For Mac, the knife cuts both ways

The Public Protector will investigate a complaint over former presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj's stay in a ministerial home. File photo: Sizwe Ndingane

The Public Protector will investigate a complaint over former presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj's stay in a ministerial home. File photo: Sizwe Ndingane

Published Apr 11, 2015

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As ANC veteran Mac Maharaj’s days in office come to an end, loyalists salute him and foes condemn him, writes Janet Smith.

 Mac Maharaj has a slightly disarming presence. When you first meet him, you’re nervous. He comes with such a history.

And then, lightly carrying his somewhat slight frame, he peers at you from behind his big glasses before offering a hand and a comradely smile.

A visceral talent is his ability to be both forthright and listen.

That combination may come with momentary gruffness, but also a wit and a confidence, which is probably why it’s difficult to think of Maharaj as being nearly 80. His birthday is on April 27, the same day as the birth of democracy in South Africa. Yet Maharaj, like Nelson Mandela, is a supreme advocate for ageing. Few knew Mac was moving into his eighth decade because he has never had an age as such. In the ANC and SACP, he’s been a legend.

Like a pebble skittering across deep water, the circles Maharaj has created have grown wider over his political life.

But outside the movement, reflections on his career on the eve of his retirement as President Jacob Zuma’s spokesman are more polarised.

Overwhelmingly, many loyalists say he’s been the greatest cadre of them all. But the opposition is united, too. They say while Maharaj is to be profoundly admired for the often quiet, but highly effective role he played in bringing about democracy, he is ending his public life at a low.

Former ANC spokesman, now an MP, the popular Jackson Mthembu wouldn’t agree. His opening gambit on Maharaj was: “Satan. That’s what he always called me… a devious thing,” he said, wryly.

“That’s how playful he will be – not showing he is a veteran, a stalwart of our movement. Being just down-to-earth. Not wanting to be showered with all sorts of praise because of what he has sacrificed.”

Mthembu has a particular admiration for Maharaj as a spokesman, having fielded one of the toughest such assignments himself.

“People have said to me, you look so bright and wonderful since you left the demands of the spokesman job, which is true. Being a spokesperson means you always have to be there, always having to articulate a particular position.

“So, for him to have done that at his age, I can tell you, I honour and salute him, that he was able to do this at the highest office in the land, not at Luthuli House like some Jackson Mthembu.

“He was doing it for the president, who gets attacked on a minute-to-minute basis. Mac would come out in defence, but without insults.”

The EFF’s national spokesman, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, who is also a firebrand MP, shares the admiration for Maharaj’s skills, saying young revolutionaries like himself “are precisely where we are because of the contribution of the stalwarts like him, because of their legacy”.

But he’s disappointed that Maharaj’s more recent role “fails to pass ethical muster”.

“He resisted and persisted. He was tried and tested. He played such a very important role in the negotiations.

“He was absolutely critical at Codesa. He was critical when it came to handling (former Bantustan leader Lucas) Mangope. All these things. His contribution in the history of the liberation struggle was really very good, very colourful. He more than played his part.

“But Mac Maharaj also typifies the ANC. The way in which he’s making his departure is what the ANC is: an organisation that has no moral authority

“It is precisely because we have an ethical problem in the South African political landscape that one concludes this is a sad exit to his political life.

“The only thing we can hope is that Zuma learns from him, and also takes his leave of his own political life, saving all of us the trouble of having to do it for him.”

Freedom Front Plus leader Corne Mulder has a vivid memory of seeing Maharaj up in the parliamentary gallery in December 1993 when a debate around the interim constitution was being held. He’d already worked with Maharaj at Codesa and had come to know him as a significant player.

“I think the two people behind the scenes, steering the process throughout, were Maharaj and the National Party’s Fanie van der Merwe. Their co-operation was most often to our frustration because we were not in that circle, but we knew his excellence.

“So I remember when we were debating in the House that December and the NP were the government and filled with a sense of power, but I made the point that we actually had no idea what was happening, and said, look up at gallery, that’s where power will reside very soon.

“And there was Maharaj sitting there, quite lonely at the time, making sure everything was happening according to plan.

“He was very much a backroom person, but very effective and committed, yet not searching for the limelight like a (Cyril) Ramaphosa.”

Mulder now believes Maharaj is bowing out as part of the ANC’s “D-team”.

“Nelson Mandela and senior people in the ANC trusted him unreservedly and he was a great member of Mandela’s cabinet, which was the ANC’s A-team – the best of the best. Now we feel he’s tarnished his reputation, even though we see that, from his perspective, he’s been a loyal cadre.

“It’s just that, there are certain things you can’t spin, whether you like it or not. You cannot sell garlic toothpaste.”

DA parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane, who was previously his party’s national spokesman, put out a tweet the day Maharaj announced his retirement, expressing a similar sentiment. “He was really one of the true South Africans you could look to as an anchor, and those South Africans are running out.

“Maharaj really made a contribution, but obviously there have been some bad decisions, and his work with Zuma has been one of those.

Maimane laughs lightly as he explains: “When I was national spokesperson, we had a lot to do and debate with each other, but he only carried his ANC card on his sleeve.

“That was always the most prominent thing there.

“It also became tricky to debate (with) Mac as a presidential spokesman because he had this calling card of the Struggle that he could bring out at any point.

“He could and would say, if we argued, ‘but where were you?’

“At the same time, his defence of Zuma was unforgiveable, and I think he certainly overinvested in that defence.”

Maimane – like Mthembu, Ndlozi and Mulder – believes the “original morality” of Maharaj was immense, “but as the sun sets on Maharaj’s generation, we’re unconvinced about this one”.

Mthembu, as a member of that new generation, would take emotional issue with that, remembering how Maharaj, when he was minister of transport and Mthembu the MEC for roads in Mpumalanga, berated young cadres over greed.

“That’s not always what you get these days from people who’ve been in high posts. He disowned us when we bought those BMWs, to the point that some of us rebought those cars and repaid the debt to the public purse.

“He was tough on us and, like a Govan Mbeki or your Baba Mlangenis, he was one of those leaders who would tell you when you were in the wrong. He told us to remain humble.

“Really, Mac Maharaj lives and breathes Struggle, and no matter what, now that’s what we need to carry forward.”

 

From student activist of the 1950s to a formidable and key Struggle cadre

 

Mac Maharaj was born before World War II broke out into a family of eight children in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal.

He was quickly drawn into student politics at the University of Natal, Durban, where he supported the cause of anti-segregationism among students, and also edited the campus paper. This was in the mid-1950s, a perilous time to be Indian in certain provinces of the apartheid South Africa, but more so a deadly time for freedom fighters.

None of this deterred Maharaj, who worked for the underground movement before leaving for London, and only returned home after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960.

It seemed inevitable, with his commitment, that he would be among the broader Rivonia comrades arrested on charges of sabotage and tortured in 1964. That led to 12 years’ imprisonment on Robben Island for Maharaj, during which time Maharaj not only shared a cell with Jacob Zuma, who would become the ANC’s intelligence chief, but also taught him how to read.

Under tough legal constraints after his release, Maharaj left South Africa again in July 1977, deployed to Lusaka by the ANC.

A critical turning point in his career was his election to the movement’s national executive committee at its important Kabwe conference in 1985. The ANC had not been able to have a conference for many years, and so the arrival of an outstanding intellect and strategist like Maharaj came as a bonus.

A target of the savage apartheid security forces, Maharaj emerged all the stronger in the underground as a lever of Operation Vula. And although that campaign would see him operating under intense pressure before being put behind bars again, it wouldn’t be long before he could finally take up a more formal role in South African political life.

That didn’t come without a wrangle, though, with his Vula arrest coming after the unbanning of the ANC. Maharaj had had to leave South Africa and then re-enter under an indemnity from prosecution, agreed to between the movement and the government. His return saw him fall squarely within the SACP fold.

But just five months after apartheid leader FW de Klerk unbanned the ANC, and days before the public launch of the SACP, security police detained Maharaj for his Vula activities, the campaign having been all about a revolutionary capture of power should ANC negotiations with the apartheid regime collapse. However, Maharaj and eight others were to receive partial indemnity.

As MK leader Chris Hani and former president Thabo Mbeki vied for power under Nelson Mandela’s leadership at the ANC’s conference in Durban in 1991, Maharaj began to step to the fore. He was named a key member of the secretariat of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa and played a role so critical that many have said he deserved the accolades which Cyril Ramaphosa received there.

Mandela appointed Maharaj to his cabinet as transport minister in 1994, but Maharaj left active politics in 1999, when Mbeki started his first term.

He would then become a businessman until returning to political life in 2011 when Zuma, his old comrade, called him back to be his spin doctor.

**Janet Smith is the executive editor of The Star

Saturday Star

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