South Africans are revolting against inept local government. Why it matters

 

Failures by municipalities to do their work are forcing many residents to take matters into their own hands. EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma

A sea change is under way at local government level in South Africa, one which all political parties had better watch out for. Citizens’ groups are taking control of municipal functions, some with the support of courts, and are delivering services where this sphere is collapsing.

The trend is being driven by voters who are sick of corrupt politicians – as every poll makes clear. For example, a poll run in late 2019 showed growing mistrust in political parties and politicians. There was a deep-seated belief that the country was headed in the wrong direction. Over 80% of respondents thought corruption was increasing.

The sad state of the local sphere has been lamented by many, not least the late Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu. He noted in 2018 that “on average almost 60% of the revenue shown in the books will never find its way into the bank account”, raising the alarm that such rampant corruption and incompetence would inevitably result in a growing revolt against rates and taxes.

The consequence has been precisely that – talk of withholding rates and taxes, and going further to simply do what has to be done – but which government seems incapable of doing. The “gatvol” (fed-up) tipping point seems to be upon us.

Growing discontent

It is against this background that the country will have local government elections, currently scheduled for August this year.

Soon the media will be replete with pundits talking about the low turnout that generally affects local elections. Some will touch on the way all parties are commonly “punished” at local rather than national elections, others will talk to the winners, losers and likely coalition partners. All this will be pretty predictable. Some of it may even be correct. But something more subterranean and interesting is happening.

There has been growing discontent with many local authorities. In some this has gone as far as concerned citizens successfully calling for the municipality to be dissolved and put into administration, as happened in Makhanda in the Eastern Cape province in 2020.

Elsewhere, citizen groups have found other ways of simply taking matters into their own hands. Instead of just moaning, people are taking action.

Events in Kgetlengrivier Local Municipality, in the platinum-rich North West province, have shown just how serious the situation has become.

In December 2020, in what was described as an “astonishing judgment”, a judge in the North West High Court ordered the imprisonment of the municipal manager of Kgetlengrivier for 90 days. The sentence was suspended on condition that sewage spilling into the Elands and Koster rivers be cleared up.

Remarkably, the judge also gave the residents’ association the right to take control of the area’s sewage works, and to be paid by local and provincial governments for its efforts.

The local residents duly took over the job of clearing sewage, successfully.

The legality of this will be tested on appeal, and may well be overturned by a more risk averse higher court. But the seeds have been sown, and national government seems to agree – national ministers were respondents in the case, and did not appeal. And the governing African National Congress (ANC) had better be careful – most of the places where these events are occurring are in ANC-held municipalities.

Take events in Harrismith in the Free State, were residents also took over fixing the sewerage; or Umdoni Municipality in Scottburgh, in KwaZulu-Natal, where residents are threatening to stop paying rates. In Graaff-Reinet, in the Eastern Cape, residents have objected to increases in municipal rates, frustrated by the broken down sewerage system and other municipal services.

This could be construed as anarchy. And it may well be. But anarchy is often criticised and used as a pejorative – a “descent” into anarchy – rather than analysed or understood as one possible “ascent” from a corrupt and coercive politics. It means something along the lines of a belief in abolishing all government, and organising residents on a voluntary, non-coercive, cooperative basis.

And this is happening, across the country, from withholding rates and taxes to taking over key service delivery functions.

South Africans may be leading themselves from the trough of corruption to something much more interesting, contested and dangerous to a young democracy. When an entire sphere of the state is close to dysfunctional and can have its power, functions and revenue turned over to citizen groups because of incompetence or malfeasance, something is very seriously wrong. Yet political parties still want voters to trust them, come election time.

Loss of trust

Trust in all spheres of government is close to rock bottom, as is trust in political parties. In the last Ipsos poll, no party was trusted by a third of its own supporters. The opinion voters have of politicians could not be lower, matched by pessimism: less than half of respondents felt the country was heading in the right direction.

The final straw may well have been watching with revulsion as the most politically connected stole money meant for life-saving COVID-19 protective equipment.

Talk of withholding rates and taxes has now become commonplace. Community groups have been seeking legal advice on withholding rates and are sharing legal opinions about the issue. Why pay, if your money is merely going to be “eaten”? This is now backed up the North West High Court ruling. Who needs government?

If pollsters want to understand where South Africa is going, it seems that measuring political parties and their campaigns is perhaps necessary – much as a visit to the dentist is necessary – but it may miss the point.

They should be polling those who no longer care about the local sphere, and who see themselves as constituting a more legitimate and, frankly, competent part of the governance infrastructure. And while taps run dry, power cuts continue due to corruption or incompetence, and no politician has yet been jailed, who is to say they are wrong?

David Everatt, Professor of Urban Governance, University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Zuma's abuse of South Africa's spy agency underscores need for strong civilian oversight

 

Former South African President Jacob Zuma deployed spies in factional battles within the governing party. GCIS

If people who work for the government tell us our safety depends on us not knowing what they do, we might suspect that they wanted to cover up wrong-doing. Unless, it seems, they work for state security agencies.

South Africa’s media are awash with shock at “bombshell” revelations about the country’s security services at the hearings of a commission of inquiry into “state capture”. Testimony shows that the State Security Agency, which is meant to provide the government with intelligence on domestic and foreign threats, was used to fight factional battles in the governing African National Congress (ANC) and to engage in corrupt activity. The agency, the evidence suggests, served former president Jacob Zuma and his allies, not the country.

The revelations are of far less interest than the reaction of the media and the national debate to them. This is so not because the case against the security services is trivial. It is anything but: it shows that they did little to safeguard the country and much to protect a political faction and to funnel public money into private purposes.

But these allegations are not new. The fact that they are being treated as bolts from the blue shows how unprepared South Africa’s politicians, media and citizen organisations which shape the national debate are to deal with the threats posed by its security establishment.

Spies behaving badly

The core of the evidence was the testimony of Sydney Mufamadi, an academic and former cabinet minister. It was damning but should have taken no-one by surprise. It was given because he chaired a panel which investigated the security agencies at the request of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Mufamadi’s panel reported in December 2018 and its report was released by Ramaphosa in March 2019. It is a public document, available on the Internet. There were some media reports on its contents when it was released but it did not cause much of a stir.

Mufamadi’s evidence was supplemented by that of the acting director-general of the State Security Agency, Loyiso Jafta, and by a witness who conducted an internal investigation into wrong-doing at the agency and who, consistent with the security services’ penchant for secrecy, is identified as “Miss K”. While both added detail to Mufamadi’s account, everything they said reinforced his panel’s findings.

The factionalism of the security services has been evident for at least a decade. During the fight against apartheid, Zuma headed ANC Intelligence. So, he could command the loyalty of former ANC underground security agents who joined the government after 1994, many of whom continued to put his interests first. Years ago, a colleague valued for his understanding of the workings of the governing party who had joined me in a radio panel discussion explained how the security agencies would interpret what we said and pass on their view to the faction whose interests they served.

So why have media treated the contents of a two-year-old report which confirmed older suspicions as a “bombshell”? One reason may be that most of the country’s reporters do not read anything longer than a media release, ensuring that government reports are ignored unless their contents are revealed at a press conference. Another is that the media – and citizen organisations which take part in the national debate – do not see the security services as a threat to democracy.

This is illustrated by the controversy over the Protection of State Information Bill. It was passed by Parliament in 2013 but is still not law – Ramaphosa sent it back to Parliament last year because he believes parts are unconstitutional.

The bill, which would give officials power to classify documents to keep them out of the public eye, triggered a campaign by media and citizens’ groups who claimed it aimed to prevent reporting on corruption. They insisted that there was no problem with “legitimate” secrecy which protected national security.

