Thabo Mbeki is as diminutive as they come. The first and only time I saw him was in Pretoria in 1995, when he attended an exhibition organised by the Nigerian embassy early in the days of majority rule. Very high did I have to stretch my neck in order to see him when his arrival was announced, because he was virtually drowned in a sea of body guards. Then he was Deputy President Mbeki. When I finally caught a glimpse of his grey-speckled hair- I couldn't see the face- I had to say to myself 'Oh what a short man.'
But as events have shown since he became president in 1999, his height is about all that is mean about Mbeki's political stature. Fearless and independent-minded, he is known to be as blunt and straight-forward as his world-famous predecessor Nelson Mandela; sometimes even more so. When South Africa hosted an international conference on AIDS in the year 2000, he challenged the forum to establish a link between HIV-AIDS and poverty, insisting that the prevalence of AIDS was more a result of the poor living standards in Africa than in the fact that the disease originated from there.
This speech was taken and reported so out of context that in extreme cases he was even quoted as having said there was no link between HIV and AIDS. Mbeki took this barrage of criticisms in stride, never denying nor seeking to make clarification on what he said. He knew the media propaganda was deliberate, some people just didn't want him to say anything different from the agreed common myths being peddled about the highly-politicised disease.
Publications like the Executive Intelligence Review defended him, narrating what really happened as opposed to what the Western media would have us believe and that was how some of us got to know the truth about the HIV/AIDS controversy. But Thabo Mbeki stood his ground, in fact even adding, in another forum, that he wondered how a disease of white homosexuals had suddenly become one of black heterosexuals in Africa. The Whites in South Africa and beyond labelled his comments 'racist and un-statesman-like'. But he remained unperturbed.
In his State Of The Nation address in January 2002, Mr Mbeki still showed this rare independent-mindedness when he said. 'We sympathise with the American people over the unfortunate event of September 11th 2001, and we will do all within our power to help in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.' Watching the SABC while enjoying my maternity leave, I almost gave in to the urge to put down my one month old baby and give him a standing ovation. At a time when world leaders were falling over each other to identify with the US, here is a man saying the victims of American aggression also deserve solidarity. At a time when no one dared to question the invasion of Afghanistan, though no evidence could be found linking the Taliban and their Honoured Guest Usama Bin Laden to the atrocities of 9/11, Mbeki was already telling the Afghans 'when the dark dirty deeds are over, we will be there for you.'
Now compare this with the reaction of other African leaders to 9/11 and you get a clear picture of who to call an African giant. They all rushed to their TV networks to commiserate with the United States. They turned the other way when plans were concluded to start the bombing of Afghanistan on October 5th 2001. Some of them like our very own Baba hopped on a plane to UK with the expressed intention of moving on to the White House for commiseration and condolence. But true to type the little tyrant there said he wasn't in the mood for some African chatter. Or how else can you explain why he received many European leaders and a few Asian ones like Megawati Sukarno-Putri of Indonesia, but still turned down poor Baba's attempt to say 'Ah, sorry o'.
Still as if to say African allies do have their uses, George Bush was reported as having called Chief Obasanjo and assigned him the task of explaining to other ECOWAS leaders why Afghanistan must be invaded, the night before the dastardly mission commenced.
No such record exists of Mbeki's attempt to visit the White House after 9/11 or his being a mouth piece for the Grand Invaders ahead of the Afghan invasion. He probably already knew as early as that time that 9/11 was a hoax, staged by America and blamed on Arabs to facilitate a steady conquest of their lands. He might also have known that the plans for an invasion of Afghanistan were completed since July 2001, only a perfect excuse was needed to pursue it.
Additionally, Mbeki might have read about the several overtures made by the Clinton administration to the Taliban government in Kabul in order to get it to agree to pipeline deals that will allow for the supply of Afghan oil through Europe to the US, but which failed because the US will not agree to certain demands of the Taliban. In his book Taliban, Ahmad Rashid, Pakistani author and journalist dedicated a whole chapter to the pipelines issue calling the incident Romancing The Taliban 1-4. There he discussed the four times the Clinton administration had arranged meetings with Taliban officials to discuss the pipelines deals by taking them all the way to 5-star hotels in the US. Knowing all this President Mbeki would have deduced that the invasion had nothing to do with the Taliban running an ancient Islamic administration or harbouring Bin Laden but everything to do with Afghanistan having the largest proven reserves of oil and gas courtesy of the Caspian sea.
Alternatively Thabo Mbeki's stance might have been out of historical knowledge of the American penchant for external aggression, he therefore decided not to tow the line, in much the same way his former boss, Mandela, had shunned George W Bush during his state visit to South Africa in 2003. Nelson Mandela had left the country ahead of the American President's visit, and earlier on, just before the American invasion of Iraq, he had described United States as 'One power with a president who has no foresight, who can not think properly and is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.' He also said 'If there is one country that has said committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.
Whatever Mr Mbeki's motivation for daring to be different, he is admirably at it again, this time in his relations with the state of Palestine. Recent reports say his government has issued an invitation for a state visit to the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya.
South African Intelligece Minister Mr Ronnie Kasrils who issued the invitation on behalf of his government, during a visit to Palestine, came under heavy criticism for doing so. But he dismissed his critics as myopic when he said 'Those who myopically object to such invitations merely show that they have learnt nothing from South Africa's transition.' And he is right, few other people on earth can understand the Palestinian plight better than South Africans. Apartheid was another inhuman occupation and the struggle against it had been as long, as bitter and at a great cost in human blood as the Palestinian one against Israeli occupation. So happy was late Yassir Arafat at the eventual liberation of South Africa, that when he attended Mandela's inauguration in May 1994, he expressed the wish that the liberation of Palestine, with him as an autonomous president was only a stone's throw away.
Right now the Jewish Board of Deputies is leading the wolf's cry against Haniya's planned visit to South Africa. They said the 'racist ideology' of Hamas stood in sharp contrast to South Africa's post-apartheid ideals. (Just look who's talking). Their spokesman Micheal Bagram had said 'As Jews and South Africans citizens we can not but view these developments with the deepest unhappiness.' But Mr Kasrils, who is himself Jewish, had defended the government's decision by saying he had used his visit to Palestine to reiterate the commitment of the South African government towards the achievement of a two-state solution based on a viable Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. This is just great. At a time like this Palestinians need all the solidarity they can get. Here is hoping that unlike the very intimidating way AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) manipulates public sympathy in favour of Israel in the United States, the Jewish Board of Deputies will not be that powerful in South Africa.
As business men Jews are very successful in the country, some say they control all the major businesses. The oldest gold mining company in the country, Anglo-American was founded by the Oppenheimers over a hundred years ago. When I lived there, over a decade ago, the largest supermarket chain in the country Pick and Pay was owned by a certain Mr Ackerman. Jews have lots of other business interests besides but their intimidating business profile is very unlikely to change government's policy on Palestine if Mbeki decides to remain the courageous African giant that he has proved to be. At least that is what we expect.
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