After Mandela by Douglas Foster

Author:Douglas Foster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2012-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

If Zuma’s basic personality was shaped by his life underground, construction of his public persona was forged in a time of radical change and negotiated settlements. In the 1980s the Berlin Wall came down and the balance of forces for revolutionary movements around the globe had changed forever. The Soviet Union, longtime financial backer of the ANC underground, unraveled. Both sides in the long, cruel conflict in South Africa finally turned to the possible benefits of a negotiated settlement.

“The regime had the state, and police power. But political power? They had zero—very little, except from minority whites,” was the way Zuma explained it. “On our side, we had political power and support, [but not] military power.” In late 1989, he was part of the first small delegation of exiled leaders secretly ushered back into the country to set the stage for formal negotiations.

When I asked what had surprised him the most about the country he found on his return, he looked a little irked. It took me a moment to realize that it was the word surprise that had offended him. As a former intelligence chief of the ANC, I supposed, you never admitted having been taken unawares.

“I operated in the forward areas,” he said stiffly. “My major task was to interact and engage the situation. It was my task from the ANC!” He added, in case I had missed his point, “In a sense I was very informed about what was happening in the country.”

Zuma flew back to South Africa in a small plane with a delegation that included Penuell Maduna, a longtime comrade. “I come back from Africa, which is not developed,” he murmured. “Potholes all over. The first day we drove from the airport to Pretoria. We were in the car—the police and the intelligence people who came to fetch us. First thing that I noticed is that everything was all quiet in the car. And I said to Maduna: ‘What do you realize is different?’ He couldn’t catch it. And I said, ‘It’s the absence of the potholes.’”

Two things struck me about this anecdote. The first was that the battle that now had him in its grip involved so many longtime comrades; Maduna was the minister of justice who had backed Bulelani Ngcuka’s investigation of Zuma. The second reference that stood out for me was his comment about coming “back from Africa”—as if South Africa wasn’t located on the continent.

It sounded like a variation on the hubris some whites expressed about being in Africa, in Cape Town or Durban or Joburg, but not being of Africa. The earliest colonists had dreamed of a canal that would physically separate their outpost from the rest of the continent, and what had apartheid been, in the end, but an effort to enforce an artificial, unsustainable apartness?

In this limited sense, white colonizers and some black revolutionaries shared an implicit belief in the country’s exceptional qualities. In the future, this kind of belief would morph into the assumption that the ANC

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