Holding spies to account

This misunderstood why the bill was tabled and what it was meant to do. Ironically, it began as an attempt to ensure that apartheid-era laws were changed to align them with the values of the democratic constitution.

When drafts of the bill proposed ending most government secrecy, the security establishment, as securocrats are wont to do, painted lurid pictures of the horrors which would ensue if citizens knew what they were doing.

They demanded strong provisions to keep information classified. To emphasise the bill’s real purpose, an entire chapter was included which made it clear that it could not be used to prevent reporting on government corruption – its only role was to safeguard “genuine” state secrets.

The “bombshell” evidence shows what the security agencies wanted to be protected from: information on how they were abusing their power. If the bill had been phrased as the campaigners wished, the security establishment’s secrets would have been classified, hiding their partisanship and wrong-doing from public view, while the media and citizens’ organisations claimed victory.

The fact that the Mufamadi report was largely ignored when it appeared suggests that the debate has no great enthusiasm for holding spies to account because it remains convinced that they need to hide what they do to protect the people.

Even now, this is a theme in some reporting on the “revelations”. Spies are feeding reporters more lurid details of how the evidence to the commission threatens citizens’ security. Agents who now fear for their safety when their identities are revealed will now, the country is told, sell their services to other employers who will protect them better.

None of this is backed by a shred of evidence – security agencies are in the business of exaggerating both the threats to the country and their importance in thwarting them. But, since the default position of many journalists and campaigners is to believe the spies, loud voices will again insist that they be allowed to keep their secrets.

Democracy’s health depends partly on ignoring those voices.

Safeguarding democracy

It is open to question how much the country needs security agencies. Crime intelligence is essential but the country is not threatened by any other state enemies (except those invented by security operatives) and internal threats to security stem from issues, such as local tensions between citizens and local governments, which are no business of spies.

That said, the country probably needs security agencies to guard against future threats but, precisely because they do operate in secret, the interests of the people will be protected only if they are subject to strong oversight from elected representatives and citizens’ groups.

At the very least, oversight bodies need to know exactly what they are doing, how and why. This information, stripped of references to people and operations where Parliament thinks this is needed, must be available to all citizens.

If that does not happen, citizens’ rights will be eroded as they allow spies to prey on them while they claim to protect them.

Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Coronavirus variants, viral mutation and COVID-19 vaccines: The science you need to understand

 

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is mutating. Aitor Diago/Moment via Getty Images

The SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates fast. That’s a concern because these more transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2 are now present in the U.S., U.K. and South Africa and other countries, and many people are wondering whether the current vaccines will protect the recipients from the virus. Furthermore, many question whether we will we be able to keep ahead of future variants of SARS-CoV-2, which will certainly arise.

In my laboratory I study the molecular structure of RNA viruses – like the one that causes COVID-19 – and how they replicate and multiply in the host. As the virus infects more people and the pandemic spreads, SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve. This process of evolution is constant and it allows the virus to sample its environment and select changes that make it grow more efficiently. Thus, it is important to monitor viruses for such new mutations that could make them more deadly, more transmissible or both.

People wait for a COVID-19 vaccine during England’s third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images

RNA viruses evolve quickly

The genetic material of all viruses is encoded in either DNA or RNA; one interesting feature of RNA viruses is that they change much more rapidly than DNA viruses. Every time they make a copy of their genes they make one or a few mistakes. This is expected to occur many times within the body of an individual who is infected with COVID-19.

One might think that making a mistake in your genetic information is bad – after all, that’s the basis for genetic diseases in humans. For an RNA virus, a single change in its genome may render it “dead.” That’s not too bad if inside an infected human cell you’re making thousands of copies and a few are no longer useful.

However, some genomes may pick up a change that is beneficial for the survival of the virus: Maybe the change allows the virus to evade an antibody – a protein that the immune system produces to catch viruses – or an antiviral drug. Another beneficial change may allow the virus to infect a different type of cell or even a different species of animal. This is likely the pathway that allowed SARS-CoV-2 to move from bats into humans.

Any change that gives the virus’s descendants a competitive growth advantage will be favored – “selected” – and begin to outgrow the original parent virus. SARS-CoV-2 is demonstrating this feature now with new variants arising that have enhanced growth properties. Understanding the nature of these changes in the genome will provide scientists with guidance to develop countermeasures. This is the classic cat-and-mouse scenario.

In an infected patient there are hundreds of millions of individual virus particles. If you were to go in and pick out one virus at a time in this patient, you would find a range of mutations or variants in the mix. It’s a question of which ones have a growth advantage – that is, which ones can evolve because they are better than the original virus. Those are the ones that are going to become successful during the pandemic.

Of the mutations that have been detected, is one of particular concern?

Any single variant or change in the virus is probably not that problematic. A single change in the spike protein – which is the region of the virus that attaches to human cells – is probably not going to be a big threat as the medical community rolls out the vaccines.

The new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, B.1.1.7., was first identified in the U.K. in December. The red object is a spike protein of the coronavirus, and it interacts with the (blue) ACE2 receptor on the human cell to infect it. The mutations of the new variant are labeled, showing their position on the spike protein. Juan Gaertner/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

The current vaccines induce the immune system to produce antibodies that recognize and target the spike protein on the virus, which is essential for invading human cells. Scientists have observed the accumulation of multiple changes in the spike protein in the South African variant.

These changes allows SARS-CoV-2, for example, to attach more tightly to the ACE2 receptor and enter human cells more efficiently, according to preliminary unpublished studies. Those alterations could enable the virus to infect cells more easily and enhance its transmissibility. With multiple changes in the spike protein, the vaccines may no longer produce a strong immune response against these new variant viruses. That’s a double whammy: a less effective vaccine and a more robust virus.

Right now, the public doesn’t need to be concerned about the current vaccines. The leading vaccine manufacturers are monitoring how well their vaccines control these new variants and are ready to tweak the vaccine design to ensure that they will protect against these emerging variants. Moderna, for example, has stated that it will adjust the second or booster injection to more closely match the sequence of the South African variant. We’ll have to just wait and see, as more people receive vaccinations, whether the transmission rates will drop.

Why is lowering transmission key?

A drop in transmission rates means fewer infections. Less virus replication leads to fewer opportunities for the virus to evolve in humans. With less opportunity to mutate, the evolution of the virus slows and there is a lower risk of new variants.

The medical community needs to make a big push and get as many people vaccinated and thus protected as possible. If not, the virus will continue to grow in large numbers of people and produce new variants.

How the new variants are different

The U.K. variant, known as B.1.1.7., seems to bind more tightly to the protein receptor called ACE2, which is on the surface of human cells.

I don’t think we’ve seen clear evidence that these viruses are more pathogenic, which means more deadly. But they may be transmitted faster or more efficiently. That means that more people will be infected, which translates into more people who will be hospitalized.

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The South African variant, known as 501.V2, has multiple mutations in the gene that encodes the spike protein. These mutations help the virus evade an antibody response.

Antibodies have exquisite precision for their target, and if the target changes shape slightly, as with this variant – which virologists call an escape mutant – the antibody can no longer bind tightly, as it loses its power to protect.

Why do we need to monitor for mutations?

We want to make sure that the diagnostic tests are detecting all of the viruses. If there are mutations in the virus’s genetic material, an antibody or PCR test may not be able to detect it as efficiently or at all.

To be sure that the vaccine is going to be effective, researchers need to know if the virus is evolving and escaping the antibodies that were triggered via the vaccine.

Another reason that monitoring for new variants is important is that people who’ve been infected might be infected again if the virus has mutated and their immune system can’t recognize it and shut it down.

The best way to look for emerging variants in the population is to do random sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 viruses from patient samples across diverse genetic backgrounds and geographical locations.

