The aura and intellectual leader continues to inspire many South African audiences. After taking the reins of presidential power from global icon Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki’s new seemingly de facto role as a well-received commentator on African affairs impresses detractors and supporters alike.

Leaving politics behind and shifting his focus to how Africa embraces its place on the global stage, the former president of South Africa is encouraging Africans to renew their understanding of their identity, while developing to their fullest potential.

BBQ joined a number of dinner events and recent addresses, taking part in the president’s engagement with professionals and aspiring young leaders.

Mbeki first and foremost believes young professionals “occupy an important place in all countries of our region”. For him, they possess the possibility to choose whether they focus exclusively on personal advancement or do so concurrently with changing African societies for the better.

He is clear about the tasks of the African Renaissance. “The establishment of democratic political systems to ensure the accomplishment of the goal: ‘the people shall govern’,” being one.

Mbeki urges young professionals to ensure “these systems take into account African specifics so that, while being truly democratic and protecting human rights, they are nevertheless designed in ways which really ensure that political and, therefore, peaceful means can be used to address the competing interests of different social groups in each country.”

His vision of an African Renaissance remains a guiding light in his engagement with the business community. He is quick to make it clear that the fate of Africa will be determined not only by political leaders but by the role of the enterprising business community.

In Mbeki’s words, young professionals “constitute an important echelon of the leadership of our region”.

“Like the rest of our contemporary leadership, you have a task to help elaborate a vision of where our countries and peoples should aim to be 20 or 30 years from today, and certainly by the end of the 21st century.”

He explains that young professionals occupy a “privileged position”: ”the bridge between the past and the future” in a world that has seen dramatic changes of late, particularly as regards the global financial crisis and the rise of China.

Mbeki’s advice on leadership centres on a core belief that an articulated and understood vision is essential to those who want to take a course of action that is advantageous to the future of the continent and its overall welfare.

“I would like to advise that you should take seriously the Biblical proverb which Chief [Albert] Luthuli elected to quote: ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’.”

In the former president’s analysis, the role that professionals will play include “establishing the institutions and procedures which would enable the continent collectively to deal with questions of democracy, peace and stability”. How they do that will include a clear conscious effort to embrace not only professional prestige but an active interest in public affairs.

Mbeki sees “the establishment of democratic political systems to ensure the accomplishment of the goal that ‘the people shall govern’
as indispensable, and a role young professionals should see as a responsibility.

He warned an audience of predominantly black professionals that there was a need for “these systems to take into account African specifics... while being truly democratic and protecting human rights”. He urged that these democratic societies be designed in ways that ensure “peaceful means can be used to address the competing interests of different social groups in each country”.

“You constitute the link between the past represented by my generation, which is on its way out,” Mbeki said at a meeting of Black Management Forum attendees.

“As Africans, I would like to believe that you feel it in your innermost being that you are proudly African!” he told the delegates.

Mbeki added that in all the countries where Africans find themselves as nationals, there can be some aspects of any given society that at worst cause despair.

“I know that many things happen which impose on you a deep sense of shame as Africans,” he points out. “What I am suggesting, nevertheless, is that you should understand and convince yourselves that whatever it is that has happened, which visits on you dissatisfaction, shame and despair, does not represent what is truly African, as would be espoused by the masses of the African people, the ultimate determinants of what it means to be an African.”

Referring to Lyndon B. Johnson, when he spoke on 4 June 1965 on the issue of the civil rights of the African-American population, Mbeki recalls the former United States president’s famous remarks: “Freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.” For Mbeki, these words carry important significance.

For him, it is clear that young African professionals are inheritors of the legacy of freedom that constituted but one battle won, while in the same vein, they each have an obligation to determine what needs to be done in order to ensure consistency with the vision of liberation.

“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say: ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.”

The Thabo Mbeki Foundation launched in October 2010 with the aim of making the 21st century an “African Century”. That vision underscores the former president’s belief in the role of empowering people.

“We must do everything we can to contribute to a realisation of the dream of the African masses that everything would be done, with them acting as makers rather than objects of history, to achieve the Renaissance of Africa, and thus make the 21st century an African one,” he says.

Mbeki believes skills and investment in people is crucial.

When engaging with young professionals, he makes the point that it is the dignified masses, counted in the hundreds of millions, who define the African soul and identity: “the masses who are your mothers and fathers, among whom you belong, who sacrificed everything to ensure that you become the professionals you are, and whom you must commit to serve, selflessly.”

A sense of responsibility toward society is the type of consciousness the president goes to lengths to affirm.

In his own words, young professionals constitute a vital stratum of the African leadership, closely linked to the task of the management of change in Africa. Young people in this context are required to find out what role they should play to construct the kind of nation state conducive to the African Renaissance.

The final answer as to how this is done is left up to the people. It is one that Mbeki seems to leave deliberately to a new generation to decide.

“I am certain that you, more than me, have the native intelligence and the new knowledge to correctly answer these questions. When you answer these questions, as I am certain you will in time do, you will affirm the assertion I have made that you constitute an important echelon in our collective leadership which, linking yesterday, today and tomorrow, will play a decisive role in determining whether Africa achieves her long-delayed Renaissance.”

For Mbeki, the tasks required for the African Renaissance are extensive but important. They include the establishment of democratic political systems to ensure the accomplishment of the goal that “the people shall govern”.

In addition, he believes that among other goals, the process achieving sustainable economic development that results in the continuous improvement of the standards of living and the quality of life of the masses of the people is critical.

Mbeki advises young professionals that they need to qualitatively change “Africa’s place in the world economy, so that it is free of the yoke of the international debt burden and no longer a supplier of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods”.

“To achieve that Renaissance means to disrupt and dislodge the deeply entrenched logic of the colonial and apartheid political economy, which continues to inform much of the contemporary reality of many African countries, including our own.”

He tasks young professionals to ensure Africa breaks free from the paradigm of being an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods. “Help in the struggle to transform our educational systems so that they produce graduates with the skills required for modern socio-economic development,” he urges.

Assist “in the effort to ensure that Africa takes her rightful place as an equal partner with all other continents, in terms of determining the future of humanity.”

The tasks Mbeki describes rest in the hands of young people, and are part of a duty “to settle the practical question on whether Africa will claim the 21st century”.

He is quick to point out that the continent’s detractors are convinced that Africans cannot achieve this historic objective.

Though the number of young professionals at the recent launch of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation was far fewer, the former president pulled no punches on the role of skills.

“The need to attend to the task of building the human capital we need to achieve Africa’s renewal” was stated in a report following
the event.

The human capital building effort is part of a project needed to “contribute to the continuing efforts to achieve peace and stability, attend to the task of women’s emancipation and empowerment, and help to ensure that our continent takes its rightful place within the global community."

Garreth Bloor