COMMENT | Invoking Mandela is intellectually embarrassing

COMMENT | I am a visitor to Malaysia. Although my family has a historical connection to this country going back to the early years after Merdeka and the leadership of Tunku Abdul Rahman, with a deeper heritage as a Cape Malay, I am obliged to respect and give deference to my hosts.

I am hesitant, therefore, to get involved or comment on the day-to-day politics of Malaysia. That’s one position I take, never mind that I am a columnist and essayist back in South Africa.

In another position, donning my cap as an academic – I am a visiting professor at the Multimedia University – I am absolutely wedded to the belief that scholarship and the research produced by academics should be more accessible, more readable and readily relevant to the daily lives of people.

Academic scholarship and research have little to no use if it remains aloof and disembedded, as it were, from the society in which it is moored.

As it goes, the lecturer teaches not just the student in class; that student returns regularly to their family, community, and society.

It is at those intersections where academic teaching and learning have to be relevant and help members of society make better decisions about their daily lives and their future. All of this is useful to bear in mind but is a topic for another day.

What got me writing this brief opinion and commentary is the Mandela-Factor has been invoked recently and commented on in this publication.

In deference to my hosts, I will not get directly involved in the politics of Malaysia, nor in government, state, or society.

What I will say about the raising of the Mandela-Factor - which is the habit of slipping behind the decency, humility, and ethical values embodied by Nelson Mandela - is that it is intellectually embarrassing.

To fully understand the basis of this statement, I should provide a brief reflection of my own work on and with the South African anti-apartheid activist who served as the first president of South Africa, Mandela.

Mandela’s humility and courage

I worked as a journalist in South Africa during the turmoil and violence that between 1985 and 1994 drove the country to the brink of a bloody civil war.

For what it’s worth, I was, at the time, also a correspondent for the New Straits Times. Mandela’s humility and courage, and a firm hand when it was necessary, pulled the country from the brink – notably when he told warring factions: “Take your guns, your knives, your pangas (machetes) and throw them into the sea”.

Mandela was not a saint, nobody governs completely without guilt, but he was graceful, humble, and kind and he was forthright when he needed to be; especially when it came to corruption, unethical conduct, bigotry, chauvinism, and double standards.

He did not become wealthy. In fact, as soon as he became president of the country, he demanded a 20 percent decrease in his own salary.

As it goes, the current president, Cyril Ramaphosa, also not quite a saint, donates half of his salary to the Mandela Foundation.

It should be said that Ramaphosa was an extremely wealthy businessperson before he became president in 2018, so he can probably afford to be charitable.

When my career in journalism ended, and before I made my way back to the London School of Economics, I worked for the Mandela administration for two years.

While I was a journalist we would share our love of the smell of the earth after the rain, and we shared a definite aversion to the ring of cash registers and the smell of money.

While I worked in the Mandela administration, I met a person who was committed to rolling back all forms of injustices, to raising awareness of patriarchy, he encouraged education and was especially concerned with children in poverty and the marginalisation of women in rural and traditional settings.

In short, Mandela never wanted to be wealthy, and he never did accrue vast sums of money. I should stress, again, that he was not a saint.

Zuma accused of fraud, money laundering

Nonetheless, consider one of his successors - 10 years after Mandela retired - Jacob Zuma. This man effectively sold the state and all its wealth off to one family, the Gupta brothers Ajay, Atul, and Rajesh who emigrated to South Africa from India in the early 1990s, and left the state hollowed out.

Besides being the architect of what we came to know as state capture, and a myriad of corruption charges during his presidency (2009–2018), which cost South Africa an estimated US$34 billion in graft, he remains, to this day, accused of fraud, racketeering, and money laundering charges relating to a $2 billion arms deal when he was deputy president in the early 2000s.

Now, here is the doozy. Pay attention at the back. If we fast forward to 2021, when he was brought before the justice system for his alleged role in hollowing out the state through corruption, patronage, and nepotism, Zuma defied the courts and was sentenced to a 15-month prison sentence for contempt of court during a corruption probe.

Bear in mind that this was even before any outstanding corruption charges were heard before the courts.

Two months into his 15-month sentence, Zuma appealed for medical parole and was released.

Suddenly, the criminal, accused of gross venality and corruption, drew sympathy from all quarters. He presents himself as persecuted and a victim of a politicised judiciary.

Many people in the country, now head in hands, are wondering just what has happened to the moral standing and ethical conduct, the humility and rejection of avarice and pecuniary gain that Mandela embodied.

As a columnist and an academic, I tend to leave it to readers and students to draw their own conclusions from what I placed on the pages of newspapers or on the blackboard, such as it is. I should, then, leave all of this here.

ISMAIL LAGARDIEN is a visiting professor at Multimedia University. He was the executive dean of business and economics sciences at Nelson Mandela University and served very briefly in the Mandela administration between a career as a journalist and an academic.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

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