Thabo Mbeki: Understanding a Philosopher of Liberation

Abstract

ABSTRACT The political thought of Thabo Mbeki, South African President from 1999 to 2008, has attracted much scholarly and popular attention in South Africa and beyond. In this article I argue that Mbeki's socialisation in apartheid South Africa, his education, training, and travel of the world radicalised him into a philosopher of liberation, a kind of philosopher that does not only love wisdom but has the wisdom and courage to love under social and political conditions that do not permit love. Even as he personally insists that he is a simple product of the teaching and example of African liberation leaders from Gamal Nasser to Nelson Mandela, this article notes that Mbeki was conditioned and shaped by his geographic and intellectual travels into a post-continental and a planetary liberation philosopher. In that way, the intersection of geographic travel, radicalisation by oppression, and epistemic journeying combined to produce a philosophical sensibility in search for liberation and rehumanisation. To critically establish Mbeki's philosophy of liberation that has a post-continental and planetary political sensibility, this article navigates a multiplicity of other scholarly, journalistic and popular understandings of Mbeki as a philosopher king, an enigma and a revolutionary prophet on the positive side. On the negative side, Mbeki has been understood and described as a scheming and calculating Machiavellian, an imperial president, race essentialist, HIV and AIDS denialist, and a sympathiser with tyrannical leaders of Africa such as Robert Mugabe. I argue that these prevalent understandings and descriptions of Mbeki not only simplify his complicated political thought but they also uncritically conceal the reality of a philosophy of liberation that is born of the conditions of domination, dehumanisation and exploitation of the peoples of South Africa, Africa and the entire Global South.