01 Jun 2009
We’re not even past the first four questions when she warns: “You have ten more minutes.” Fortunately those ten become twenty-five. But there’s no time for tea or coffee, and a number of subjects remain untouched. After the last answer has been jotted down, she walks to the mirror, examines her hair and golden dress, and tell to her secretary: “Call them to say I’m running late.”
The subtext is obvious: Dr. Mamphela Ramphele is a busy, formidable woman with a severe time problem. After years of political activism and an impressive academic career she is now the chairperson of the investment company Circle Capital Ventures. Additionally she’s also one of the most outspoken critics of the African National Congress (ANC) and its coalition partners, writing regular stinging opinion pieces for the newspapers.
When I ask her about the coming elections, she says: “For me it’s just incredible that as South Africans we can devalue our democracy by voting into power a party that thinks it’s not important to clear the name of its presidential candidate, which should be essential to issues such as integrity, anti-corruption and human rights. This is not someone running a cornershop. This is the face of South Africa! I don’t want him to be that face until he clears his name.”
She waits until I’ve finished writing, then continues, as if lecturing a class of students: “It’s not a question of denying him (Jacob Zuma) that right, but it’s a right for people like me, who fought and who lost people during the struggle, to say: I don’t want someone who faces charges, some of which have been tested in court.”
Ramphele receives me in her office on the 28th floor of the LG Building in Cape Town. “Just sit here,” she said, pointing at a chair. “Then you can enjoy the view.” That view is indeed breathtaking. The Waterfront, the harbour, a far away bay, and right in front of us, as if to accentuate the not so distant past, Robben Island, where many black activists, including Zuma, spent long years in prison.
A copy of her recent book Laying the Ghosts to Rest sits on the table. She began writing it in 2001, after her four years as vice-chancellor at the University of Cape Town, the first woman in South Africa to fill that post. ‘It was the most exciting job; I worked eighteen hours a day, seven days a week.”
But for her book she needed time and distance, both physically and mentally, which is what she got when she moved to Washington in 2000 to work for the World Bank. She wanted to dissect the new South Africa that was blatantly ruining its chances of a structural transformation, complacently basking in the afterglow of the ‘Mandela miracle’.
She wrote and wrote, but couldn’t find the thread to link the various chapters. She went back in time, to the village of Kranspoort in what is now Limpopo, where she grew up. She remembered how she was afraid of the dark, afraid of the ghosts of her ancestors, who were hiding in a haunted tree and in the graves of the Seakamela people who had been forcibly removed. The only way to lay those ghosts to rest was by naming them and communicating with them about all the unfinished business.
That was it! The key to her book: the ghosts who need to be fully heard before they can be laid to rest. “When I thought of that everything fell into place. It enabled me to be critical in a constructive way.”
The book was finally published last year, receiving glowing reviews. The only critique she heard, she says with a self-assured smile, was that it was so hard to criticise her book. That’s only partly true. The style is occasionally dire and repetitive, that of an academic attempting to write for a wider audience. But the range of subjects and her analysis are challenging. Ramphele covers virtually all the dilemmas of post-apartheid South Africa: race, Aids, leadership, corruption, vandalism, apathy, forgiveness, education, unemployment, affirmative action, discrimination, health. The holistic approach. She nods. “My mind works like that. I don’t separate the political, the personal and identity. It keeps me sane. It comes from my political history. I was introduced to Black Consciousness when I was a student.”
BC permeates her analysis: the black pride of Steve Biko, the man with whom she had a long affair and two children. “I’m very proud of my BC background, because it has liberated me. I can live anywhere in the world. I have no chip on my shoulder.”
Ramphele abhors political correctness and isn’t afraid to offend the new rulers. In her view the failures of South Africa’s democracy are largely related to a dysfunctional, corrupt leadership and the lack of articulation with the poor. “Look at the hospitals! Look at the schools! Women in childbirth are left to die because the nurse has her team time. Look at the level of filth in Johannesburg. How can you explain how a mayor cannot worry about that?”
She fulminates against the MPs and the cover-up of their ‘travelgate’ scam. She lashes out at the messy business with government tenders. ‘My village was supposed to get a tar road to Polokwane. We’re still waiting. Every time there’s a new tender! But now we do have a ‘Tender Park’ in Polokwane.”
She propagates a ‘retro-gardist approach’: go back in time and deal thoroughly with the past before you plan for the future. “It wasn’t my intention, but having participated in the avant-garde I realised that these ghosts can only be laid to rest by going through a retro-gardist phase. It’s about how the past reflects on what we do. Some reactionary views may be correct, but we don’t want to hear it. One of the human abilities is to be reflective. That’s what we must do: be reflective, try to understand why this person is acting like this.”
She argues, for example, that not everything from the apartheid era should be dismissed as negative and unworkable. During apartheid the civil service was competent, teachers arrived in time and service delivery was efficient – albeit for a small minority. The new civil service, she writes, is often sluggish, corrupt, unmotivated and rude. She stresses it over and over: we shouldn’t take mediocrity for granted, we should strive for excellence. “We have to fight that culture of impunity and make people pay for their failure to deliver. But no one stands up. How to stop it? Well, the tax payers should ask: why are we voting for the ruling party if they don’t deliver. But there’s a sense of powerlessness. And the bottom 40 percent have given up, saying: ‘They only come here when they need our vote’.”
I mention Cope. She sees it as a beacon of hope, “the best thing that happened.” “Not because of what they stand for, but it’s a break from that monolithic thing. It supplies transformative energy. It has great potential for democracy. It already has had an impact: the ANC has to work a lot harder.”
But doesn’t the country need people who can transgress that excluding struggle legacy, with all its shadowy relationships and secrets? How long will it take until the ghosts of the struggle have been laid to rest and someone without a tainted past, a South African version of Barack Obama, stands up?
“That shouldn’t take that long,” she says. “Initially Obama wasn’t given a chance. But he had the passion to believe he could make a difference. He was connected with the poor through his community work and went ahead against all odds. The black community disowned him, but he pursued, with a clear conscience. He’s a great example for South Africa. We can do it. We can have a higher, more transparent version of democracy. We have to. We’re living in a world where they don’t take prisoners. We’re no longer the miracle people.”
Than she looks at her watch. Time’s up.
CV
1947 Born in Kranspoort
1968 Studies medicine at University of Natal
1969 One of the founders of Black Consciousness Movement
1974 Has child from Steve Biko, Lerato, who died after two months
1977 Banished to Tzaneen by apartheid government
1978 Has another child from Biko, Hlumelo, born after the death of his father
1991 Deputy Vice-Chancellor at UCT
1991 Co-editor of Bounds of Possibility: The legacy of Steve Biko
1992 Editor of Restoring the Land
1993 Publishes A Bed called Home
1995 Publishes Mamphela Ramphele – A Life
1996 Vice Chancellor at UCT
1996 Publishes Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader
2000 Managing Director of the World Bank.
2004 Voted # 55 in the Top 100 Great South Africans
2005 Chair person of Circle Capital Ventures
2008 Publishes Laying Ghosts to Rest: Dilemmas of the transformation in South Africa
Heroes and influences
Dr. Mamphela did not reply to a request to cite her heroes and influences.