Thabo Mbeki bemoans South Africa’s lack of ‘quality leadership’

Former President and Chancellor for the University of South Africa (UNISA), Thabo Mbeki does not believe that it requires a referendum to address the enormous challenges facing South Africa.

Speaking during a dialogue with UNISA students on Wednesday, Mbeki said the country was facing serious challenges, ranging from leadership, safety and security, and the economy among others.

In recent times, Mbeki has not minced his words, and used every possible opportunity to speak publicly about the country’s challenges, including that of the governing African National Congress (ANC).

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“A critical ingredient needed to resolve those problems is good leadership in government and generally in society.

Eskom needs engineers and economists, not politicians

“Just before I came, former statistician general Pali Lehohla made an interesting observation regarding the energy issue, that Eskom is a big engineering institution but also a big business. And he said, therefore, in terms of its leadership, you need engineers and economists, but instead we have politicians and accountants. I am not saying he was right, but he was looking at the issue of the quality of leadership in the country.

“Why do we seem to be incapable to address this matter? Is it because of what Pali is raising? Maybe it’s the answer.”

South Africa has for the past year been grappling with load shedding which was ramped up to stage 6 last weekend, only to be reduced to stage 5 on Tuesday evening.

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Mbeki said he thinks Lehohla was right, considering the situation around the new power stations Medupi and Kusile.

“Why are the new power stations misbehaving like the old ones,” Mbeki asked.

Power crisis started during Mbeki presidency

The roots of the current electricity crisis can, ironically, be traced back to Mbeki’s tenure as president.

Mbeki infamously believed that investing in electricity infrastructure was not a priority, and that the private sector would step in to plug the cracks which were beginning to show as far back as the early 2000s.

In 2006, he told the National Assembly that there was no energy crisis, and that load shedding, which was then a new phenomenon, was simply an “opportunity for economic growth through infrastructure expansion”.

Mail and Guardian reported at the time that Mbeki responded to parliamentary questions about the electricity outages that: ”We shouldn’t frighten ourselves too much”.

”Yes, indeed, there was a problem. There were regrettable losses suffered by many businesses, but there is no crisis.

”Whatever needs to be done to make sure that the economy grows and new investors come into the economy is being done on the energy and other sides.”

At the time, he denied that the power outages had any negative effects on investment sentiments.

Erasing legacy of apartheid will lead to social justice

Despite his criticism, Mbeki on Wednesday said that at some point during the Covid-19 pandemic, he believed there was some hope for the country.

“In 2020 particularly, we had something that came out of South Africa which was positive that business, government, labour and civil society, everyone was saying the economic challenges are so big that we need to get together to solve them. Two years have passed and nothing has happened.

“Many years ago, some of us were saying the strategic task was to eradicate the legacy of apartheid but we are nowhere near… We have not done anything to eradicate that legacy, because within that legacy you will find the social justice issue that was talked about in 2020?” Mbeki said.