South Africa's Mbeki falls by the politics he pioneered

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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The vultures have come home to roost with Thabo Mbeki. For a legendarily proud man and cunning strategist, his resignation this week is a shocking downfall. Mbeki tried to join the African National Congress when he was 10 years old; the party made him wait until he was 14. He hardly knew his father, ANC leader Govan Mbeki, who was imprisoned and whom he did not see for 28 years. His brother, Jama, was killed by apartheid agents. He lost his son when the young man went undercover to try to join him in exile.Through all of this, he made loyalty to the party paramount.And now the party has forced Thabo Mbeki out in a putsch that seems calculated for maximum humiliation.After nearly six decades of take-no-prisoners politicking, the sheer quantity of enemies Mbeki made and grudges that he bore have combined to overwhelm him, crushing whatever respect there may have been for his record as a veteran in the fight against apartheid, or as a peacemaker across Africa, or as the man who succeeded Nelson Mandela as president of the country.He pioneered a style of stealthy, calculated politics in this country -- he bested the elderly leaders of the apartheid era with it, and many of his own rivals for power in the party -- but he too in the end has become its victim.The surface cause of his ouster is a long-running feud with Jacob Zuma, who deposed him as African National Congress president last December.The two were comrades-in-arms in the struggle against apartheid. Although they are the same age, 66, Mbeki, who was born into the ANC, took Zuma under his wing when the latter went into exile much later. As Mbeki rose in the ANC hierarchy and took on a key role in negotiating with the white-rule government, he used the much more personable Zuma to charm crowds, especially those of the Zulu ethnic group, from which the latter hails.Mbeki, after a series of deft maneuvers, defeated many rivals to become president of the ANC in 1997 and of the country in 1999. He made Zuma his deputy, choosing him because the apparently guileless and jovial Zuma posed no threat to his power.Mbeki has lived to regret that misjudgment, as Zuma quietly cultivated a power base with the trade unions, the Communist Party and others who felt marginalized by Mbeki's ardent embrace of a free-market model of economic growth.Having too late perceived the Zuma threat, Mbeki is accused of using state institutions to undermine his deputy, and making sure he was charged with a host of corruption offences. Although few people here believe Zuma is innocent of those allegations, he was charged even as many other Mbeki allies were seen to have been protected from prosecution for equal or greater offences.Zuma's new camp of loyalists fought back and, 10 days ago, won a huge victory when a high-court judge threw out the Zuma charges on a procedural issue (he made no comment on Zuma's innocence) and suggested Mbeki may have conspired as part of the "titanic power struggle."Mbeki has governed in an aloof and inaccessible style. He gave his people only rare glimpses into the person that he is. One came in a powerful speech to parliament called "I am an African," when the new nonracial constitution was adopted in 1996. Another came a year ago, when South Africa's national rugby team lifted the petite and mildly terrified-looking president onto brawny shoulders when they won the World Cup.Mbeki left South Africans with one more of those images last night, when he concluded his speech to the people by thanking them for the opportunity to have served them. "Thank you," he said.And slowly, his voice not quite steady, he repeated the words in each one of this country's 11 languages.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)