Introduction

Today we bring you the third in our series of five posts on the relationship between the ANC and religion. Together the five posts comprise a single essay on the ANC and religion, the central thesis of which is that religion is a helpful metaphor for understanding the ANC's political ideology and, in particular, for better understanding the politics of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. The five different posts - each one of which constitutes a different section of the full essay - are as follows:

Introduction
The ANC and Religion
Thabo Mbeki and the truth
Jacob Zuma and God
Conclusion

The essay from which the posts are drawn was written in May 2008, when Thabo Mbeki was still President. Today's post looks at the politics of former President Thabo Mbeki; in particular the notion - which underlies all of this thought - that he in particular and the ANC in general have sole access to the truth and that they are the only ones able to identify, understand and promote it.

Thabo Mbeki and the truth

"Truth does indeed have immense power; yet it remains extremely elusive. No single person, no body of opinion, no political or religious doctrine, no political party or government can claim to have a monopoly on truth. For that reason truth can be arrived at only through the untrammelled contest between and among competing opinions, in which as many viewpoints as possible are given a fair and equal hearing. It has therefore always been our contention that laws, mores, practices and prejudices that place constraints on freedom of expression are a disservice to society. Indeed these are the devices employed by falsehood to lend it strength in its unequal contest with truth."[1] [Nelson Mandela]

"...for those among us who see themselves as agents of progressive change, complete and accurate knowledge, representing accurate understanding of objective reality, liberated from prejudice, false assumptions and propaganda, becomes an imperative and inalienable condition for the untrammelled but responsible exercise of the hard-won right to self-determination. We have the possibility and latitude and the necessity to speak thus because we live during our own age of revolution. Exactly because it is such an age, all of us face the demand to understand objective reality accurately and objectively, to enable the revolution to decide on the correct strategy, tactics and operations...Opponents of change see it as their obligatory task to falsify reality, in their interest."[2] [Thabo Mbeki]

In November 2007 the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) released its annual South African Survey.[3] Among a great many other things, the survey found that "the number of people living on less than US$1 per day (the measure of extreme poverty used by the World Bank) in South Africa increased from 1.89 million in 1996 to 4.2 million in 2005"[4]. In layman's terms, it found that more people were living in poverty in 2007, than did in 1996.

The report was met with outrage and contempt from the Presidency and President Mbeki in particular, who used an edition of his weekly newsletter - ANC Today - to attack, first, the SAIRR's motives and, second, its research; as well as to provide a long and convoluted rebuttal.[5] It was also a response that initiated a substantial debate between the Presidency, the SAIRR and various other commentators in the country's media.

At face value, it was a debate about statistics - which were correct and accurate and which were false and misleading - but, as is so often the case with the President, the real issue was what he saw beneath the surface: the motive and intent that informed the SAIRR's decision to publish.

Tony Leon has said the following about statistics and the role they play in the ANC's political discourse:

"[The ANC's belief that only it is capable of knowing and defining ‘the truth'] manifests itself in the form of a conflict over the nature and validity of a particular set of statistics... A given development or condition will be described in statistical terms... and, generally speaking, two responses will be forthcoming: the ANC will present its very particular interpretation and other commentators - the media, civil society or an opposition party - will present their own and differing interpretation. Depending on which view is presented first, the ANC will either set out its position authoritatively, with a pre-conceived outcome in mind, or with hostility and animus, as a weapon to silence dissent. Both are designed to enforce and impose its interpretation as indisputable. To a certain extent that is understandable and, indeed, in the nature of politics. But if your first principles are that only you are able to articulate the proper and ‘correct' course of action, then statistics and how they are managed take on a new significance - for then you must be able to reconcile them with your decisions and conduct. Not to do so would be to risk the legitimacy of your political programme in its entirety. In other words, whereas statistics are usually used to illustrate one's ideological position, when the ANC is concerned, its ideological position is used to justify any given set of statistics."[6]

This attitude is typified by President Mbeki, and his response to the SAIRR (and that of others in the Presidency) is one of the best illustrations of it.

The final line of Mbeki's letter best captures its underlying motivation and reasoning. In it, he argued that the SAIRR had "positioned itself as the liberal alternative to our movement", that it had shown an "unwillingness" to report on "improvements in the standard of living of the masses of people", choosing instead to "discover statistics that serve the political purpose of discrediting our movement" and, thus, he boldly declared, "government underlines the imperative that we must at all times stand ready to chain the canards!"[7]

To paraphrase: the SAIRR refuses to publish positive news about government. Instead it invents ‘statistics' to drive its (political) agenda to discredit and oppose the ANC government. Thus, it is against the ANC (and, by implication, the fight against apartheid); and the ANC government must act to constrain it.