The more sequencing data researchers collect, the better vaccine developers will be able to respond in advance of major changes in the virus population. Many research centers around the U.S. and the world are ramping up their sequencing capabilities to accomplish this.

Richard Kuhn, Professor of Biological Sciences, Purdue University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Do you see red like I see red?

 

It’s disconcerting to think the way two people perceive the world might be totally different. Mads Perch/Stone via Getty Images

Is the red I see the same as the red you see?

At first, the question seems confusing. Color is an inherent part of visual experience, as fundamental as gravity. So how could anyone see color differently than you do?

To dispense with the seemingly silly question, you can point to different objects and ask, “What color is that?” The initial consensus apparently settles the issue.

But then you might uncover troubling variability. A rug that some people call green, others call blue. A photo of a dress that some people call blue and black, others say is white and gold.

You’re confronted with an unsettling possibility. Even if we agree on the label, maybe your experience of red is different from mine and – shudder – could it correspond to my experience of green? How would we know?

Neuroscientists, including us, have tackled this age-old puzzle and are starting to come up with some answers to these questions. One thing that is becoming clear is the reason individual differences in color are so disconcerting in the first place.

Colors add meaning to what you see

Scientists often explain why people have color vision in cold, analytic terms: Color is for object recognition. And this is certainly true, but it’s not the whole story.

The color statistics of objects are not arbitrary. The parts of scenes that people choose to label (“ball,” “apple,” “tiger”) are not any random color: They are more likely to be warm colors (oranges, yellows, reds), and less likely to be cool colors (blues, greens). This is true even for artificial objects that could have been made any color.

These observations suggest that your brain can use color to help recognize objects, and might explain universal color naming patterns across languages.

But recognizing objects is not the only, or maybe even the main, job of color vision. In a recent study, neuroscientists Maryam Hasantash and Rosa Lafer-Sousa showed participants real-world stimuli illuminated by low-pressure-sodium lights – the energy-efficient yellow lighting you’ve likely encountered in a parking garage.

The eye can’t properly encode color for scenes lit by monochromatic light. Rosa Lafer-Sousa, CC BY-ND

The yellow light prevents the eye’s retina from properly encoding color. The researchers reasoned that if they temporarily knocked out this ability in their volunteers, the impairment might point to the normal function of color information.

The volunteers could still recognize objects like strawberries and oranges bathed in the eerie yellow light, implying that color isn’t critical for recognizing objects. But the fruit looked unappetizing.

Volunteers could also recognize faces – but they looked green and sick. Researchers think that’s because your expectations about normal face coloring are violated. The green appearance is a kind of error signal telling you that something’s wrong. This phenomenon is an example of how your knowledge can affect your perception. Sometimes what you know, or think you know, influences what you see.

This research builds up the idea that color isn’t so critical for telling you what stuff is but rather about its likely meaning. Color doesn’t tell you about the kind of fruit, but rather whether a piece of fruit is probably tasty. And for faces, color is literally a vital sign that helps us identify emotions like anger and embarrassment, as well as sickness, as any parent knows.

It might be color’s importance for telling us about meaning, especially in social interactions, that makes variability in color experiences between people so disconcerting.

Looking for objective, measurable colors

Another reason variability in color experience is troubling has to do with the fact that we can’t easily measure colors.

Having an objective metric of experience gets us over the quandary of subjectivity. With shape, for instance, we can measure dimensions using a ruler. Disagreements about apparent size can be settled dispassionately.

The spectral power distribution of a 25-watt incandescent lightbulb illustrates the wavelengths of light it emits. Thorseth/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

With color, we can measure proportions of different wavelengths across the rainbow. But these “spectral power distributions” do not by themselves tell us the color, even though they are the physical basis for color. A given distribution can appear different colors depending on context and assumptions about materials and lighting, as #thedress proved.

Perhaps color is a “psychobiological” property that emerges from the brain’s response to light. If so, could an objective basis for color be found not in the physics of the world but rather in the human brain’s response?

