APJ: What are you most proud of from your time as the leader of South Africa’s main opposition party?

Leon: Well, I’m proud of the fact that we not only survived in very, very choppy and turbulent waters, but that we also carved out the space. So that actually, although it’s a very one party–dominant state, South Africa has a viable opposition. Now I have to say, if you look at other post-colonial, post-independent countries in Africa, generally that hasn’t happened. Generally, what’s happened is that one party has taken over, unchallenged, and been in power for a generation. And then there’s a huge eruption when that party finally gets chopped out, either through a military coups or through an election. And Zimbabwe’s a very, very potent and salutary example of when the opposition space closes down. When you try and open it up, as the NDC [National Democratic Congress] did in 2000, it’s too late. So, we’ve kept that space open. We’ve laid down, I think, some important precedents of parliamentary behavior in a newly democratizing state. But, more important than that, to me, personally having the chance to participate in the writing of, first, the interim constitution in 1993, and then the final constitution in 1996, and looking at some clauses there that, I know, if it weren’t for the efforts of people who I happened to meet, would not have been there at all — I think this is an accomplishment. Now, realizing that, there is going to be realizing the aspirations of that constitution, that’s a different set of authorities that still has not been achieved. But, the fact that there’s a yardstick that one can use to hold government accountable for its actions is a very significant accomplishment.

APJ: How do you see the role of the opposition party in South Africa today?

Leon: Well, I think it’s got a multidimensional role. It’s developed a democracy. So that means you can’t just assume that you’ve got a normal political contestation, in the sense that there’s a lot of history, there’s a lot of baggage. There’s a lot of institution-building. It’s sort of “learn as you go,” rather than having settled, for instance, opposition and government interaction and behavior. Having said all that, it’s absolutely critical, in my view, that the opposition presents an alternative and that it challenges the government on hard key issues, like corruption, poor governance, the overambitious reach of the majority party, which wants to conquer all the independent sites. But the constitution can’t be marked out for occupation by nonparty people. And so what I’m saying is, I think the opposition can’t just be opted or in the slipstream of governing parties. It has got to present some clear and coherent alternative — that is in a structural, functional sense. There tends to be a very close correlation between virtual identity and political “preferencing.” So, this creates an extra challenge. And the question is not just to speak for your corner but to reach out, even aspirationally, to the groups that you do not represent. But certainly, in South Africa, you would need to represent it, if you were going to become a viable alternative. Now, the third dimension . . . is obviously to find alternative sites; you can’t produce politics through a zero-sum game. In South Africa, there’s a very, very vestigial federal element to the constitution, where all nine provinces [are] very centrally controlled, á la Putin’s Russia. It’s a bit like that. The central government massively interferes with the provinces. A lot of the powers have been rolled back. In fact, what we’re trying to do is to establish alternative governing sites at a local level — best example, city of Cape Town, which has been very fiercely contested with. We have a majority at the moment. And we’re trying to use that as a delivery forum, or a delivery flagship, so that we can show that even if we don’t have power nationally, we have power locally: we can deliver more effectively, [be] cost-effective and less corrupt.

APJ: During 1994 to 1999, the opposition party gained a significant amount of support. What were some strategies that the opposition party used to garner that increase in support?

Leon: Well, to be honest, our growth, which was very high, compared to where we were — speaking of my party — we felt that we were the most effective opposition because we had a coherent liberal democratic platform. The default option of most minority voters in the 1994 election went for the national party because they were the biggest. But they were the outgoing government. They performed clearly in opposition. We were unencumbered with a lot of the baggage when it came to taking on the ANC [African National Congress] because we didn’t have the legacy or the albatross of apartheid around our necks. So, that was one thing. The second thing was that we had an opposition mindset. They did not. So, we set out to do what oppositions do, use question time of Parliament to tap into a lot of anxiety about emerging issues, like corruption, HIV/AIDS, the overreach of the governing party into various areas of society, from sports to the private sector, where we felt that government should know its place. And, by articulating that, and also because we didn’t have, what I call the drip-drip torture of the truth and reconciliation commission, we were not complicit in the apartheid atrocities, whereas the national party would spend so much time on the defensive in the first five years, that they couldn’t really look after their voters. So, this really helped us. We had a very aggressive campaign in 1999. The campaign was actually designed by some American political consultants, and I thought that it was fine. Let’s go with a strategy that’s going to maximize our support. And we did. And we grew, in one election, more than any other party has grown in South African history.

APJ: The “fight back” slogan that the opposition used in its strategy to gain more voters’ support was criticized as being counterproductive to social change. How would you respond to this accusation?

