Egypt’s crisis shows wisdom of Mandela’s reconciliation BY ALLISTER SPARKS , 17 JULY 2013, 05:48 THE Egyptian military’s action in overthrowing that country’s democratically elected president is an unmitigated disaster. Not only has it set Egypt’s prospects of economic recovery back at least 20 years, it has also reversed the promise of the "Arab Spring" by discrediting the nascent idea of democracy throughout the Islamic world. Nor is it only Gen Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who is to blame for besmirching the idea of democracy in the Middle East. The western democracies, who are jumping all over al-Sisi, did so themselves when they refused to recognize Hamas’s clear-cut victory over Fatah, by 74 seats to 45, in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections of 2006. The US went even further a year later, when it became complicit in an attempt to overthrow the Hamas regime, resulting in the administrative severance of Gaza from the West Bank. It is little wonder that the Islamists deride western-style democracy, saying the West recognizes election results only when its favored parties win. But in my judgment, the man most culpable for bringing about the wretched situation in the land of the pharaohs is deposed president Mohamed Mursi himself, because it was his political ineptitude — indeed, his venality — that triggered the huge public protests that led to the recent military intervention. Mursi was elected to lead a deeply polarized society, but he made no attempt to bring its factions together, despite his campaign pledges to be an inclusive president for all of Egypt’s 84-million people. My purpose in noting this is that I believe that what is happening in Egypt now highlights the wisdom of our own Nelson Mandela in the way he piloted our deeply divided country through its transition from apartheid to democracy. As someone who was there with other reporters at the rock face of our tumultuous upheaval in the black townships as the anti-apartheid protests reached their climax through the 1980s, culminating in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, it makes my blood boil to hear some romantic revolutionaries criticize Mandela for being too conciliatory, too soft on the whites, in negotiating our transition. He focused too much on reconciliation and not enough on reconstruction, say these armchair critics. He should have driven a harder bargain. What they don’t quite say, but which is implicit in their subtext, is that Mandela betrayed the revolution. He should have fought on to achieve the glorious victory of their dreams. My point is that Mursi did exactly what these romantic revolutionaries contend Mandela should have done. He took over a deeply polarized country and made no attempt whatsoever to reconcile its divided people, focusing solely on the Islamist agenda of his Muslim Brotherhood. That is what produced the backlash, with about 14-million aggrieved Egyptians — Coptic Christians, secularists and others — pouring onto the streets to protest, which in turn led to the military foolishly compounding the folly by deposing the president and triggering a second backlash by his supporters. The result is the potential destruction of the Arab world’s most important country and, combined with the mess in Syria, the possible destabilization of the whole region. That, I firmly believe, is what could well have happened to South Africa if Mandela had acted as his radical critics contend he should have done, which was to go for a full-blown revolutionary agenda without regard for the need to reconcile the country’s deeply polarised society. Mandela knew very well that there was no prospect of the African National Congress (ANC) winning a military victory over the largest, best-equipped and best-trained army in Africa. He knew from the outset that the most the ANC’s armed struggle could achieve would be to force the National Party government to the negotiating table, and there to use the muscle of its huge support base to achieve the best deal possible. Which is exactly what it did. A key moment in those tense historic times came when Mandela held a secret meeting with a group of right-wing army generals headed by the then chief of the South African Defence Force, Gen Constand Viljoen. The generals were opposed to the negotiations and had formed a militant organisation called the Afrikaner Volksfront. Mandela knew that these generals, backed by a considerable number of military reservists across the country, were capable of wrecking any deal struck with FW de Klerk’s government and of reincarcerating the ANC leadership, as al-Sisi has now done with the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. But Mandela stood firm. He confronted those generals with a statesmanlike frankness that deserves to be carved in stone. "If you want to go to war," he told them, "I must be honest and admit that we cannot stand up to you on the battlefield. We don’t have the resources. It will be a long and bitter struggle. Many people will die and the country may be reduced to ashes. But you must remember two things. You cannot win because of our numbers: you cannot kill us all. And you cannot win because of the international community: they will rally to our support and they will stand with us." In my view, that was the single most pithy and decisive statement made in the entire anti-apartheid struggle. It turned the tide in favour of the negotiated settlement that we finally achieved. It was a statement by a great, insightful leader that left his most implacable opponents bereft of any rejoinder. The sheer power of its common sense broke the generals’ threatened resistance and allowed the process to go ahead. It is also a statement that all the "born-frees" in our land should study and internalise, for it sums up in those few words the situation that Mandela faced at that critical moment. He could fight on with tragic consequences for his people, as even if they won after many deaths, they would inherit a wasteland. Or he could negotiate a deal and, by focusing on the reconciliation of his divided people, lay the foundations for a new, united country. He made the right choice. Mursi chose differently. He won the Egyptian election with a mere 51% of the votes, but on assuming office he ignored the other half of his country’s divided population and focused only on pursuing his Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda. So the alienated half rose up against him, and now Egypt faces the awful possibility of sliding into a civil war that could well reduce the country to the ashes of which Mandela spoke. The moral of the story is that when you win an election you don’t simply become the leader of the voters who put you in power; you become president of your entire country, of all your people. And it is then your democratic duty to do what you can to unite them into a common sense of nationhood — not to perpetuate sectarianism and its dangerous consequences. That was Mandela’s vision, but it has been fading since those brilliant first years that he was at the helm. Now it is up to our "born-frees" to recover that vision and build on it.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 05:50:00 +0000
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