Cone cells in the eye’s retina encode messages about color vision. ttsz/iStock via Getty Images Plus

To compute color, your brain engages an extensive network of circuits in the cerebral cortex that interpret the retinal signals, taking into account context and your expectations. Can we measure the color of a stimulus by monitoring brain activity?

Your brain response to red is similar to mine

Our group used magnetoencephalography – MEG for short – to monitor the tiny magnetic fields created when nerve cells in the brain fire to communicate. We were able to classify the response to various colors using machine learning and then decode from brain activity the colors that participants saw.

So, yes, we can determine color by measuring what happens in the brain. Our results show that each color is associated with a distinct pattern of brain activity.

Researchers measured volunteers’ brain responses with magnetoencephalography (MEG) to decode what colors they saw. Bevil Conway, CC BY-ND

But are the patterns of brain response similar across people? This is a hard question to answer, because one needs a way of perfectly matching the anatomy of one brain to another, which is really tough to do. For now, we can sidestep the technical challenge by asking a related question. Does my relationship between red and orange resemble your relationship between red and orange?

The MEG experiment showed that two colors that are perceptually more similar, as assessed by how people label the colors, give rise to more similar patterns of brain activity. So your brain’s response to color will be fairly similar when you look at something light green and something dark green but quite different when looking at something yellow versus something brown. What’s more, these similarity relationships are preserved across people.

Physiological measurements are unlikely to ever resolve metaphysical questions such as “what is redness?” But the MEG results nonetheless provide some reassurance that color is a fact we can agree on.

Bevil R. Conway, Senior Investigator at the National Eye Institute, Section on Perception, Cognition, and Action, National Institutes of Health and Danny Garside, Visiting Fellow in Sensation, Cognition & Action, National Institutes of Health

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Mbeki and Obasanjo: case studies in the use of soft power in Africa's interests

 

Former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki share a light moment at a meeting of the G8 and developing nations in Tokyo in 2000. EFE-EPA/Michel Euler

The concept of soft power has been part of the parlance of international relations for three decades. Soft power actors use non-coercive and persuasive means to achieve their objectives. Attraction rather than force is their preferred language.

The application of soft power remains focused on states because of their primacy in international politics. But, the increasing influence of non-state actors dictates a need to review this approach. Non-state actors on the international stage include international organisations, NGOs, multinational corporations, terrorist groups and individuals.

It is against this backdrop that I studied the power of attraction of non-state actors. I focused on the soft power credentials of former African presidents – Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria, 1999-2007) and Thabo Mbeki (South Africa, 1999-2008).

The two have made important contributions to the continent this century through promoting peace, democracy, pan-Africanism and regional integration.

The study captures the essence of their soft power. It also engages how it has rubbed off on their respective countries – during and after their presidencies.

I examined Obasanjo’s and Mbeki’s traits, ideas and policies. In particular I focused on their contribution to pan-Africanism and the idea of the African Renaissance. I argue that they successfully used their soft power and international clout to make significant contributions in Africa and beyond.

Obasanjo as a soft power president

After Obasanjo’s civilian administration ended in 2007, he attracted widespread criticism within Nigeria. This is perhaps best captured by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s description of him as a “master of hypocrisy”.

But, this underplays some of his accomplishments. The period between 1976 and 1979 when he was the military head of state is lauded by some as the most dynamic era of Nigeria’s foreign policy. And during his civilian administration (1999–2007) Nigeria was catapulted from a pariah state (due to gross human right abuses by successive military regimes) to a significant regional and, to a lesser extent, global player.

Thanks to Obasanjo’s idiosyncratic soft power, Nigeria, once neglected in global affairs, witnessed an influx of high profile visits, including US presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Its voice was better heard in such bodies as the Commonwealth, Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement.

Obasanjo was notable for his courage and decisiveness, particularly when it came to colonialism and, later, apartheid. His toughness on these issues, and his promotion of regional integration, had remarkable success.

