Mills and Hartley on the 'Gang of Six': Masters of repression and ruin
Key topics:
Liberation movements face criticism for corruption, rigged elections, and elite enrichment.
Economic struggles persist despite resource wealth; GDP per capita remains low across nations.
Democracy is hollowed out, with opposition suppressed and no real reform in sight.
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By Greg Mills and Ray Hartley*
Southern Africa’s ‘Gang of Six’ – the leaders of its embattled liberation movements − gathered at a swanky hotel near Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport last week to bemoan “imperialism” and “foreign interference”, which were held to be the biggest threats to their decades-long political control of the sub-region.
The new enemy was identified as “right-wing populism”, code for the administration of US President Donald Trump. As Zimbabwe’s Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took power in a coup and presided over a rigged election, put it: “The infrastructure that denied us democracy and independence has mutated and expresses itself in numerous forms. These include interference in the internal affairs of our parties and governments, sabotage of our economies, and, at worst, covert support of conflict and war in our jurisdictions.”
Even South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, now the head of a minority party in a coalition government, was drinking the Kool-Aid, saying: “We must continue to be guided by the principles that have guided our movements. These include self-determination, anti-imperialism, social and economic justice, and the pursuit of equality and freedom.”
The former President of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano, speaking at an ANC dinner ahead of the meeting, said: “It is crucial that we recognise that in many of our countries we witnessed the weakening of democratic institutions.”
Ramaphosa asked at the summit: “Are our movements still vehicles of justice or have they become platforms for status and convenience?”
Ramaphosa said: “For many of us, corruption and patronage have contributed to various degrees to the destruction of our social fabric, to the weakening of the state and to the disunity of our movements.”
But instead of calling for a culture of democracy and accountability and the ending of rigged elections, which have plagued the region, he issued the clarion call: “Let us renew our ideological clarity”.
He’s doubling down on all the things that have led these countries onto a slippery slope of failure and poverty.
Bitter truth
The bitter truth which remained unspoken was that the liberation movements have singularly failed to improve the lives of their citizens who languish among the world’s poorest, while the liberation elite have grown rich beyond their wildest imaginings.
The countries presided over by the Gang of Six liberation leaders are among the world’s worst economic performers. Mozambique, the scene of a recent rigged election and a mass uprising that was put down by force, registers a GDP per capita of just over $600, Tanzania sits at $1220, Zimbabwe comes in at $1420, Angola (despite its bountiful oil and other mineral riches) at around $2365, Namibia averages $4035, and South Africa $5710.
While South Africa is an outlier, it registers less than half of the global average of GDP per capita of just under $12000. And, it should be remembered, the per capita number conceals more than it reveals, as these are some of the world’s most unequal societies where elites enrich themselves at an astonishing rate despite the sea of poverty in which they live.
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The true picture is that the promise of liberation has long given way to the reality of elite enrichment and the hollowing out of democracy. In Tanzania, a few days after the summit, the leader of the opposition, Tundu Lissu, appeared in court on trumped-up treason charges while his party has been barred from participating in the forthcoming election. When in doubt, pad the voter’s roll, dominate official television and radio, turn off the internet, intimidate the opposition, and, when all else fails, turn out the troops and cook the books.
In Angola, the last election was deemed to have been rigged by everyone except for the Gang of Six, who have an unwritten rule that they will do whatever it takes to keep each other in power. The same day as the liberation movement summit concluded, violence broke out on the streets in response to protests against the rise in fuel prices – this in Africa’s second largest oil producer, which pumps 1.1 million barrels a day and refines only 45,000. Serious doubts remain, true to regional form, about the outcome of the 2022 general election, supposedly won by President João Lourenço with 51% to his challenger Adalberto Costa Júnior’s 44%.
Decades of repression
To its south, in Namibia, Swapo won a hotly contested election in November 2024, but only after the polls stayed open for an unseemly long time while voters were found to save the liberation movement. In Zimbabwe, decades of repression have hollowed out the opposition, and the military remains the power behind the throne, as was demonstrated by the 2017 coup that brought President Emmerson Mnangagwa to power.
The reality on the ground is that the liberation movements have lost their legitimacy and are incapable of reforming because their elites derive so much benefit from the crony societies they have built.
Democracy, which was embraced by liberation movements as the best way to ensure that the people remain in control of the power elites, has become a hollowed-out charade which is rolled out every four or five years amidst repression and show trials which seek to destroy the electoral opposition. Inbetween these days of theatre, the opposition is bogged down in endless legal cases, where the law becomes politics by other means, recalling the slogan by Peru’s General Óscar Benavides: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
What the Gang of Six failed to agree on in Johannesburg was, of course, a raft of reforms that will return their countries to people-centered democracies where governments are forced to test their record and policies in competitive polls. Turkeys don’t, after all, vote for Christmas.
They failed to discuss the economic reforms needed to open up economies dominated by regulation, which seeks to direct rents to the liberation movement elite. They failed to address public service reform, which is needed to produce better health, education and security for ordinary people.
Instead, they raised their glasses with special guests from Russia, China and Cuba to the old way of doing things: Shouting down imperialism while riding roughshod over the will of the people.
A luta continua! The looting must continue.
*Dr Greg Mills is a Fellow at the University of Navarra in Spain and a founder of the Platform for African Democrats (https://www.pad.africa/). From 2005, he was for 20 years the director for the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation. His recent books include "Rich State, Poor State," "The Art of War and Peace." and the forthcoming "The Essence of Success: Insights in Leadership and Strategy from Sport, Business, War and Politics," all published by Penguin Random House.
*Ray Hartley is an independent commentator. He is the former Research Director of the Brenthurst Foundation and previously edited the Sunday Times, The Times, Rand Daily Mail and BusinessLIVE. He is the author of "Ragged Glory: The Rainbow Nation in Black and White," "The Big Fix," and "Ramaphosa: The Man Who Would be King" among other works.
This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission