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Monday, September 4, 2000

The Road Ahead
An interview with South African president Thabo Mbeki

In the 16 months since he succeeded Nelson Mandela, the man who led the victorious struggle against apartheid, Thabo Mbeki has stamped his mark on the South African presidency. Dressed in an immaculately-cut grey suit, Mbeki spoke last week in Pretoria with TIME Atlantic editor Christopher Redman and South Africa bureau chief Peter Hawthorne.

TIME: Have whites done enough to combat racism in South Africa?

Mbeki: It's not just a white community problem. I think it has to be an understanding of what racism is. The answer to that question, from blacks and whites, tends to be insulting someone, hurting someone, doing something physically discriminatory against them. And we have legislation that deals with that sort of thing. But the most important thing about racism is to end the socioeconomic divisions. There hasn't been sufficient focus on this. When we discuss for instance the question of Africanization, it is politicized. So we jostle about it. Whereas if people understood more fundamentally what it means there wouldn't be that debate about it.

The German Chamber of Commerce here in South Africa has about 500 members and you'll be lucky if you find 10 of them are Africans. Even German companies working in South Africa, surely they should have made some effort to get black people into management positions. But they haven't. But they aren't racists, they say. They've never sworn at anybody. So, yes, you have to address offensive language, offensive behavior and so on. But to address the fundamental issue I don't think people, black and white, have responded with the speed that is possible. All of us actually have an obligation to de-racialize our society. It guarantees our security and addresses the possibility of some explosion further down the line.

TIME: Some people are concerned about the change in style from the Mandela presidency to yours. They say it's too centralized, even secretive. Is this true?

Mbeki: Yes, I've heard these comments. There's nothing centralized about it. There is an ongoing process of addressing the effectiveness of government. It requires various aspects, starting with the system of national cabinet which we inherited in which the agenda of the national government was decided by whatever legislation the various ministers thought they should bring before the cabinet. Your capacity to coordinate is weakened by the fact that your national agenda is determined by bills that ministers bring and the impact of the presidency on that system of government is determined by the same things.

TIME: So what the outside world sees, or accuses you of doing - by-passing your own cabinet - is really an attempt to impose a more efficient decision-making government?

Mbeki: Well, sure. I don't know what is meant by by-passing and the like. There's no such thing. What we are trying to do is to say, we are a government, we are not a federation of ministries. We are a government that has to have a policy, that has to be coherent, that has to hang together. We now have a system that enables the whole government to sit together and say what's our strategical approach to investment, for instance, and let all of the ministers discuss the question so then by the time you go back into your government departments you are fully informed on all the elements of one story.

TIME: Does South Africa have a role to play in the global economy?

Mbeki: The challenge facing everybody is to address poverty and underdevelopment in the world. Now I'm not talking about welfare handouts but about investment, knowledge transfers, all the things that enable economies to grow faster [and] modernize. As part of that group of countries and particularly in the African context, South Africa is a major player.

The Bank of International Settlements in a report two years ago said, if you took just 1% of the portfolio holdings of the institutional investors of the G7 countries those would amount to two-thirds of the total Latin American economy. That gives you a measure of the volume of capital available. The challenge in my view is to find ways and means by which you are able to encourage larger volumes of that capital into direct investment. As you can see, a tiny fraction of the totality of the assets of those institutional investors put into direct investment would make an enormous difference. And obviously it is in the interests of the major companies in developed countries to address the issue of poverty among billions of people who cannot afford to buy their products. The question is: How do we manage this larger transfer of these productive resources into the underdeveloped world?

TIME: Why aren't more outsiders investing in South Africa?

Mbeki: We've attracted many high quality investments. Car companies, for instance, see us as an important base to produce not just for the domestic market but for foreign markets. It's not industry which may employ a very large number of workers. These are plants and operations that are high-quality. BMW, for instance, supplies the whole world with one particular model of car exclusively from here. Mercedes has done the same with a decision on one of its particular cars. Ford Motor Company now has a major operation here for the rest of the world. South Africa is now a major platform for the manufacture of Rolls Royce engines. So maybe instead of making projections on investment since post-apartheid Day One ... perhaps we would have understood the matter better in [in terms of] what this country is likely to do is attract more high quality investment.

