PALI LEHOHLA | Was Kgosi Mangope a sellout or a provider of a blueprint for a developmental state?

Around 2016 Kgosi Manyane Mangope was at the Southern Sun in Pretoria where Risenga Maluleke and I were having an office meeting with other staff members. Upon noticing him, we went to greet. He rose and as we shook hands and greeted, he introduced himself and said, “I am Manyane Mangope.”

We quickly had to say, “Kgosi, that is why we came to greet and hoped to introduce ourselves.” He had beaten us to it.

In the last three weeks, I have been driving through the North West to the capital Mahikeng. The deplorable state of the infrastructure, including the seat of government Garona, which means our home, left me cold. Is this what Mangope’s saying of “Ntime o mphele ngoana” has become? The saying means “let us sacrifice for future generations, let us not eat their future”.

Forty-two years ago, on September 30 1982, I arrived in Mmabatho trying to transit to Botswana having escaped sure death from Lesotho the previous day. The transit to Botswana was aborted and I settled in Bophuthatswana. After struggling to find work for seven weeks, I got a job in the statistics unit in the economic affairs department. On November 17 1982 I had my letter of appointment and got cracking on the job.

The escape from Lesotho is a topic for another day, just as is the decision to settle in Mmabatho. Two important and related events persuaded me to pen this article as I reflect on my professional journey to date in South Africa. These led to further questions that we should confront as South Africa turns 30 — and in turn has to confront another 30 years.

As we meandered through to Motswedi, the abandoned Lehurutshe Education Training College became a mirror image of our failed education system

The first event is the retirement of the last of the team of employees of the then Bophuthatswana Statistics that formed the base of my operation in 1984 and shaped my career as the statistician-general of South Africa.

The second is I attended the unveiling ceremony of the family tombstones of Mangope over the weekend on Saturday the 24th.

I served under the government of President Mangope for 13 years. Among key operations I was responsible for were the 1985 and 1991 Bophuthatswana censuses. The design and content of these censuses gave shape to all the four post-apartheid censuses. Three of these were under my authority. The first post-apartheid census of 1996 and the 2001 and 2011 censuses were under my leadership and management. The 2022 census under statistician-general Risenga Maluleke has retained the same content.

The challenge I faced in 1982, with the apartheid South African censuses, including the 1980 census of Bophuthatswana, was their anti-development focus. I vowed not to follow the apartheid template. My task was to transform these into development instruments. I did.

This was very much to the displeasure of the Central Statistical Service (CSS), which said they would not support my effort. So I told Dr Brilliance Gouws: “Bring it on. I do not need your support.” At that I left the meeting at the CSS in Pretoria and on matters population censuses the chapter of collaboration was closed for the two censuses of Bophuthatswana of 1985 and 1991.

All other homelands of Ciskei, Transkei and Venda, and all self-governing territories, followed the limited anti-development content and depended on Pretoria for processing their censuses.

I never reopened the topic until I came to lead the 1996 census. This was now on my terms, based on my practical experience in Bophuthatswana and my professional knowledge of the subject matter that I had led.

Throwing a no co-operation decision at Pretoria was not easy, but I took it on that fateful day of February 1984. After 13 months in office, I knew I could make that decision — not on the basis of technical capability of the staff, because none had a degree at the time, but I had understood their commitment to the path I took and they were eager to learn.

No sooner had I thrown the tantrum than a fellow student at NUL joined me and added the critical skill of programming for data processing. Second, the IBM System/38 at Garona Building was under black management. Motale Phirwa, my programmer, and I approached the leadership at System/38 for processing support. They said: “We are in.”

Preparations for fieldwork began in earnest at the beginning of 1984. The team of 14 field operators I had recruited in 1984 did not have driver’s licences. Consequently, I had to traverse the breadth and width of Bophuthatswana driving my team. Through this experience I gained confidence

“Rena le rona”, which means “we are confident about ourselves”, was the mantra of Mangope. By March 1985 we were ready for the field and we executed. Then came data capture and processing. Nothing was as intimidating and exciting as this phase.

First, the Pretoria manual for occupations and industry was arranged alphabetically and was unintelligible. My first fight with the Pretoria-donated adviser Piet Bossert arose when I said the manual was unintelligible. Having worked at the department of labour in Lesotho in the National Employment Service (NES), I knew of better days on International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) and the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC). I called for the manuals from my former staff at NES in Lesotho and they were sent.

Motale and I had to recruit 220 coders. The manuals were copied and bound to meet the requirements. We recruited two shifts, one during the day and one for the night. The night shift consisted of civil servants. They faced coding for the first time.

