There was general agreement in South Africa that May’s ugly attacks against desperately poor foreigners in Johannesburg and elsewhere marked a low point in that country’s post-apartheid history. Fifty lives were lost and an estimated 50,000 foreigners forced to flee the country. It also marked yet another low point in the dismal 13-year-long presidency of Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki distinguished himself by his lack of response – flying off from a bankers’ meeting in Mozambique to an African heads of state confab in Tanzania, while foreign-owned shacks and shops went up in flames. He finally managed a statement of regret although, unlike his political rival Jacob Zuma, he never did get around to visiting the affected communities. South Africans were enraged by the behaviour of their increasingly remote and out-of-touch President.
Nelson Mandela was always going to be a hard act to follow as President of South Africa. He combined a sharp political mind with a sense of higher purpose. His warmth and humanity almost always shone through. Years of imprisonment on Robben Island had failed to make him bitter. Thabo Mbeki did, however, at first seem like a good bet as Mandela’s successor. He was sober and dignified, with sterling academic credentials from Britain’s University of Sussex. Mbeki came from a longtime African National Congress (ANC) family and was part of the generation of political leaders that had passed a good deal of time outside South Africa during the darkest days of apartheid. While he lacked Mandela’s popularity, many felt he was the right pair of hands to guide the country from the euphoric days of liberation to making South Africa a functioning democracy on a day-to-day basis.
