“Before we proceed any further, hear me speak…

You are all resolved rather to die than to famish?...

First, you know Caius Marcius is chief enemy of the people…

Let us kill him, and we’ll have corn at our own price…”

Thus opens the Shakespearean tragedy of Coriolanus - to which the people respond: “No more talking on’t; let it be done: away, away!”

Those of us familiar with the irony of the play would know that the “victor”, Caius Marcius later known as Coriolanus, is viewed as a villain by the people. He is despised, detested and rejected by men because all he cared about was himself and how history would perceive him. Everything else he dismissed as popular or plebeian.

Without necessarily going into the detail of the tragedy, this play once again came to mind when reading the first article by former President Mbeki and his foundation’s subsequent response to Ray Hartley’s response. Sadly, his second article released earlier today is in the same vein.

It was Mark Gevisser, who in his biography of Mbeki, The Dream Deferred, wrote about how paranoid the president was, that made this initial comparison to Coriolanus. Having spent hours interviewing Mbeki, one reads Gevisser’s account of how the paranoid President even dismissed his own wife in one instance.

Gevisser’s theory, alluded to by the former President in his first article, was that the president was distrustful. He was obsessed with how he was perceived and how history would judge him. The former president’s exercise, mentioning an anecdote of Winston Churchill, confirms Gevisser’s theory: the man is paranoid. So paranoid, about how history would view him, that even his foundation promptly and peremptorily tries to refute Hartley’s response.

The former president, like the erstwhile Shakespearean character Coriolanus, must understand that we judge him, and history will judge him, on his stance on the issues rather than his person. We are really not interested in, nor is history (as plebeian as it might be) interested in, who plotted to oust him or not, whether he reprimanded Tshwete or not and whether they got the investigations right or not.

We want to know about the corn. We want to know about why he was contemptuous towards the people. We want to know why he fell into the trap of personalising the South African narrative. We didn’t want to remain trapped in this personality cult; a cult now obsessed with President Zuma. Instead we want to talk about the issues.

In his letter to the President of the ANC on 31 October 2008, Mbeki wrote:

"During the decades we have worked together in the ANC, we have had the great fortune that our movement has consistently repudiated the highly noxious phenomenon of the "cult of personality", which we saw manifested in other countries..."

After trying to elicit from the ANC President his view on the phenomenon of a "personality cult" and after listing the names of struggle heroes and heroines, Mbeki continues:

"...They never did anything, nor did we act in any way as we grew up in the liberation movement, which would result in our movement being enslaved in the cult of the individual.

In this regard there were exceptional circumstances attached to Comrade Nelson Mandela, which were not of his making or will..."

Unfortunately for Mbeki, he was the one to follow in the Presidency after the iconic Nelson Mandela. Whether he liked Madiba's shoes or not, he certainly was tempted to wear them because it was he that continued to cultivate this "cult of the individual"; as Coriolanus did.

The error with the saga, detailed by Mbeki in his first article and to which Hartley responds, was not that there was an attempted oust. It was not that the 3 ANC leaders were named nor was it that the Minister of Safety and Security divulged classified (if it was such) information to the public.  

The tragedy of the saga was that South Africa was continuing to be dragged along the cult of personality. While Madiba's "cult", as admitted by Mbeki, "...was not of his making or will...", that saga once again steered South African politics away from discussing the important issues and instead entrapped us in the politics of big daddy.

Mbeki could have ended the obsession with big daddy but instead cultivated (and continues to cultivate through his articles) an organisation and country which became fertile ground for personality cults around Zuma, Vavi, Malema, Nzimande and so many others. 

If only he addressed the issues! If only he would still address the issues!

Racism. The negotiated political settlement. The perception that Madiba sold out the revolution. GEAR. HIV-AIDS. Our problematic economy. Inequality. Unemployment. Poverty. Instead, we are subjected to "correcting history's perception" of him as a man. If the 21 year-old needs therapy, then we need to understand those early stages. Mbeki may account for the first 14 years!

We want heroes that will give us corn. Not heroes obsessed with their place in history!

Away! Away! Away!

For he is (and remains) an enemy of the people!

Wesley Seale has a Masters from the University of Sussex and lectures South African politics at Rhodes University.