Stripped of the rhetoric, the central message is deeply disturbing and fundamentally undemocratic.

Of course the merits of either side of the argument are not going to be resolved without a proper and considered analysis of the statistics offered by each side, for which space does not allow here. Conveniently, it is a moot point because, in broad terms, both sides simply cited a different set of statistics, which are by no means mutually exclusive: The SAIRR, one which uses US$1 as its measure (putting some eight million South Africans below the poverty line) and Mbeki, government's census figure of R3 000 per annum (which, as the SAIRR points out, ironically would put some 21 million South Africans below the poverty line).

Frans Cronje of the SAIRR perhaps best summed it up in his response to a series of attacks on the Institute by the Presidency: "It is important to point out that this is not a zero-sum-game. One side of the debate is not necessarily correct while the other side is wrong. It is most likely that both sides may be mostly correct".[8]

But the idea of multiple truths is an option only for the SAIRR, and one to which President Mbeki himself could never subscribe, for it runs contrary to one of his core beliefs: of a single, objective truth to which only the ruling party has access. For Mbeki, "the SAIRR relies on a definition of poverty that is radically different from the one spelt out in the RDP and described by StatsSA. Necessarily, this produces a distortion of our reality which amounts to a falsification of this reality".

Thus, Mbeki does two things: First, he disputes the SAIRR's statistics as an attempt to falsify reality and, second, he attaches a moral quality to their argument - the SAIRR is not simply wrong, but bad. Significantly, in his response, Mbeki makes reference to "our" reality, not the first time this word has revealed the underlying intent behind an argument of his.[9] Perhaps the President gives the game away there. For ‘our' is just the sort of diametric word that appeals to both the religious zealot and the fervent nationalist - if there is an ‘ours', there must also be a ‘theirs', the one is good, the other bad.

For Mbeki the stakes are absolute, not relative. And to contradict government is not merely to offer a different insight, view or analytical framework, but to stand in opposition to the ANC government and all that it represents. (The particular topic around which the debate centred - poverty - is also significant, for it too goes to the heart of the ANC's legitimacy and is inextricably linked to its grand narrative - helping emancipate ‘the people' from the legacy of apartheid.) To quote the then-head of policy co-ordination in the Presidency, Joel Netshitenzhe, who asked rather ominously: "was there no ulterior motive behind this study?"[10] It is, of course, a rhetorical question. For the Presidency, there always was an ulterior motive - racism. And thus, the SAIRR must be actively defeated (government must act to "chain the canard").

I have used the Presidency's altercation with the SAIRR as an illustration of a broader trend. For Mbeki, this pattern plays itself out in any one of a myriad of different areas, from the extent and nature of South Africa's crime problem, to the values and consequences of affirmative action. In each a case there is a set of evidence presented (often by independent institutions but sometimes even by the state itself) and, in each case, it will not only be disputed (as an attempt to falsify reality) but painted as divisive and born of ill-intent.

Perhaps the notorious example is HIV/Aids.

It is true that, almost in spite of Mbeki, government has recently become far more proactive in its approach to fighting HIV/Aids but, even then, this new emphasis has only come about after almost a decade of denial and, as a consequence, the most intense public pressure. Led by Mbeki, for years, the ANC government was in denial about the pandemic. For years, countless forms of evidence and research which set out the extent and nature of the problem were placed before the state. And, for years, the ANC government in general and President Mbeki in particular, contested almost every element of it, "from medical science, through to the death rate, to government financing, to the very existence of the problem itself."[11] The consequences of which were dire.

As the pressure increased and the debate intensified, so the President seemed to retreat into a different reality, one where the most basic facts were contested and unseen agendas (unseen to all but Mbeki) were driven by Western imperialism or naked racism, the agents of which were everywhere.[12] In October 2000, Mbeki announced he was ‘withdrawing' from the Aids debate.[13] But the damage had already been done.

George Orwell describes it best: "Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events...The calamities that are constantly being reported - battles, massacres, famines, revolutions - tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources."[14]

It is quite plausible to argue that, with regard to HIV/Aids, Mbeki first created and fostered a world in which he was sealed off from reality (through courting and advocating the science of Aids dissidents) and, second, because of the constant war of attrition between the state and ruling party on the one hand, and opposition parties and civil society on the other, it became almost impossible for the ordinary person to distinguish fact from fiction; and for the President to cling to his "lunatic beliefs".[15] Where did government's treatment programme begin and end? Should ARVs be given to pregnant women? Should one take an Aids test? What exactly is Aids and how does it relate to HIV? All of these questions were the source of contention, dispute and debate.