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TIME: What about the country's reputation for violence?

Mbeki: At the suggestion of many of these large corporate investors our new Investment Advisory Council has put the issue of communications top of its agenda. They are saying that they are very disturbed at what is being communicated about South Africa to the rest of the world because they say it is not a reflection of the truth. They are saying that there is a negative message put out about South Africa to the rest of the world which impacts on foreign investment and which actually does not reflect the reality of South Africa. The fund manager of a major company recently told me that at the last meeting of his board he realized that their volume of investment in South Africa is the same as the volume in Brazil. His board was also aware of the levels of crime in South Africa but were surprised to learn of the levels of crime in Brazil. General Electric has business in Poland on a smaller scale than in South Africa and has had 300 of its cars hijacked in Poland and not single car hijacked in South Africa.

TIME: You've been criticized for playing down the link between HIV and AIDs. Where do you now stand on this very controversial issue?

Mbeki: Clearly there is such a thing as acquired immune deficiency. The question you have to ask is, what produces this deficiency? Now, if you go through the literature, ordinary standard literature available in medical schools, there will be a whole variety of things [that] can cause the immune system to collapse. Endemic poverty, the impact of nutrition, contaminated water, all of these things, will result in immune deficiency. If you take the African continent you add to that things like repetitive infections of malaria, ordinary STDs [sexually transmitted diseases] - syphilis, gonorrhea etc. All of these will result in immune deficiency. Now it is perfectly possible that among those things is a particular virus. But the notion that immune deficiency is only acquired from a single virus cannot be sustained. The problem is that once you say immune deficiency is acquired from that virus your response will be anti-retroviral drugs. But if you say the reason we are getting collapsed immune systems is a whole variety of reasons, including the poverty question which is very critical, then you have a more comprehensive response to the health condition of a person.

TIME: Are you prepared to acknowledge that there is a link between HIV and AIDS?

Mbeki: This is precisely where the problem starts. No, I am saying that you cannot attribute immune deficiency solely and exclusively to a virus.

TIME: But would you acknowledge that HIV is a causal factor in AIDS?

Mbeki: I am saying sure, no problem at all, there may very well be a virus. But there is a lot of debate among scientists which is why we said let all these different factions come together. Let's all get together ourselves and sort out this question. There cannot be any dispute about all these other things which result in immune deficiency. It's in the medical school textbooks at university. So one of the first things they are going to try to answer is, when you take a person's blood and measure it, what are you measuring? Are you measuring a virus or what? For what has been said is that these tests are measuring HIV. But what are these tests really measuring? The scientists are not agreed among themselves that what they are measuring is a virus. They are measuring the response of the immune system to something attacking it. But TB [tuberculosis], for example, destroys the immune system and at a certain point if you have TB you will test HIV positive because the immune system is fighting the TB. Then you will go further to say TB is an opportunistic disease of AIDs whereas in fact TB is the thing that destroyed the immune system in the first place. But if you come to the conclusion that the only thing that destroys immune systems is HIV then your only response is to give them anti-retroviral drugs. There's no point in attending to this TB business because that's just an opportunistic disease. What is fundamental is the AIDs. So much so that even in everyday language AIDs is said to be a disease. It's no such thing. AIDs is a syndrome. It's a whole variety of diseases which affect a person because something negative has happened to the immune system. If the scientists come back and say this virus is part of the variety of things from which people acquire immune deficiency, I have no problem with that. But to say this is the sole cause therefore the only response to it is anti-retroviral drugs, I am saying we'll never be able to solve the AIDs problem.

TIME: The so-called African renaissance isn't looking so good. Aren't you disappointed about what you're seeing in your continent?