A foreign policy that embraces genuine promotion of democracy and peacemaking generates soft power.

Obasanjo enhanced his, and by extension Nigeria’s soft power through his successful peacemaking and promotion of democracy. The former, in places such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. The latter, in São Tomé and Príncipe, Togo and Côte d'Ivoire.

In Liberia, he was instrumental in ending the war. Obasanjo also facilitated the resignation of President Charles Taylor who was granted asylum in Nigeria. He played an active role in the transition to democratic rule that ushered in President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson in 2006.

In São Tomé and Príncipe, Obasanjo ensured the reinstatement of President Fradique de Menezes following a military coup in 2003.

His reformist ideas, set out in the Memorandum of Understanding of the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa, was adopted by the African Union summit in 2002.

The memorandum has four cornerstones. These are security, stability, development and cooperation as prerequisites for good governance on which African states would be measured.

It is thus clear that Obasanjo’s towering personality and international stature have enabled Nigeria to shape African institutions. He is thus a wielder of soft power.

Since leaving office, Obasanjo has continued to exhibit this soft power through conflict mediation and humanitarian interventions, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2008–2009) and Côte d'Ivoire (2011).

But, a number of shortfalls blot his soft power credentials. These include his unilateral decisions and apparent disdain for the rule of law while in power.

Mbeki’s legacy

Mbeki was influenced by some of Africa’s great political minds, as well as pan-African thinkers, during his years in exile in the UK.

For example, while studying at Sussex University in England in the mid-1960s, he engaged the ideas of pan-Africanist luminaries Aimé Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Leopold Senghor and W.E.B. Du Bois. Arguably, all these individuals influenced Mbeki’s views as seen in his pursuit of pan-Africanism and African Renaissance.

Mbeki has often been labelled an “African intellectual” and “African philosopher king”. There is no gainsaying that his administration had the most impact of any post-apartheid government in international affairs – even more so than Nelson Mandela.

This was evident in his push for South-South solidarity and reform of old international institutions such as the UN Security Council. The African Union, despite its weaknesses, provided the platform for him to promote peace and security in Africa.

Exercising his soft power attribute (persuasion), Mbeki used shuttle diplomacy to garner the support of other African states, the Group of Eight and the Association of Southeast Asian States to establish the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the African Peer Review Mechanism. He was noted as a major peacemaker on the continent. This is best shown by his administration’s peacemaking and peacekeeping in Burundi, the DRC and Sudan.

Mbeki was often called upon to mediate and find lasting solutions to conflict in Africa. In 2004, the African Union asked that he proffer a political solution to the conflict in Côte d’Ivoire. He was actively involved in mediation to end conflicts in Comoros, Rwanda, Sudan, Eswatini and Zimbabwe.

Some of the interventions turned out to be a mere plastering of wounds as countries such as the DRC and Sudan remained fragile.

Nevertheless, Mbeki facilitated the Lusaka ceasefire agreement and the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement. The accords aimed to end the DRC and Burundi’s conflicts, respectively.

Indeed, the calls for Mbeki’s mediation reflect recognition of his idiosyncratic soft power.

Mbeki’s administration demonstrated remarkable commitment to provide aid to Africa. The African Renaissance Fund was established in 2000 to disburse aid to fellow African states. This offered an alternative to Western aid laced with debilitating conditions.

Mbeki continued to play a significant role after his presidency. He was appointed chair of the African Union’s efforts to bring peace to Sudan and South Sudan in 2009. This culminated in South Sudan’s independence in 2011.

The most significant factors that undermined his credibility were his quiet diplomacy in Zimbabwe and HIV/AIDS denialism.

Due to their soft power resources, Obasanjo and Mbeki made their mark on pan-Africanism and conflict resolution in Africa. Their ideas remain deeply ingrained in the African Union.

Oluwaseun Tella, Senior Researcher, Institute for the Future of Knowledge, University of Johannesburg

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.