On a continent where leaders seldom step down, Thabo Mbeki’s resignation earned some plaudits, but the former South African leader also caught flak for an anaemic response to the region’s crises.
Mbeki resigned on September 21 after being forced to stand down following a bitter feud within the ruling African National Congress (ANC), pitting him against leadership rival Jacob Zuma.
“Mbeki makes a fact of the point that he is a true democrat because people very often mistake bowing out of public service as a defeat or failure,” said Pat Utomi, a Nigerian economist and political commentator.
The move was “instructive for Africa generally and particularly for a country like Nigeria”, he said.
South Africa’s second democratically elected president became the country’s first to be forced from office and his exit rattled the prosperous African nation as more than a third of the Cabinet also resigned.
But his successor and ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe has promised to maintain the economic policies that have led to sustained growth in recent years.
In its Thursday editorial, the Sudan Tribune asked: “How many leaders in this continent are ready to leave their seats based on the will of the people they are serving?”
“We as Africans have a good lesson to learn from that brave attitude,” journalist Thuou Loi Cingoth wrote.
“If African leaders were to act like Mr Mbeki we could have avoided almost our entire current crises in the continent.”
Central African political observer Saint-Clair Titi-Soma criticised as “dinosaurs” African leaders such as Gabon’s Omar Bongo, Libya’s Moammar Gadaffi, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe among others.
“Mbeki’s dignified exit shows him as a loyal party man who would not put personal interest before that of his party and the country,” said Lai Mohammed, spokesperson of Nigeria’s opposition Action Congress party.
But Christopher Fomunyoh, a top official with the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, said Mbeki’s long struggle against apartheid had blunted his ability in helping resolve conflicts in parts of the continent.
Criticism
“His hostility to non-African contribution has watered down the overall outcome of these [mediation] initiatives,” he said in Nigeria.
For example “instead of questioning why Khartoum is supporting groups killing people in Sudan, his first reaction was why should the international community want to indict al-Bashir”.
“In Zimbabwe, he would say why should people be pushing Mugabe to do what he does not want to do,” he added.
A Darfur rebel group also criticised the former South African president for backing the African Union’s calls to defer a possible International Criminal Court war crimes indictment against al-Bashir.
“Mbeki came to Sudan and supported the Sudanese president, a man we say is guilty of genocide of our people,” said Mahgoub Hussein, a London-based spokesperson for a key faction of the Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Army.
Hussein said Mbeki’s departure opens “a door for a new presidency in South Africa to take a position consistent with international justice and to reach a solution to the Darfur crisis”.
However, Mbeki is credited with mediating a power-sharing deal in Zimbabwe between Mugabe and rival Morgan Tsvangirai, easing months of political crisis that has frazzled the Southern Africa nation.
His exit has raised new concerns about Zimbabwe’s fragile power-sharing as tough negotiations are still under way to form a Cabinet.
Mugabe described his former counterpart’s resignation as “devastating”.
“It’s devastating news that President Mbeki is no longer president of South Africa, but that is the action of the South African people,” Mugabe was quoted in Zimbabwe’s Herald newspaper as saying on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
“Who are we to judge them? But it is very disturbing.” — AFP