Mbete, doyenne of ANC epitaph writers
As the Al Jazeera Head to Head interview seeped into the country ’ s consciousness this week like poop through a nappy, the consensus was clear: Baleka Mbete had embarrassed herself. Her evasive replies to Mehdi Hasan’s questions were shocking. The whole thing was an inexplicable blunder.
I disagree. First, I’m not sure you can embarrass yourself if there is nothing left to embarrass. Perhaps, five years ago, it would have been embarrassing for the former activist to reflect on how eagerly she had undermined democracy and the rule of law to make sure the Sun King Zuma didn’t have to answer questions about Nkandla.
But now? To be publicly embarrassed requires a reputation that is generally intact. After half a decade of being at best a passive enabler and at worst a vocal supporter of a gang of looters, feelings or ideas such as embarrassment no longer apply to her.
As for the shock expressed on social media, I suspect that’s less about Mbete’s answers than our own unfamiliarity with combative journalism. Our media have sometimes been guilty of (to use Nick Dawes’s magnificent description) stenography. But the nature of news also requires that endless, dutifully recorded verbiage be edited for length, massaged to fit available space and selectively quoted to make a point.
For centuries our politicians’ words have been smoothed and trimmed and polished, their meaning made clearer by subtle rearrangement, their arrogance dimmed by the inevitable dulling that comes from reading something on a page rather than hearing it crackling out of a throat. No wonder, then, that the interview was shocking to some: an hour of Mbete is a very different experience than a curated paragraph of Mbete.
Of course, nobody was more shocked than Mbete: often she regarded Hasan with a mix of amused curiosity and horror. What is this strange life form, she seemed to be wondering, which claims to be a journalist and yet is challenging me? Can I order riot police into the Oxford Union like back home? Or will he be sated with a free ANC Tshirt?
Business Day columnist and Oxford academic Jonny Steinberg was in the audience and, being close to the human realities of that hour, came away with a slightly more empathetic view. He describes watching Mbete, a flinching and tired apologist, gaze at the faces in the room, “searching for signs of scorn”. She was, Steinberg wrote, “in real pain”.
Steinberg is a perceptive and intelligent writer, and it is possible that Mbete deserves as much sympathy as mockery. But I was struck by one moment not mentioned in his piece. It came just after Mbete claimed that European colonialists had brought criminality to Africa. Granted, Hasan replied, the British Empire had brought all sorts of suffering to peoples around the world, but SA’s murder rate was still, Mbete had to admit, almost uniquely bad. She ducked and weaved. Where had Hasan got those figures? “The UN,” he replied. “You may have heard of them, they’re a big organisation.”
It was a cheap shot, and a perfect opening for a more sophisticated politician. Come now, Mehdi: that’s beneath you.
I have heard of the UN, Mehdi, but since we’re patronising each other, perhaps I can remind you about how misleading statistics can be. And so on. Instead, Mbete shot back two gunshot syllables: “So what?”
She may have been in pain. It was certainly ugly to watch. But right there, she reminded all of us why we are where we are. With those two words she reiterated the prevailing ethos of the last decade: contempt.
“So what?” The perfect epitaph for the gravestone of the modern ANC.
Which brings me back to that third and final criticism: that Mbete or her handlers should never have agreed to do the interview. I understand why you might believe this, but it is based on a false assumption. It presupposes Head to Head is a show on which a tough journalist gets answers out of reluctant subjects. It presupposes that you live in the world of Mehdi Hasan.
But Baleka Mbete lives in the ANC, which means the show was something entirely different. Her task was clearly defined. It wasn’t to answer to a journalist and an audience who mean less than nothing to the ANC. It certainly wasn’t to admit to mistakes in front of the children of Western liberal elites, in the stone heart of the colonial project. It was, simply, to perform the sacred rites; to repeat the homilies and ritual denials; in short, to demonstrate her faith to her fellow high priests in the temple.
Hasan thought he was doing an interview. He wasn’t. He was building a cross onto which Mbete could hoist herself. And her faith will be rewarded.
SHE REMINDED US WHY WE ARE WHERE WE ARE ... THE ETHOS OF THE LAST DECADE: CONTEMPT
HER TASK WASN’T TO ANSWER TO AN AUDIENCE WHO MEAN LESS THAN NOTHING TO THE ANC