ANTI-IDEOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF RIGHTS

In April 2014, in an editorial in the Daily Maverick titled ‘Building Unity to Restore Democratic Rule’, Raymond Suttner, former African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party (SACP) leader, appealed:

In the context of South Africa's deepening social crisis, growing levels of inequality, private and public violence, there can be no doubting the importance of Suttner's appeal. Suttner's article was written before the May 2014 election in which the ANC was able to claim a sixty-two per cent majority, albeit less than forty per cent of the total number of people eligible to vote. But predictably the ANC's overwhelming victory did nothing to staunch the political impasse that pervades our society, with the ongoing controversy over the financing of the president's private homestead at Nkandla, and strikes and service-delivery protests commencing again barely before the ink was dry on the election results. Judging by the levels of protest, South Africa is a country in revolt against the status quo.

AT THE TIME THAT this chapter was first written in early 2005, South Africa was still deeply enmeshed in government-endorsed AIDS denialism. Access to antiretroviral treatment was being resisted and delayed by the government; voluntary HIV testing was not encouraged; and HIV and TB were talked about as unconnected. All hard to believe! At that time this author speculated that South African President Thabo Mbeki's response to the HIV and AIDS epidemic would become the Achilles heel of his government.

However, Mbeki was still in the ascendency. In 2004 he had led the anc to another convincing general election victory and was secure in his leadership within the party and the country. Mbeki's ‘denialist’ position on hiv had been the subject of fierce criticism from trade unions, churches and the Treatment Action Campaign (tac), but the anc itself seemed largely unmoved. Although there had been cracks indicative of some unhappiness with the President's position, these cracks were mere fault-lines for what would later become deep divisions. Indeed, Mbeki's self-confidence and his blindness to public opinion on hiv/aids internationally and in South Africa were evident in his decision to re-appoint Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang as Minister of Health after the 2004 general election.

Writing in late 2009 therefore, it seems surprising how quickly predictions that hiv would be the Achilles heel of the Mbeki presidency came true. In a few short years, it has become received wisdom that Mbeki erred seriously on hiv.

INTRODUCTION

Civil society under Mbeki

This chapter examines the experience of one of South Africa's foremost pro-poor civil society movements, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), and uses it to reflect on the role that was played by social justice organisations during Mbeki's presidency (1999-2008). It juxtaposes the attitude of Mbeki's two governments to civil society organisations with the constitutional vision of active citizenship. It shows how, under Mbeki, organisations of civil society that were independent of the ANC were frequently denigrated by senior ANC leaders. When, on issues such as HIV/AIDS and poverty, they persisted with campaigns that ran contrary to the party line, concerted efforts were made to label and hence to delegitimise them. In the process, Mbeki sanctioned the erosion of key principles of constitutional governance and a contempt for principles of the rule of law.

Under apartheid the law was used to build the architecture of inequality and deprivation and to render the citizenry largely powerless over government policy and conduct. After 1994 law was put to a diametrically opposite purpose: apartheid law was replaced with a Constitution that seeks to foster social equality. Law now empowers, in no small part by providing people with a range of instruments they can use to exercise and advance their rights, as government goes about its daily business.

At the opening of the Constitutional Court building in 2004 Mbeki described the Constitution as ‘a vital compact at the core of our national life’. But, as TAC's story reveals, the practice of government during the Mbeki years was often contrary to the spirit of this compact.

Mbeki-sponsored AIDS denialism ought not to have been possible under the new legal order. Denialism is essentially a subjective state of mind. Maintaining it requires closing one's mind to reason, evidence and better judgement. However, in South Africa the president's embrace of AIDS denialism did not remain an individual matter. It came to infect the government and the ANC as a whole.