We're witnessing the slow, wimpish degeneration of an administration that promised so much but ultimately delivered little. How we drooled over the prospects of Mbeki taking the helm of government! Unlike his predecessor, who was big on meaningless symbolic gestures, we told ourselves, Mbeki was the hard taskmaster who was going to get things done. Sadly, it didn't turn out that way.
Instead, the administration is going to leave us with a legacy of unsolved problems, some of them of its own making. Even the economy, the centrepiece of Mbeki's achievement, runs the risk of unravelling at the very sunset of his reign - no doubt undermined by the darkening international economic outlook, but more spectacularly by the mess at Eskom, the handiwork of Mbeki's government.
It didn't have to end this way.
What lessons does the Mbeki debacle offer us? How do we prevent this sort of degenerative disease from occurring again?
We have very little to go by in our short history. Nelson Mandela, the first president of the new dispensation, didn't hang around long enough for us to prise some lessons from his tenure. He was just too keen to leave. His job was done. Also, the circumstances of his departure were different. He left in a blaze of affection from his supporters. But Mbeki was fired. As a result there is a tense stand-off between him and his party as we speak.
Authority tends to ebb away from a government approaching its end, because people naturally begin to factor it out of their lives. There's no better illustration of this phenomenon than the final days of F W de Klerk's government. When Chris Hani was assassinated in April 1993, it was not De Klerk, but Mandela, unencumbered by the yoke of office, who went on national television to make a moving speech which saved the country from the civil war which many had predicted. From then on Mandela was the acknowledged, if unelected, leader of the country. Which is what Jacob Zuma is trying to do - steal a march on Mbeki by putting a different spin on policies, and in some instances, crafting his own.
To understand Mbeki's predicament, though, one has to go back to the final days of P W Botha's presidency. After suffering a stroke, Botha decided to resign his leadership of the National Party but remain president of the country. De Klerk, his successor, would have none of that. Botha was bundled out in a palace coup that was to leave him bitter to the end. Mbeki is unlikely to suffer a similar fate, probably because Zuma is himself uncertain of his own future.
The clumsiness of the transition or transfer of power - with its attended uncertainties - has nothing to do with the personalities involved. They can only play the cards they're dealt. It's the structure that's at fault. The deficiency of our electoral system is well documented: the list system gives enormous clout to party bosses, thus encouraging sycophancy among MPs and leaving the electorate in no position to hold those in power accountable. That obviously will have to change if democracy is to have any meaning.
But the role and the election of the president will also have to be reviewed. According to the constitution the national assembly is required to elect a president "from its members". This means whatever mandate the president has emanates from his party. The ANC therefore has a point when it says it should be telling Mbeki how to run the country.
That has to change. The people should elect their own president. That way he will be answerable to them, not to the party.
