At the height of his intellectual influence over the South African society, some amongst us were wont to refer to former SA president, Thabo Mbeki, as "the Philosopher-King." It is a type of portmanteau that was intended to convey a sense of Mbeki's great skill as a competent, "managerial" SA State president, as well as his impressive and widely-acclaimed intellectual erudition.
It is also a term that represented a rare occasion of our collective public endorsement, as a form of sincere flattery, of this rare quality in Thabo Mbeki, which clearly set him apart, in a positive sense, from his iconic predecessor, Nelson Mandela, the father of the nation and archetypical reconciler. But uneasy laid the Mbeki head that wore the philosopher-king throne.
It was really never clear whether Mbeki's undoubted intellectual influence owed much to his long-held positions at the apex of our democratic State, both as Nelson Mandela's deputy president, and later as SA's president in his own right, or whether it was Mbeki's intellectual erudition that made his pulsating presidency both so compelling and highly controversial, synchronously.
Now that Mbeki has lost his "political kingdom" - or the "king" nomenclature of the portmanteau "philosopher-king" - after his unceremonious ouster from power in the late 2008, we are coming closer by the day to answering the quizz. For Mbeki the King is finished politically, at least in terms of the above portmanteau. What should remain as part of his presidential rule's oddments is Mbeki the Philosopher.
But is Mbeki the Philosopher still as intellectually influential over our society as Mbeki the philosopher-king was? Is Mbeki the Philosopher still taken seriously without the formidable prop of the massive and far-reaching SA state apparatus? Do we now have less of Mbeki the Philosopher, and more of Mbeki the sagacious African Sage, as a result?
The best way to seek to solve this puzzle is to look at Thabo Mbeki's recent pronouncements regarding the specter and threat of rising tribalism in South Africa under SA President Jacob Zuma. This is because Mbeki's statements about tribalism are his most pointed critique of post-Mbeki South Africa yet. But they also indicate Mbeki's continuing determination and interest in shaping post-apartheid South Africa as a major and influential intellectual powerhouse, or as Mbeki the Philosopher/African Sage.
Speaking recently at the University of South Africa (UNISA), Thabo Mbeki bemoaned the failure of the ANC in the last hundred and two years to overcome the problem of tribalism in South Africa, a stirring objective that was put before the ANC's founding fathers by former ANC president, Pixley la ka Seme. What is more, Mbeki was particularly scathing regarding the practice of leading SA Cabinet Ministers and State officials to fill up positions in their respective ministries and offices with their fellow tribesmen, or with people from their regions, which practice runs counter to the ANC's founding values, vision and ethos.
The diagnosis on tribalism by Mbeki was welcome and lauded by many in our society, whilst ridiculed and dismissed by as many amongst us. The more critical accused Thabo Mbeki of hypocrisy and double-standards, and of having himself permitted, if not actively encouraged, the growth and consolidation of Xhosa-led tribalism during his own SA presidency.
The responses in support of and against Thabo Mbeki's statements on tribalism are a sharp reminder of the pitfalls of what the Brazilian pedagogue, Paul Freire, once referred to as "the mystification of ideological knowledge." So sensitive are the subjects of tribalism and racism in South Africa that it is almost impossible to demystify any disquisition about, as well as a rational national debate on, either.
As a result, we are really no wiser today as to whether Mbeki's State of Tribalism Analysis (SOTA), as a counterpoint to the more stodgy, predictable, somnolent, self-praising and annual State of the Nation Address (SONA) by President Jacob Zuma since 2009, has any validity in lived reality or facts. More heat than light has been generated by protagonists on Mbeki's SOTA, dueling against one another to gain what is often a silly political advantage in the public intellectual space. This is truly unfortunate and ungainly.
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