Mbeki: No, I'm not disappointed. The change in Nigeria, for instance, is an important step with regard to an African renaissance. You can look around the continent and see that kind of progress. Look at the situation in Algeria. The conflict there hasn't come to an end but I sense that they are getting on top of it. Look around this southern African region where there's been a whole series of elections - in Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana, Malawi. In Zimbabwe one of the interesting things in that election was that you had a ruling party which came close to losing power. Yes, there were problems and violence but despite those problems it confirmed the viability of the democratic process. We are making progress in the Congo. I have just met with a delegation from President Kabila and I'm absolutely certain we're going to solve that problem. It's taken too long but the discussions I have been having now with President Kabila and his emissaries come down to a need to stop all this talking and really take actual, practical steps. Let's move these foreign forces into real process of disengagement and then out of the Congo. Let's move on this internal dialogue. I'm going to see Kabila when I come back from the U.S. and we'll move that process along. The Congo process has a direct bearing on what happens in Burundi, of course. The Burundi problem is at an important stage and even the parties that didn't sign the peace accord have indicated to the facilitator, Mr. Mandela, that they will sign. We are working with the Secretary General of the U.N. to provide some form of security, not a peacekeeping force, for the process to continue. We are in dialogue with the leaders and the rebels in Rwanda towards a process of integration. We are also having discussions with the government in Angola where there is no doubt from our point of view that only a political solution is possible to the conflict there.

TIME: How do you respond to those who say you aren't being tough enough on these issues?

Mbeki: You can swear twenty thousand times at President Kabila, it won't change the situation in the Congo. We have to deal with these matters in the necessary detail. The details you cannot avoid. We have been having discussions with the Angolan government for instance for a very long time. We are saying that a military solution in Angola is not possible. You need a fundamental acceptance of this that will open the way to other things. But I can't beat President dos Santos over the head with a stick until he agrees. We have to continue to engage him. Now we are in the position where we are agreed with the Angolan government that a military solution is not possible. We are trying to assist the return to a stable and democratic system of rule in the CŸte d'Ivoire. But these matters require detailed engagement.

In the last few months I've done a lot of traveling abroad. What we are saying to world leaders is that we have to respond to the challenge of African development. We can't proceed from a position of fatalistic acceptance. Given what is happening, if you look at the African continent in detail, not just the impression, the bulk of the current political leadership will at least say, 'We have to abandon previous experiences of military governments, military coups and we really have to work hard at this democratic system.' They are saying, 'We have to abandon the failed economic policies of the past.' And I've been saying to the leadership of the developed world that they need to respond positively so that even if it is to challenge us, to say this is what you say but we want to see practical action from you consistent with what you are saying.

I talked to the E.U. summit in Portugal, I went to see the Nordic prime ministers and the G7 and G8 groups. I am very pleased with the outcome. The world is responding to the challenge. For the first time the G8 summit actually focused and identified the development challenge. Then the E.U., the U.S. President, the Nordics, the Japanese, the World Bank, the IMF, everybody asked me, 'What is the next step?' The next step must be we as Africans, we will come back to you with a realistic, practical program to help Africa's underdeveloped countries. So they have said, 'Fine, we will wait for that.' We now have agreed at the OAU summit to lead this process of the elaboration of the African development agenda. And absolutely everybody has said we have to respond in particular ways to this African development challenge. All of us. I am very hopeful that we will get some movement out of that.

Clearly there is a commitment. But it has to be driven by credible activity on our part as Africans that shows that we ourselves are as committed to development as we are asking other people to be. I have spoken to a number of African presidents to say, this is what we have done but for us to succeed we need to act in a manner which does not discredit our commitment to the perspective of a peaceful, democratic Africa.

TIME: How would you characterize the task you face as President?

Mbeki: In the Mandela years we put together the policies needed for the post-apartheid era ... In education, for instance, we had to de-racialize the schools, open up the system of school governments, improve quality of education. Now the policy framework is there and we are ready to bring about actual change. That's what we are about now. And I think in the end what we must really account for as a government and a society is whether in fact these changes are happening. If they are not happening then clearly we have failed. But we won't fail because the policies don't exist.

Source:
TIME EUROPE
Monday, September 4, 2000

(This is the unedited version as it appeared in Time Europe, at http://www.time.com/time/europe/webonly/africa/2000/09/mbeki.html)