My office-based staff were very small and I appointed them into supervisory positions. I had to tell Bossert off again. He objected to their appointment. I told him I have confidence in these staff members after about 20 months of working with them.

Then came 1994 and preparations for Census 1995. Armed with the two censuses of Bophuthatswana that I led successfully, I challenged the Pretoria approach and argued for the Bophuthatswana approach. Dr Du Toit, then head of the CSS, declared me persona non grata in CSS matters in February. He failed and could not get the position of head of CSS when this post was advertised a month later in March. Dr Mark Orkin got the position in July and the task of building began in earnest when he roped me into the CSS three days later.

My trip down memory lane at the unveiling of the tombstones of Mangope and his family members was a very moving, celebratory moment.

I called my friend Monese Setenane on Friday evening. He had driven me on my escape mission from Lesotho and facilitated, as fate would have it, our ending up in Bophuthatswana. In September 1982 I had a car but no driver’s licence and I needed him as a driver and backup for my learner’s licence.

This time, my licence had expired 10 days ago and I needed to renew it and I said to him: “My friend, let’s recreate our trip to Bophuthatswana — but this time only from Pretoria.”

We reminisced on the trip of 40 years ago. We remembered how we slept on the Derby Bridge to wait for dawn to refill our car. How we drove through the dirt road in Peela and wondered if we were lost but reappeared through Groot Marico. How upon arrival in Mmabatho, the place looked like a construction site whose design, when finalised, reflected the mind of a visionary.

My team at the obscure statistics office of Bophuthatswana held its own and today, as the last of the team I led retires, I can proudly say that team that had no graduates in November 1982 when I started with it ended up as graduates — because I pushed them to do so and the Bophuthatswana government paid for them

As we meandered through to Motswedi, the abandoned Lehurutshe Education Training College became a mirror image of our failed education system. However, seeing the uniformed schoolchildren heading to school on a Saturday morning was pleasing. The potholes in Lehurutshe sang in unison with others elsewhere.

We tried to locate the rail station that used to be called Mangope Station for history’s sake, but when there is no train to Mahikeng from Johannesburg and all you see are trucks and trucks, you ask: are we followers of “Ntime o mphele ngoana” or are we devourers of our own children’s future?

As we meandered I would see sign posts of villages where I cut my teeth in statistical surveys from 1982: Gopane, Mothlabe, Dinokana, Masebudule, Moshwana, and Motswedi.

At the unveiling I got hearty greetings from Chief Shuping’s son. I used to visit, in my line of duty, many a chief, and Chief Shuping of Shupingstad was one on my list as a must to sit and talk with, so was Chief Modisakgomo Mabe. These memories were filled with nostalgia of the great contribution that this experience bore on me as I went about my work as the statistician-general of South Africa.

Among the dignitaries were deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke, Prof Victor Pitsoe of Unisa, Prof Botlhale Tema of North West University and Mr Joseph Jack, private secretary of Mangope.

Former chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng spoke of the legacy of this towering figure. He said this figure was called a sell-out. He asked: how can an educator with a glowing track record of training colleges of education, agricultural schools, manpower training centres and schools, hotel schools, cultural centres for children, tourism institutions such as the towering Sun City, sporting facilities, modern buildings for civil servants, pension fund systems, housing ownership schemes, a university, high schools of excellence such as the Mmabatho International School, farmer development programmes, broadcasting industry in the form of Bop Radio, Bop TV and Mmabatho TV, a recording studio of note, a paragon of governance — the list is endless — be called a sell-out?

Many leading figures holding their own in institutions of the state came out of Bophuthatswana, and Mogoeng mentioned himself as such a product who studied with support from the Bophuthatswana government.

The question is thus this: was Mangope a sell-out or a provider of a blueprint for a developmental state? My team at the obscure statistics office of Bophuthatswana held its own and today, as the last of the team I led retires, I can proudly say that team that had no graduates in November 1982 when I started with it ended up as graduates — because I pushed them to do so and the Bophuthatswana government paid for them.

In the hierarchy of the statistics office in the North West, from the team I started with in 1982 there were accomplished leadership people occupying chief director, director, deputy director and assistant director positions as they exited office.

Perhaps, as I look into him as my mirror, I cannot but ask the same question that Mogoeng asked: was Mangope a sell-out or a provider of a blueprint for a developmental state?

What lessons, as we mark 30 years of our democracy, are we to draw from him when we set our eyes on the next 30? Mangope was known for his deep cultural reflections such as “Ntime o mphele ngoana”. In the system he built as a leader, he lived this principle.

May his soul — and those of his family whose tombstones were unveiled —rest in peace.

• Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa.