Latest news with #JusticeandTransport
Daily Maverick
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Tony Leon's new book delivers an insider's account of South African and global politics and personalities
Tony Leon's new book contains fascinating observations about previous foreign and South African leaders and their successes and failures. It also offers insider views on the negotiations to achieve the Government of National Unity. The book reads just like he would sound in a congenial conversation over dinner. We meet over coffee, just before Tony Leon goes to speak at the memorial service for his long-time friend and political colleague Douglas Gibson. At that service, Leon said of Gibson, in speaking of their party, post-1994, that: 'Reduced to just seven MPs and three senators, each of us had to juggle dozens of competing roles. His included chairman of the Federal Council, chief whip, spokesman on Justice and Transport and member of the rules committee. In navigating the revival of our party, Douglas was my essential partner and my closest collaborator, and in the snake pit of politics we forged a durable and deep friendship for which I am so deeply grateful.' His comments regarding his long-time friend's life and works highlight Leon's political trajectory as well. Even if some think Leon was too in-your-face for the politics of the new South Africa, (a political life that, to be fair, is pretty hard-knuckle) he deserves credit for helping set his party on its journey to being South Africa's official opposition, instead of being the marginal political force that it was, back in 1994. The party is now the second largest partner in the Government of National Unity, the second multiparty government since 1994 and in the first days of the country's racially integrated politics. We quickly get on to the business of speaking about his new book, Being There, and his thinking about the current and future challenges of South Africa's political and economic landscape. I remind him that we first met at a mutual friend's home over dinner in the years before the 1994 election. Back then, he was a junior parliamentarian and I was working at the US embassy, trying, like every diplomat assigned to this country, to gauge its rapidly changing political texture and what it would mean for the future. As a backbencher MP, Leon's reputation was as a new, bold — and even arrogant, for some — politician. Back then, it seemed he had crisp, definitive answers for every challenge. If he still has answers for many questions, he has also been tempered by a lifetime in politics. For those who may not remember, Leon was a member of the Progressive Party through its various iterations as it became, successively, the Progressive Federal Party, the Democratic Party and eventually the Democratic Alliance, or DA. Along the way, he may be best remembered as the face of a feisty party that once campaigned on the slogan, 'Fight Back!' For some, while that was read as a pushback against the new, all-race, democratic dispensation in South Africa, Leon would certainly have insisted, au contraire, it was a principled, succinct protest against the growing corruption, the lack of effective government administration and policing, and floundering efforts to build a strong economy and nurture job creation. But that is now old news. We have all moved on. Youngish elder Leaving Parliament, Leon served as South Africa's ambassador to Argentina — on behalf of an ANC government, nogal. More recently, he has moved away from government service and joined the corporate world. But earlier this year, the DA was poised to become a key element of the new Government of National Unity (GNU), as the ANC's faltering lock on national politics and the electorate had made one-party government impossible to maintain. His old party then called on Leon as a youngish elder to be a leading participant in the negotiations over the formation of that GNU. His description of those efforts comprises a significant portion of his new book. Leon believes the DA is becoming increasingly well-placed to position itself, in the future, as the core party of a new political landscape, as the governing party or leader of a coalition of like-minded political groups beyond the current political landscape. The first section of his book delivers insights about the lives and careers of several Middle Eastern leaders, including Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres (and, by contrast, the actions of the current Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas). There is also a more expansive essay on the essential nature and requisites of leadership — or the lack of it, nowadays. As Leon writes towards the end of Being There: 'In many ways, we inhabit — in the true sense — a leaderless world. Mostly, our leaders are either pedestrian placeholders or titanic ego-driven populists who use high office as an engine for self-enrichment or as an instrument of revenge against enemies, real or perceived. The Peronists in Argentina, the Zumas in South Africa, the Trumps in America and the Netanyahus in Israel — all are political grifters who set one section of society against the other. They weaponise differences and grievances, ride roughshod over rules and respect for others, and hijack public institutions for personal ends.' Leon's thoughts about populism ring about right, especially his thoughts over what he terms 'cakeism' — the appeal of would-be populist leaders and their promises that can destroy an economy. (Cue those apocryphal remarks of the queen of France about bread versus cake.) It seems entirely reasonable that such views were strengthened as he observed the glowing embers of Peronism when he was South Africa's ambassador in Argentina. Collectively, thoughts like these can easily be read as a critique of the current leaders in the Middle East. The second part of the book plays off Jesse Unruh's crisp summing up of the inevitable mix of money and politics: 'Money is the mother's milk of politics.' Unruh was a major figure in California state politics for decades, and he is on target, although there are occasionally other nutritional elements in that mix as well. (My favourite novel of politics is Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the King's Men. There, Warren added the inevitability of sex as the third leg of the political triangle along with money and the temptations of power, although Leon left that third element out of his equation.) In this section, several chapters recount his fraught fundraising experiences for his party — especially since in the early days of the new dispensation, the Progressive Party/PFP/DP/DA was a minnow in a smallish pond that was also inhabited by a large shark. Another chapter includes a dissection of the public saga of Ronnie Kasrils, an approach that may have been encouraged by Kasrils' cheerleading for the Hamas militants in their 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel. (Leon's spouse is Israeli-born born and Kasrils' language clearly infuriated Leon.) As Leon tells it, through the years of the South African liberation struggle, in exile, Kasrils had quietly been receiving a retainer from his brother-in-law, a prominent businessman in South Africa. But after Kasrils' comments on the 7 October massacre, that tap closed. Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold, and so it has been served. Complex negotiations For many readers — those interested in the negotiations for the birthing of the GNU, and even more so, commentators and historians of South Africa's contemporary politics — Leon's detailed description of the complex negotiations between the ANC and the DA, together with some other parties leading to the formation of the GNU will be of genuine interest. Leon kept a diary throughout this entire engagement, and almost 100 pages of his book form a narrative built on those diary entries. In the future, it will be an important source for evaluations of those negotiations. Leon's recollections will be read together with those of all the others who participated in the negotiations, after they write their versions. The remaining pages of Being There include short essays on the successes and failures of FW de Klerk, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Nelson Mandela. There is also a series of more personal reminiscences, labelled by the author as The Nostos. These include a deconstruction of the false charge that Leon's father had been responsible for sentencing the ANC operative Solomon Mahlangu to death years ago. In particular, Leon's experiences as an ambassador in Argentina during the desperate days in that country's last (so far) Peronista regime are particularly interesting, as Leon positions them as a cautionary tale of what happens when a country augers towards the ground economically and politically. Of special interest to this reader (because of his own experiences) were Leon's non-specialist but trenchant observations on Japan after visiting there. Japan has surmounted its World War 2 experience (and managed to put much of the resulting horrors aside), even as it continues to embrace many ancient traditions together with its contemporary political and economic policies designed for the benefit of a majority of its citizens. Beyond the book, our conversation also covered other topics, key among them being the current difficulties between the US and South Africa. I ask Leon who he thinks should be South Africa's ambassador to the US, or, perhaps, what kind of person should they be? Leon observes that the ambassadorial role has been diminished over the years (the recent presidents' meeting had no ambassadors present from either nation, as would usually have been the case in a meeting between two national presidents). Beyond the traditional diplomatic roles, more and more, Leon says, the job of an ambassador is to be their country's chief salesperson, instead of one of those old-style diplomats. Any new South African ambassador assigned to Washington will have a difficult policy to sell, especially given the two countries' Middle East positions. A key question now is that the Trumpian dog whistle to its Maga constituents is over DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and, by extension, over South Africa's Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment policies. Speculating in the immediate wake of the presidential meeting, he notes that the approach of a possible equity equivalent for Starlink operations in South Africa may lead to changing the discussion. (Of course, crime is something that is always in the air in any discussions about South Africa, and it came up in that presidents' meeting as well. It was instructive, per Leon, that rebuttals about crime in that meeting came from a white South African billionaire.) We turn to the often-repeated accusation that the DA has a problem with black leaders. Leon responds that it is unfair to call every black leader's departure from DA leadership roles a failure of black leadership in the party. People leave political bodies for many reasons. However, he adds that the party needs to make it easier and more enticing for expatriated South Africans to return to the country and make real contributions. What of the DA's future? Leon says he is most interested in matters of policy rather than party management, as he is no longer an officer-holder. He believes that by being in the GNU, the DA has improved its legitimacy and prospects with many people. Its participation in the GNU has made it more 'kosher,' so to speak, and it may well gain further traction. He thinks that if the DA can maintain this trend, it will grow even as the ANC continues to make further reversals in support. The key question, of course, is how he views South Africa's future. Leon argues that most countries, except for places like Afghanistan or Sudan, don't explode or disintegrate. He acknowledges that there still is a lot of ruin in South Africa, but citizen action is stepping forward wherever it can. Taken as a whole, Leon seems cautiously optimistic about the country's future prospects, regardless of its current problems and its challenges. DM
Reuters
15-02-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Mother and child die from injuries after car ramming attack in Munich
Item 1 of 2 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Minister for Justice and Transport Volker Wissing and Munich mayor Dieter Reiter lay flowers as they visit a makeshift memorial for the victims of a suspected ramming attack where a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker drove a car into a crowd, as the Munich Security Conference (MSC) takes place in Munich, Germany February 15, 2025. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach [1/2] German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Minister for Justice and Transport Volker Wissing and Munich mayor Dieter Reiter lay flowers as they visit a makeshift memorial for the victims of a suspected ramming attack where a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker drove a car into a crowd, as the Munich Security... Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab Read more
