The Day I Shared Lager With Thabo Mbeki

Quote: “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” – Bill Cosby.
Me & Mbeki
The Day I Shared Lager with Thabo Mbeki as South Africa’s Future President Tugged on His Trademark Pipe
IT’S 1986 in the spring of Harare. Here I was seated in front of post-apartheid’s future President as he tugged on his trademark pipe and the aroma of tobacco consumed my probing mind. The bearded diplomat-cum-freedom fighter graciously sipped a cold lager, waxing lyrically in measured tones in Queen’s English, about his vision for a new South Africa.
Before then Thabo Mbeki was an enigma whose reputation had preceded him in the underground movement of the liberation struggle spearheaded by the African National Congress.
He was the ANC’s International Affairs Director at Mandela Street in Margaret Thatcher dominion, and the foreign face of the magnetic movement that attracted hordes of black and white post-Woodstock activists.
The British-educated semi-diplomat travelled between Lusaka and London in his roving post as a well-heeled envoy aimed at demystifying his outlawed guerilla movement as legitimate resisters bent on changing the status quo of apartheid.
Our venue was on the outskirts of the high-security conference centre, where India's Rajiv Gandhi, Cuba's Fidel Castro, the PLO's Yasser Arafat, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and almost 50 heads of state were attending the 8th Summit Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement.
NAM was bloc of 101 nations formed in 1961 by leaders of the post-war independence movements, Nehru of India, Tito of Yugoslavia, Sukarno of Indonesia, Nkrumah of Ghana and Nasser of Egypt. NAM members were known to be neutral in the confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union, and this was an ideal platform for the ANC to lobby support from more than hundred countries under one roof.
ENTER THABO MBEKI
Enter Thabo Mbeki, the suave and skilful negotiator and chief lobbyist. Before that I enjoyed the privilege of interacting with other ANC leaders in exile Oliver R Tambo, Joe Modise, Jaya Appalraju, Govin Reddy, Tessa Colvin and Dr Kesavaloo Goonum and many other exiles who were busy lobbying support in the Zimbabwean capital.
I was equally privileged to receive security clearance to interview Mbeki, but the interview never saw the light of the day because of the tough censorship laws against banned people and organizations. However, I finally published anecdotes of the one-on-one interview soon after President Mbeki took the oath of office at the Union Buildings.
I watched the new el-supremo of African politics work at Parliament in Cape Town in 2004 when he delivered his famous “I Am An African” state of the nation address, and later joined the entourage at the Union Buildings, where he was sworn in for the second term, not long after President Mugabe was given a standing ovation when he walked the red carpet to the VIP seats.
Only a fortnight ago, peace broker Mbeki put the red seal on a power-sharing deal between Zanu-PF and the MDC groupings.
But back home from his favourite African city where he lobbied the world’s leading freedom icons to help the ANC to crack the yoke of apartheid and usher democracy on one of the last bastions of colonial-apartheid rule, His Excellency was unceremoniously from ousted from the Office of the Presidency in a new brand of political maneuvering that has sullied the ANC’s prestige political past, history, heritage and legacy. Mbeki was a staunch member of the broad church that is the ANC, Africa’s oldest liberation movement turned sophisticated ruling party.
Though post-independent Zimbabwe was in its knees in debts and battling post-colonial poverty and the ravages of a bush war, Harare showcased Africa’s model breadbasket nation, housing 2 000 delegates in homes and apartments especially constructed for the conference, while others lived in the homes of wealthy Zimbabwean whites.
In his keynote address, Prime Minister Mugabe urged the heads of state to provide economic aid for the black African "frontline" states that were seeking to cut off trade with apartheid SA, calling on the nonaligned nations to provide military equipment and training to support the black armed struggle in South Africa.
Well, at least now we know that Mbeki does not have a short memory.
Ja, well, no, Chief, our outgoing commander had pulled our troublesome neighbours out of the boiling political pot, only to be axed on the eve of his swansong at the United Nations.
I recall as if it happened yesterday. Picture this two-part scenario: Mbeki, the ANC diplomat in exile and his love for briar pipes, but sipping lunch-time beer and not whisky, during a breakaway interviewing session at NAM.
Four years earlier, just like Yusuf Dadoo, the SA Communist Party leader in exile, tugging his trademark pipe and sipping lager in London during the United Nations' apartheid sports-sanctioning conference under the stewardship of Sam Ramsamy in 1982, I was given an inside track of a rainbow nation in the making.
Quite prophetically, the bearded persona who was to become our visionary president, gently advised me to go home because "we needed journalists to cover the story of our victory over apartheid”, while Dadoo provided some incredible insights into how his conservative family prodded him into studying medicine over political activism.
That day in Harare was forever etched in my mind as I watched Mandela’s protégé deliver stirring speeches, poetically, and wooing voters across the colour line, to what he is good at, straddling on the world stage from New York to Timbuktu, from G8 to SADC, on his “I Am An African” mission.
Now that Mr Dignity is out of the highest office in rainbow country, forced out by his brothers-in-arms, he can reinvent his career by becoming Ambassador-At-Large in a new mission to bring real peace, stability and economic growth to Africa’s troubled hotspots.
Hamba Kahle, Chief, I owe you one for the good advice when ominous dark cloud blighted the African skyline.
So let us get on with the business unusual of governing the Beloved Country and striving for the non-racial democracy that you had stoically fought for during a lifetime of 60 years.

Marlan Padayachee is an international freelance journalist, socio-political commentator and media communications strategist whose work as an anti-apartheid critic and activist earned him the prestige British Council Fellow and US International Visitors awards.