To this day, the President refuses to apologise for or retract his position on HIV/Aids. Indeed, he reportedly regrets withdrawing from ‘the debate' in the first place.[16] But what does he have to apologise for? In his own mind, he was and remains right. Indeed, so powerful is the idea that the truth is the sole preserve of the ruling party, that only it is able to identify, describe and understand reality; that Mbeki believes it is possible to reshape history where it does not suit him and, almost by sheer force of will, redefine the present. Not doubt, to this day, Mbeki simple yearns for an opportunity to explain why he was right, and his many opponents were wrong.

His obsession with the truth is not limited to marginal debate but often concerns the most fundamental of issues, involving the health and welfare of millions of people; and neither the scale of the opposition nor the weight of the evidence could ever dissuade him from it. All those truths were bent to the President's will and we today we live with the consequences.

Endnotes

[1] See Speech by Nelson Mandela; [14 February 1994]; "Speech to the International Press Institute Congress".
[2] See ANC Today; [Vol. 7, No. 29, 20 - 27 July 2007]; "Facts, fiction and mini-skirts".
[3] See South Africa Survey 2006/07; The South African Institute of Race Relations.
[4] This quote is taken from a briefing note released by the Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Services in the Presidency [22 November 2007] titled, "Global Insight, South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) and Poverty: Whose Reality?" The survey itself [Ibid] puts it like this: "On the measure of extreme poverty used by the World Bank, both the percent-age and the absolute number of people living in poverty have increased in the period between 1996 and 2005, peaking in 2002. It seems that while groups who started off with more money have made financial gains, the situation for the lowest earners has worsened in terms of incomes."
[5] See ANC Today; [Vol. 7, No. 45, 16 - 22 November 2007]; "The truth will prevail!"
[6] See Speech by Tony Leon MP; [22 August 2007]; "A truth that's told with bad intent".
[7] In his letter in ANC Today the week before his attack on the SAIRR, Mbeki introduced the idea of a ‘canard' as follows: "The word ‘canard' is not regularly used in our country's conversational English. We use it here in its dictionary meaning - ‘a piece of news/a story that is false and is told to people deliberately in order to harm someone'." He suggested that a range of ‘canards' existed about the ANC and used the threat of a dictatorship and the idea that the ANC had "gone astray" as examples. For more see ANC Today; [Vol. 7, No. 44, 9 - 15 November 2007]; "South Africa - the problem of being new!"
[8] See Frans Cronje; Business Day; [28 November 2007]; "Challenging the poverty consensus".
[9] On 8 March 2002 Mbeki told journalists outside the Presidential Sports Awards in Cape Town, "For two to three years let's not mind losing international competitions because we are bringing our people into these teams." The immediate question, of course, is who exactly are "our people"?
[10] See Joel Netshitenzhe; Business Day; [27 November 2007]; "Telling neglect in race institute's poverty study".
[11] See Speech by Tony Leon MP; [22 August 2007]; "A truth that's told with bad intent".
[12] For an absolutely excellent overview of Mbeki's denialism on Aids, see the Moneyweb article "Here is the evidence of Mbeki's denialism" [12 July 2007] by James Myburgh (http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page66309?oid=146432&sn=Detail
[13] See Sunday Times; [15 October 2000]; "AIDS: Mbeki backs off". The relevant section of the story reads: "President Thabo Mbeki has told the ANC's highest decision-making body that he is withdrawing from the public debate on the science of HIV and Aids. Party insiders said Mbeki told the ANC's national executive committee that his continued participation in the debate was causing confusion."
[14] G. Orwell; Notes on Nationalism; [May 1945].
[15] See G. Orwell; Notes on Nationalism; [May 1945]. The full quote reads: "The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied."
[16] See Mark Gevisser; Thabo Mbeki: The dream deffered; [2007]. In his biography, Gevisser describes Mbeki's decision to withdraw from the HIV/Aids debate as "one of the most difficult (decisions)" of his political career: "When I asked him in 2007 how he felt about having to withdraw from the Aids debate, he told me it was ‘very unfortunate' that his initiative had been ‘drowned'". Asked by Gevisser why Aids had absorbed him he responded: "It's the way it was presented! You see, the presentation of the matter, which is actually quite wrong, is that the major killer disease on the African continent is HIV/Aids, this is really going to decimate the African population! So your biggest threat is not unemployment or racism or globalisation, your biggest threat which will really destroy South Africa is this one!" Put another way: Aids ran the risk of replacing racism as "the biggest threat" and that couldn't be true.

This article was first published on the Democratic Alliance weblog - The Real ANC Today - November 17 2008