Irish influences help to shed light on South Africa's aloof president

SOUTH AFRICA: An biography of Thabo Mbeki reveals that he drew heavily on the rhetoric and ideals of Robert Emmet to forge his…

SOUTH AFRICA:An biography of Thabo Mbeki reveals that he drew heavily on the rhetoric and ideals of Robert Emmet to forge his political philosophy, writes Joe Humphreysin Pretoria.

It is a sign of the man's character that eight years into his presidency, Thabo Mbeki has few friends who claim to know what makes him tick.

The South African president is famously elusive, every bit the "enigma, wrapped in a riddle, hidden in a mystery" that one Johannesburg newspaper labelled him this week.

The once-exiled anti-apartheid leader, who is seeking a third term as president of the African National Congress (ANC) at a party convention next month, inspires affection and loathing in almost equal measure.

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Who is this man who prides himself on his open-mindedness but is intolerant of dissent? Who is this man who exudes leadership but has singularly failed to address some of his country's biggest challenges, the HIV/Aids crisis chief among them? A new biography of Mbeki has gone some way to answering such questions.

Written by South African author Mark Gevisser, the book took eight years to complete, much of which was spent chasing the ever-circumspect Mbeki for interviews. The result is a 800- page opus that is as meandering and as complex and the subject himself.

The book has already grabbed headlines in South Africa for uncovering fresh details of Mbeki's "dissident" views on Aids, but it also breaks new ground by revealing some unlikely influences on his character, including one with a specific Irish flavour.

The president's love of the poetry of WB Yeats is well known. According to Gevisser, however, it was another Irishman - the martyred Robert Emmet - who had a profound influence on shaping Mbeki's political philosophy.

The author reports that Mbeki was introduced in the early 1960s to Emmet's orations, and particularly his 1803 speech from the dock in which he cites his executioners' "impatience for the sacrifice". Significantly, around the time of this introduction, Govan Mbeki - the young revolutionary's father - was on trial with Nelson Mandela, facing a possible death sentence.

According to Gevisser, one of the first things Mbeki did when he went into exile to Sussex in England was to track down a recording of Emmet's speech, performed by Micheál Mac Liammóir, on an album of Irish revolutionary orations.

"Thabo and I used to come back from the pub and listen to it, over and over again," one of Mbeki's old Sussex peers told Gevisser. "It was an emotional thing, I think; a sense of a link to revolt and a fight against oppression."

Gevisser says the young activist "made all his undergraduate friends memorise Emmet's words" and he still has the album, which used to be banned in South Africa.

More significantly, says Gevisser, Emmet's example had a lasting impact on Mbeki, influencing his vision and personal mission, as well as his rhetorical style. He writes: "It is too easy to cast Mbeki as the anti-heroic antidote - or sequel - to the heroic larger-than-life Nelson Mandela.

"For within the managerialist, technocratic pinstripes of Thabo Mbeki is someone who seems to have always wanted to be a hero, like his father, like Nelson Mandela. Like Robert Emmet."

Ironically, another author writing on the subject this week believes it is Yeats who comes closest to unlocking the secret of Mbeki's personality. In an analysis that is perhaps a little unfair to the poet whatever about the president, Drew Forrest - a critic with the Johannesburg Mail and Guardian - argues that Mbeki has taken to heart Yeats's "proto-fascist" celebration of "an aristocratic civilisation".

In a review of Gevisser's book, Forrest writes: "Of course, Mbeki is not a fascist, nor does he believe mass poverty is desirable, but the rigid hierarchy Yeats extols would have resonated with him.

"He believes, at base, that leaders should lead and followers follow . . . He believes in politics as the domain of the few, to be conducted in corridors and behind closed doors, with the many weighing in every few years by crossing a ballot paper."

Whatever the truth of such psychoanalysis, it appears Mbeki's popularity is on the wane.

Each week a new name is added to the list of possible ANC leaders, the latest being Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, former wife of the president's main rival Jacob Zuma and current minister for foreign affairs, who said yesterday she believed South Africa was now ready for a woman president.