Context is no excuse for a leader's moral failure

THABO Mbeki deserves every bit of criticism for the unnecessary and costly mistakes he made during his presidency. These mistakes cannot be wished away by overemphasising the context within which they were made. We should, of course, give each other moral discount under appropriate circumstances for making mistakes. Equally, however, we are all responsible agents, who can rightly be blamed for wrongdoing as much as we should be praised for achievement.

This is why I disagree profoundly with an argument by Jonny Steinberg on this page earlier this week, in which he takes many to task for conveniently casting Mbeki as an “ogre” after his political death. This is a rather evocative accusation but one that does not stand up to critical scrutiny.

Steinberg does not claim Mbeki should be exonerated for all his errors. Instead, he engages in the increasingly popular activity of psychobiography writing — “situating” the man or woman within the “context” in which their decisions were taken. In this vein, Steinberg opines that it was always going to be difficult for Mbeki to succeed because “ he inherited a nation whose character and condition few had foreseen”. With this contextual picture of deep developmental and identity challenges richly painted, he argues that “Mbeki’s AIDS denialism is inseparable from this situation”.

The conclusion is that those who criticise Mbeki without due regard for the furniture in the universe within which he acted, “ have made him into an ogre … because (they) wish that what has departed with him is a country ill at ease with itself”. By implication, this says more about our “ wishful thinking ” than about Mbeki deserving the tag “ogre”.

This analysis is not convincing. There is a wide logical gap between understanding the context within which Mbeki acted and understanding the decisions he took. The implicit assumption is that Mbeki may have behaved differently but for these contextual facts. It cannot be a matter of psychological necessity that the facts about the country Mbeki inherited entailed AIDS denialism. No doubt Steinberg does not intend to imply this, but excessive contextualising can lead to this kind of unintended exoneration of political and moral wrongdoing.

Mark Gevisser made a similar mistake in his work on Mbeki. Unlike Steinberg, who looks to the facts of the country to explain Mbeki, Gevisser took the more inviting path of pop-psychologising about Mbeki’s early life. The short man had grown up in exile, without a biological father at hand, negotiating his way into adulthood without regular familial structural support and, lo and behold, could therefore not help himself to later make policy choices that included scepticism about orthodox science. Gevisser, like Steinberg, needs to mind the logical gap. Should we really believe that, but for these biographical facts, Mbeki would have acted differently? Is Govan Mbeki really the ultimate explanation for Thabo’s leadership sins?

Many world leaders had difficult childhoods but we do not routinely absolve them from moral responsibility for their mistakes. This points to a second weakness in Steinberg’s analysis. We are urged to understand Mbeki but understanding, in its turn, is not related to moral and political accountability. We can take a closer look at Mbeki’s AIDS denialism as a case in point.

Pop psychoanalysis may well succeed in offering us an explanation of Mbeki’s attitudes and actions. Assume, for sake of argument, some speculative facts. Imagine he was the victim of racial insults from white British students at Sussex. Imagine he was the victim of a racist hate crime or two, which further embedded a set of acrimonious attitudes towards his uncaring host country. A well- written story that digs up the full set of related facts, such as was attempted by Gevisser, is of great voyeuristic interest. Such a project certainly helps us as citizens to understand our leaders. In Mbeki’s case, we know many of his fellow cadres returned from exile with less racial baggage than him. This means we must look to the unique personal facts of Mbeki’s life to understand him. To that extent, I endorse a project such as Gevisser’s.

But — and this is the crux of the matter — does knowing the life history of Mbeki justify his poor political leadership on AIDS? Does it exonerate him, or even demand we give him some moral discount for bad behaviour? Does it justify Steinberg urging us to footnote the contextual facts about this ogre, including the forgotten silence of others around him? Surely not.

Mbeki is a deeply intelligent person, able to engage in reasoned decision making. He freely chose AIDS denialism. He is therefore morally and politically culpable. We may somewhat understand how he came to make these mistakes but understanding does not displace blame. Too many people died because of his needless self-indulgence, absent father or not. Mbeki earned the ogre tag. It certainly was not thrust upon him.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=89369