other blight on his brother's political character is clearly Zimbabwe. A missed opportunity, in Moeletsi's view; a lost chance "to show that South Africa can make a real contribution to building a democratic Africa".

It was on the issue of Zimbabwe that Moeletsi became one of the most vocal critics of the Mbeki administration, to the point where many felt it was a personal spat between the two brothers. But Moeletsi is quick to note that he hails from a family of hotheaded political activists - "just listen to my mother these days".

The Mbekis come from an old liberal tradition with entrenched liberal values of the old black elite. "And there are absolutely no walls between us on account of differences of opinion about what the ANC should and shouldn't do."

The irony is that Thabo Mbeki chose to support Robert Mugabe, publicly at least, to the point of securing him another few years in office.

The Zimbabwean power-sharing deal was announced on the eve of the Nicholson judgment, which brought Thabo down. In its wake lies a cabinet in crisis.

"Jacob Zuma says he has instructed them (the cabinet ministers) all to stay, but many are leaving," Moeletsi notes after 14 ministers and deputies tendered their resignation, with a possibility of more to come. "You are kind of entering an era of anarchy."

It's clearly a crisis that reaches beyond the cabinet - but a crisis that Moeletsi views only in the Chinese sense of the word: "It is both a danger and an opportunity at the same time."

The danger showed its face on Tuesday, when the rand took a nosedive in the wake of Finance Minister Trevor Manuel's "resignation", which wiped billions of rands off the JSE and dented investor confidence.

The ratings agencies are speaking out: "Where are you guys going?" asked Moody's. "You are a big-risk country as it is, and you are playing with fire."

The opportunity, on the other hand, is for the ANC to take stock and maybe come up with a leadership that will have a new vision and be more coherent in their outlook.