Leon: Yes. That’s exactly what the ANC said. We, of course, said it was fight back against corruption, against crime, against misgovernment. It was very contested. But I think it was necessary for a party that was on the periphery and on the edge to have some clear blue water, which we defined as a very, very crowded field. And we succeeded with that. You can always argue, retrospectively … but [the] most irritating signs are the signs of hindsight. And you can always argue . . . if you’d be more inclusive, it might have had a better result. The ANC, whatever its other virtues, is very, very intolerant of opposition — whether the opposition came from us, or a predominantly White party, from the Inkatha Party, which is predominantly Zulu party; they don’t like opposition. And I think they doubt the legitimacy of people who oppose their national project. But to me, what had to be fought back against is not the ANC, as such. They’ve got a very significant majority. They have some good leaders and very bad leaders. And they are very good deliberators. So they weren’t going to be troubled in one or two or three elections. It would take more time. But what I think is the most malicious and dangerous threat in South Africa, and remains so, is this construct of the government, the National Democratic Revolution, which goes way beyond the precepts and the confines of our constitution, and is basically a Gramscian — as in Antonio Gramsci — project of Germany, getting control of all elements of society, including the opposition parties, the business sector, and so on. Because, to me, that is a very, very dangerous red light that flashes. And it needs to be opposed. And we opposed it. So that, to me, was the essence of the fight. In fact, it remains so, today.

APJ: What do you see as the critical challenges facing South Africa right now?

Leon: Well, I think the biggest challenge on the economic/social front is, strangely enough, the paradox. Well, the whole of South Africa is a paradox. It’s a tale of two countries. On one hand, you had the GDP growth at a 20-year high. But actually, you’ve got unemployment at a 20-year high as well because the economic growth happened in the wrong places. It tends to be in the non-tradable sector, the professional services, government services, and so on. It’s not creating jobs for the people who are the most unemployed — that’s the poor, the Black, the youth. That’s the biggest area of unemployment. And the high level of growth has not dented that unemployment at all. And that’s because it’s been a vertiginous collapse in manufacturing and export jobs, and so forth. Now that has got a whole lot to do with skills allocation in South Africa. It’s also got to do with a lot of government interventions that, I think, affected sustainable growth, Black economic empowerment, which has created a set of iconic Black millionaires. And it massively “multiracialized” the ownership class. It’s done very little at the bottom of that to transform the economic relations. So, you know, you’ve got an army of unemployed people, one of the highest in the world. You’ve got a long-term problem. And, we [have] in the highest AIDS infection rates in the world — highest number of AIDS mortalities in one country. That’s another challenge. And then you’ve got, allied to that, that one is the cause of the other. And, you know, it’s not so much the volume of the crime, as [the violent nature]. South Africa has the most violent crime rates in the world. So, you’ve got these very combustible elements and the question remains, how does a government deal with them? Those are the challenges. Well, you deal with them by not . . . cutting off country or adversarial views. You have a real conversation, which the government doesn’t really have. It’s convinced of the perpetual righteousness of its own policies, even when they’re demonstratively failing. It attaches itself to certain constructs. And then it doesn’t depart from them when the evidence [proves otherwise]. So hopefully there will be more self-examination, more correction of the errors, and the realization that you transform it, or cost brings in its wake a set of negative consequences. Now I’m not saying it doesn’t need to be a racial transformation. But, when you pursue that, as you’re taught that [it’s] the only priority, meaning you push people out of the police force who are politically incorrect, you insist on the public service that is racially represented, rather than being skills-oriented, you’re going to get a certain set of results. And if you're going to have BEE —Black economic empowerment — as your lone star, then you are going to have to train it to the ownership class. But you’re not, necessarily, going to be able to create a dent on employment. So, I think you’ve got to be much more mixing and matching, and much less ideological “fetishization,” you know, making a fetish ideology. And maybe the next regime will do that. If they don’t we will carry on producing these dismal figures and putting ourselves at the top of the indices that we don’t want to be on top of, which is crime, unemployment, and skills flight. The biggest area of unemployment is the poor, the Black, and the youth. And the high level of growth has not dented that unemployment rate at all, and this is because there has been a vertiginous collapse in manufacturing and export jobs, and so forth. Now that’s got a whole lot to do with skills allocation in South Africa. It’s also got to do with a lot of government interventions that, I think, affected sustainable growth, Black economic empowerment, which has created a set of iconic Black millionaires. And it massively multiracialized the ownership class. It’s done very little at the bottom of that [pool] to transform the economic relations.

APJ: Do you think that South Africa could be the next Zimbabwe? If not, what is South Africa doing to mitigate the issues that are affecting Zimbabwe so they don’t affect South Africa?

Leon: If you go back to Mugabe, prior to 1980, it was a symbol of hope for us in South Africa, that we could also make a nonracial transition. Mugabe did not start off in power as a tyrannous monster that he now is, although some would argue that the signs were always there. But he developed that full throttle with his grip to advance and turn, with vengeance, against both the Black opposition and the White farmers and everyone else in society who stood in his way. The question is, what will happen? And you won’t know the answer to that until the ANC is threatened, nationally, with a loss at the polls. That has not yet happened. But, Mugabe also started all the corruption. First came the corruption and then came the intolerance for democracy. Well, we’ve certainly developed a huge amount of corruption in South Africa. We haven’t yet seen the mess, intolerance, or the official intolerance of democracy. We’ve seen some signs of it, but not as pervasively. Now the question, is that because South Africa is never going to be a Zimbabwe? Or is it because we haven’t faced a Zimbabwe-type situation yet? Probably a bit of both. I think the factors that could make South Africa like Zimbabwe are there. But equally, the fact is that [the forces acting] against it are there as well. One of them is, I think, South Africa has a more developed civil society than Zimbabwe had. We’ve certainly got a larger opposition than they had, at the time, that Zimbabwe saw its power there, but then became very, very powerful. There was no opposition. What Mugabe did was to actually co-opt the previous opposition into his government. And they went along, and there are, therefore, no opposition space at all. So we kept that space open. I also think the South African economy is much larger than Zimbabwe’s economy, and it’s quite easy to flatten. South Africa is like a skyscraper, compared to a little hut. That’s a comparison. So, what I’m saying is, I think it depends on how we respond to things. And our responses have been mixed. I don’t think Zimbabwe’s an automatic destination for South Africa, at all, but not an impossible one, either. And we’ve got to see how we manage over the next few years. But I suppose the most worrying sign is that we don’t differentiate ourselves in public from the excesses of Mugabe, and that’s got to do with the politics of solidarity, and the history of colonialism, and a lot of other bad things that have impaired good political judgments in the Zimbabwe issue.

APJ: What advice would you give to a member of an opposition party on how to impact change in Zimbabwe?

Leon: Wow. Well, I think the first thing is to be strategic. I think, often, the Zimbabwean opposition is more brave than it is strategic and smart. And I think more often than not, they’ve participated in elections that were rigged against them, before they ever started. And then crying foul after the election’s been stolen, when you know at once it’s going to be stolen from you, actually, to me, is just dumb politics. And they’ve tended to do that too often. It’s very difficult to give advice. The problem is, Robert Mugabe, you know, grows tobacco. He doesn’t have oil. So getting international interest in Zimbabwe is limited. But I think they’ve just got to keep up the pressure from outside the country, as much as they do inside. And thirdly, they’ve got to reinvigorate their supporters, which is very difficult. I’m not saying it’s easy, because people are coward, people are frightened. But I have to say that at the worst days of apartheid in South Africa, despite a lot of official oppression, there was a spirit of resistance kept alive in the country, either due to the ANC or not, because they were banned, officially. So I guess the same is true of Zimbabwe, that there is still a spirit of . . . desperate yearning for change. And their job is to feed that, however difficult it is and whatever the odds. I think the other thing that I might make so bold is nothing helps a government, especially one that’s the likes of Zimbabwe, in having a spirit of opposition, where the major opposition in Zimbabwe has allowed itself to become divided, in terms of any play to the advantage of the government. And I don’t think that’s helped anything. I also think they place too much faith in South Africa’s role as an honest broker. They’ve tended to accept, reluctantly, a mediation role for South Africa. I think they’re going to make the terms much more stringent for that. And, you know, none of these things are easy. But I think more fearsome odds have been overcome than those faced by the opposition of Zimbabwe. And I hope that they have both the wisdom and the perseverance to see it through. Because it certainly is necessary.

APJ: What are your future plans?

Leon: Well, I’ve got another year to spend in the Parliament until my term expires in 2009. I’ve really enjoyed my study group here at Harvard’s Kennedy School. I was amazed at how well it was attended. So I’d like to, perhaps, come back and do something like that, in a slightly different role here at Harvard or somewhere else. Because I think there’s a great yearning for, not just information, but for an on-the-ground analysis. Also, perhaps . . . it’s not just a simple morality play, of good versus evil, the complexities and subtleties of a developing democracy like South Africa and its neighborhood are more variegated than perhaps the superficial images flashed abroad suggest. And I think people want to explore that and tease it out. So I’d like to participate in it. I am also bringing out a book soon, which is a political memoir.