title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: To emphasise that Waters had left the band, the inner gatefold featured a photograph of just Gilmour and Mason shot by David Bailey. Its inclusion marked the first time since "Meddle" (1971) that a group photo had been used in the artwork of a Pink Floyd album. Wright was represented only by name, on the credits. According to Mason, Wright's leaving agreement contained a clause that prevented him rejoining the band, and "consequently we had to be careful about what constituted being a member".


title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" was released in the UK and US on 7 September 1987. It went straight to number three in both countries, held from the top spot in the US by Michael Jackson's "Bad" and Whitesnake's self-titled album. It spent 34 weeks on the UK Albums Chart. It was certified silver and gold in the UK on 1 October 1987, and gold and platinum in the US on 9 November. It went double platinum on 18 January the following year, triple platinum on 10 March 1992, and quadruple platinum on 16 August 2001, greatly outselling "The Final Cut".


title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: Gilmour presented "A Momentary Lapse" as a return to an older Pink Floyd sound, citing his belief that under Waters' tenure, lyrics had become more important than music. He said that their albums "The Dark Side of the Moon" and "Wish You Were Here" were successful "not just because of Roger's contributions, but also because there was a better balance between the music and the lyrics [than on later albums]". Waters said of the album: "I think it's very facile, but a quite clever forgery ... The songs are poor in general; the lyrics I can't quite believe. Gilmour's lyrics are very third-rate." Wright later said Waters' criticisms were "fair".


title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: In "Q", Phil Sutcliffe wrote that it "does sound like a Pink Floyd album" and highlighted the two-part "A New Machine" as "a chillingly beautiful vocal exploration" and a "brilliant stroke of imagination". He concluded: ""A Momentary Lapse" is Gilmour's album to much the same degree that the previous four under Floyd's name were dominated by Waters … Clearly it wasn't only business sense and repressed ego but repressed talent which drove the guitarist to insist on continuing under the band brand-name." Recognising the return to a more music-oriented approach, "Sounds" said the album was "back over the wall to where diamonds are crazy, moons have dark sides, and mothers have atom hearts".


title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: Conversely, Greg Quill of the "Toronto Star" wrote: "Something's missing here. This is, for all its lumbering weight, not a record that challenges and provokes as Pink Floyd should. "A Momentary Lapse of Reason", sorry to say, is mundane, predictable." "Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau wrote: "You'd hardly know the group's conceptmaster was gone – except that they put out noticeably fewer ideas." In 2016, AllMusic critic William Ruhlmann described it as a "Gilmour solo album in all but name".


title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: In 2016, Nick Shilton chose "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" as one of the "Top 10 Essential 80s Prog Albums" for "Prog". He wrote: "While it's not a patch on the Floyd masterworks of the 70s, it merits inclusion here. The ironically titled 'Signs of Life' is an instrumental prelude for 'Learning to Fly' which showcases Gilmour's guitar, while the pulsating 'The Dogs of War' is considerably darker, and the uplifting 'On the Turning Away' simply sublime."


title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: The album was reissued in 1988 as a limited-edition vinyl album, complete with posters, and a guaranteed ticket application for the band's upcoming UK concerts. It was digitally remastered and re-released in 1994, and a tenth anniversary edition was issued in the US three years later.


title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" was reissued again as part of the "Later Years" box set released in December 2019. The album was "updated and remixed" by Gilmour and Jackson, with restored contributions from Wright and newly recorded drum tracks from Mason to "restore the creative balance between the three Pink Floyd members". "Rolling Stone" described this version as "more tasteful ... [it] doesn’t drown in eighties reverb the way the original did ... Although none of the "Momentary Lapse" remixes will be dramatic enough to sway the band’s critics, they add clarity to what Gilmour was trying to achieve." A standalone album was released on 29 October 2021.


title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: Pink Floyd decided to tour for the album before it was complete. Early rehearsals were chaotic; Mason and Wright were out of practice, and, realising he had taken on too much work, Gilmour asked Ezrin to take charge. Matters were complicated when Waters contacted several US promoters and threatened to sue if they used the Pink Floyd name. Gilmour and Mason funded the start-up costs; Mason, separated from his wife, used his Ferrari 250 GTO as collateral. Some promoters were offended by Waters' threat, and several months later 60,000 tickets went on sale in Toronto, selling out within hours.


title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: As the new line-up (with Wright) toured throughout North America, Waters' "Radio K.A.O.S." tour was sometimes close by. Waters forbade the members of Pink Floyd to attend his concerts, which were generally in smaller venues. Waters also issued a writ for copyright fees for use of the Pink Floyd flying pig; Pink Floyd responded by attaching a huge set of male genitalia to the balloon's underside to distinguish it from Waters' design. By November 1987, Waters had given up, and on 23 December a legal settlement was reached at a meeting on "Astoria".


title: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

text: The "Momentary Lapse" tour beat box office records in every US venue it booked, and was the most successful US tour that year. Tours of Australia, Japan, and Europe followed, before two more tours of the US. Almost every venue was sold out. A live album, "Delicate Sound of Thunder", was released on 22 November 1988, followed in June 1989 by a concert video. A few days later, the live album was played in orbit, on board Soyuz TM-7. The tour eventually came to an end by closing the Silver Clef Award Winners Concert, at Knebworth Park on 30 June 1990, after 200 performances, a gross audience of 4.25 million fans, and box office receipts of more than £60 million (not including merchandising).


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Pope Clement VII (; ; born Giulio de' Medici; 26 May 1478 – 25 September 1534) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 November 1523 to his death on 25 September 1534. Deemed "the most unfortunate of the popes", Clement VII's reign was marked by a rapid succession of political, military, and religious struggles—many long in the making—which had far-reaching consequences for Christianity and world politics.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Elected in 1523 at the end of the Italian Renaissance, Clement came to the papacy with a high reputation as a statesman. He had served with distinction as chief advisor to Pope Leo X (1513–1521), Pope Adrian VI (1522–1523), and commendably as gran maestro of Florence (1519–1523). Assuming leadership at a time of crisis, with the Protestant Reformation spreading; the Church nearing bankruptcy; and large, foreign armies invading Italy, Clement initially tried to unite Christendom by making peace among the many Christian leaders then at odds. He later attempted to liberate Italy from foreign occupation, believing that it threatened the Church's freedom.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: The complex political situation of the 1520s thwarted Clement's efforts. Inheriting unprecedented challenges, including Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation in Northern Europe; a vast power struggle in Italy between Europe's two most powerful kings, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Francis I of France, each of whom demanded that the Pope choose a side; and Turkish invasions of Eastern Europe led by Suleiman the Magnificent, Clement's problems were exacerbated by King Henry VIII of England's contentious divorce, resulting in England breaking away from the Catholic Church; and in 1527, souring relations with Emperor Charles V, leading to the violent Sack of Rome, during which Clement was imprisoned. After escaping confinement in the Castel Sant'Angelo, Clement—with few economic, military, or political options remaining—compromised the Church's and Italy's independence by allying with his former jailer, Charles V.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: In contrast to his tortured pontificate, Clement was personally respectable and devout, possessing a "dignified propriety of character", "great acquirements both theological and scientific", as well as "extraordinary address and penetration—Clement VII, in serener times, might have administered the Papal power with high reputation and enviable prosperity. But with all of his profound insight into the political affairs of Europe, Clement does not seem to have comprehended the altered position of the Pope" in relation to Europe's emerging nation-states and Protestantism.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Clement left a significant cultural legacy in the Medici tradition. He commissioned artworks by Raphael, Benvenuto Cellini, and Michelangelo, including Michelangelo's "The Last Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel. In matters of science, Clement is best known for approving, in 1533, Nicolaus Copernicus's theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun—99 years before Galileo Galilei's heresy trial for similar ideas.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Giulio de' Medici's life began under tragic circumstances. On 26 April 1478—exactly one month before his birth—his father, Giuliano de Medici (brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent) was murdered in the Florence Cathedral by enemies of his family, in what is now known as "The Pazzi Conspiracy". He was born illegitimately on 26 May 1478, in Florence; the exact identity of his mother remains unknown, although a plurality of scholars contend that it was Fioretta Gorini, the daughter of a university professor. Giulio spent the first seven years of life with his godfather, the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Elder.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Thereafter, Lorenzo the Magnificent raised him as one of his own sons, alongside his children Giovanni (the future Pope Leo X), Piero, and Giuliano. Educated at the Palazzo Medici in Florence by humanists like Angelo Poliziano, and alongside prodigies like Michelangelo, Giulio became an accomplished musician. In personality he was reputed to be shy, and in physical appearance, handsome.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Giulio's natural inclination was for the clergy, but his illegitimacy barred him from high-ranking positions in the Church. So Lorenzo the Magnificent helped him carve out a career as a soldier. He was enrolled in the Knights of Rhodes, but also became Grand Prior of Capua. In 1492, when Lorenzo the Magnificent died and Giovanni de' Medici assumed his duties as a cardinal, Giulio became more involved in Church affairs. He studied canon law at the University of Pisa, and accompanied Giovanni to the conclave of 1492, where Rodrigo Borgia was elected Pope Alexander VI.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Following the misfortunes of Lorenzo the Magnificent's firstborn son, Piero the Unfortunate, the Medici were expelled from Florence in 1494. Over the next six years, Cardinal Giovanni and Giulio wandered throughout Europe together—twice getting arrested (first in Ulm, Germany, and later in Rouen, France). Each time Piero the Unfortunate bailed them out. In 1500, both returned to Italy and concentrated their efforts on re-establishing their family in Florence. Both were present at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512, where Cardinal Giovanni was captured by the French but Giulio escaped; this led to Giulio becoming an emissary to Pope Julius II. That same year, with the assistance of Pope Julius and the Spanish troops of Ferdinand of Aragon, the Medici retook control of Florence.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: In 1510, while the Medici were living near Rome, a servant in their household—identified in documents as —became pregnant, ultimately giving birth to a son, Alessandro de' Medici. Nicknamed "il Moro" ("the Moor") due to his dark complexion, Alessandro was officially recognized as the illegitimate son of Lorenzo II de Medici, but at the time and to this day, various scholars suggest that Alessandro was the illegitimate son of Giulio de' Medici. The truth of his lineage remains unknown and debated.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Regardless of his paternity, throughout Alessandro's brief life, Giulio—as Pope Clement VII—showed him great favoritism, elevating Alessandro over Ippolito de Medici as Florence's first hereditary monarch, despite the latter's comparable qualifications.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Giulio de' Medici appeared on the world stage in March 1513, at the age of 35, when his cousin Giovanni de' Medici was elected Pope, taking the name Leo X. Pope Leo X reigned until his death on 1 December 1521.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: "Learned, clever, respectable, and industrious," Giulio de’ Medici's reputation and responsibilities grew at a rapid pace, unusual even for the Renaissance. Within three months of Leo X's election, he was named Archbishop of Florence. Later that autumn, all barriers to his attaining the Church's highest offices were removed by a papal dispensation declaring his birth legitimate. It stated that his parents had been betrothed , (i.e. "wed according to the word of those present.") Whether or not this was true, it allowed Leo X to create him cardinal during the first papal consistory on 23 September 1513. On 29 September, he was appointed Cardinal Deacon of Santa Maria in Dominica—a position that had been vacated by the Pope.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Cardinal Giulio's reputation during the reign of Leo X is recorded by contemporary Marco Minio, the Venetian ambassador to the Papal Court, who wrote in a letter to the Venetian Senate in 1519: "Cardinal de' Medici, the Pope's cardinal nephew, who is not legitimate, has great power with the Pope; he is a man of great competence and great authority; he resides with the Pope, and does nothing of importance without first consulting him. But he is returning to Florence to govern the city."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: While Cardinal Giulio wasn't officially appointed Vice-Chancellor of the Church (second-in-command) until 9 March 1517, in practice Leo X governed in partnership with his cousin from the beginning. Initially, his duties centered primarily on administering Church affairs in Florence and conducting international relations. In January 1514, King Henry VIII of England appointed him Cardinal protector of England. The following year, King Francis I of France nominated him to become Archbishop of Narbonne, and in 1516 named him cardinal protector of France. In a scenario typical of Cardinal Giulio's independent-minded statesmanship, the respective kings of England and France, recognizing a conflict of interest in Giulio protecting both countries simultaneously, brought pressure to bear on him to resign his other protectorship; to their dismay, he refused.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Cardinal Giulio's foreign policy was shaped by the idea of "la libertà d'Italia," which aimed to free Italy and the Church from French and Imperial domination. This became clear in 1521, when a personal rivalry between King Francis I and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V boiled over into war in northern Italy. Francis I expected Giulio, France's cardinal protector, to support him; but Giulio perceived Francis as threatening the Church's independence—particularly the latter's control of Lombardy, and his use of the Concordat of Bologna to control the Church in France. At the time, the Church wanted Emperor Charles V to combat Lutheranism, then growing in Germany. So Cardinal Giulio negotiated an alliance on behalf of the Church, to support the Holy Roman Empire against France. That autumn, Giulio helped lead a victorious Imperial-Papal army over the French in Milan and Lombardy. While his strategy of shifting alliances to liberate the Church and Italy from foreign domination proved disastrous during his reign as Pope Clement VII, during the reign of Leo X it skillfully maintained a balance of power among the competing international factions seeking to influence the Church.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Giulio de’ Medici led numerous armed conflicts as a cardinal. Commenting on this, his contemporary Francesco Guicciardini wrote that Cardinal Giulio was better suited to arms than to the priesthood. He served as papal legate to the army in a campaign against Francis I in 1515, alongside inventor Leonardo da Vinci.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Cardinal Giulio's other endeavors on behalf of Pope Leo X were similarly successful, such that "he had the credit of being the prime mover of papal policy throughout the whole of Leo's pontificate." In 1513, he was member of the Fifth Lateran Council, assigned the task of healing the schism caused by conciliarism. In 1515, his "most significant act of ecclesiastical government" regulated prophetic preaching in the manner of Girolamo Savonarola. He later organized and presided over the Florentine Synod of 1517, where he became the first member of the Church to implement the reforms recommended by the Fifth Lateran Council. These included prohibiting priests from carrying arms, frequenting taverns, and dancing provocatively – while urging them to attend weekly confession. Similarly, Cardinal Giulio's artistic patronage was admired (e.g., his commissioning Raphael’s "Transfiguration" and Michelangelo’s "Medici Chapel", among other works), particularly for what goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini later called its "excellent taste".


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Cardinal Giulio governed Florence between 1519 and 1523, following the death of its civic ruler, Lorenzo II de Medici, in 1519. There "he was permitted to assume almost autocratic control of State affairs," and "did very much to place public interests upon a firm and practical basis." U.S. President John Adams later characterized Giulio's administration of Florence as "very successful and frugal." Adams chronicles the cardinal as having "reduced the business of the magistrates, elections, customs of office, and the mode of expenditure of public money, in such a manner that it produced a great and universal joy among the citizens."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: On the death of Pope Leo X in 1521, Adams writes there was a "ready inclination in all of the principal citizens [of Florence], and a universal desire among the people, to maintain the state in the hands of the Cardinal de’ Medici; and all this felicity arose from his good government, which since the death of the Duke Lorenzo, had been universally agreeable."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: When Pope Leo X died on 1 December 1521, Cardinal Giulio was "widely expected to succeed him"—but instead, during the conclave of 1522, the College of Cardinals elected a compromise candidate, Adrian VI of the Netherlands. Of why this happened, historian Paul Strathern writes, "it was common knowledge that [Cardinal Giulio] had been Leo X's most able adviser, as well as manager of the pope's financial affairs. The fact that Leo X had blithely ignored his cousin's advice, on so many occasions, was widely seen as being responsible for the plight of the papacy—not the influence of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. On the contrary, Cardinal Giulio appeared to be everything that Leo X was not: he was handsome, thoughtful, saturnine and gifted with good taste. Despite this, many remained steadfast in their opposition to his candidacy."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: In conclave, Cardinal Giulio controlled the largest voting bloc, but his enemies forced the election to a stalemate. Among them were Cardinal Francesco Soderini, a Florentine whose family had lost a power struggle to the Medici "and held a grudge"; Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, a Roman nobleman who wanted to become Pope himself; and a group of French cardinals who "were unwilling to forget Leo X's treachery to their King."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Realizing that his candidacy was in jeopardy, "Cardinal Giulio now chose to make an astute tactical move. He declared modestly that he was unworthy of such high office; instead, he suggested the little-known Flemish scholar Cardinal Adrian Dedel, an ascetic and deeply spiritual man who had been tutor to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Cardinal Giulio was sure that Cardinal Dedel would be rejected—on the grounds of his obscurity, his lack of political expertise and the fact that he was not Italian. The selfless suggestion that had been made by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici would then demonstrate to all that he was in fact the ideal candidate. But this move backfired badly, Cardinal Giulio's bluff was called and Cardinal Adrian Dedel was elected as Pope Adrian VI."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: During his 20-month papacy, Adrian VI "seemed to set great store by Cardinal Medici's opinions... And all the other cardinals were kept distinctly at arm's-length." In this way, Cardinal Giulio "wielded formidable influence" throughout Adrian's reign. Splitting time between the Palazzo Medici in Florence and the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, Cardinal Giulio "lived there as a generous Medici was expected to live, a patron of artists and musicians, a protector of the poor, a lavish host."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: In 1522, rumors began to swirl that Cardinal Giulio—lacking legitimate successors to rule Florence—planned to abdicate rule of the city and "leave the government freely in the people." When it became clear that these rumors were untrue, a faction of mostly elite Florentines hatched a plot to assassinate him and then install their own government under his "great adversary", Cardinal Francesco Soderini. Soderini encouraged the plot, exhorting both Adrian and Francis I of France to strike against Giulio and invade his allies in Sicily. This did not happen. Instead of breaking with Giulio, Adrian had Cardinal Soderini imprisoned. Afterward, the principal conspirators were "declared rebels", and some were "apprehended and beheaded; by which means Giulio was again secured [as leader of Florence]."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Following Adrian VI's death on 14 September 1523, Cardinal Giulio overcame the opposition of the French king and finally succeeded in being elected Pope Clement VII in the next conclave (19 November 1523).


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Pope Clement VII brought to the papal throne a high reputation for political ability and possessed in fact all the accomplishments of a wily diplomat. But his contemporaries considered him worldly and indifferent to the perceived dangers of the Protestant Reformation.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: At his accession, Clement VII sent the Archbishop of Capua, Nikolaus von Schönberg, to the Kings of France, Spain, and England, in order to bring the Italian War to an end. An early report from the Protonotary Marino Ascanio Caracciolo to the Emperor records: "As the Turks threaten to conquer Christian states, it seems to him that it is his first duty as Pope to bring about a general peace of all Christian princes, and he begs him (the Emperor), as the firstborn son of the Church, to aid him in this pious work." But the pope's attempt failed.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Francis I of France's conquest of Milan in 1524, during his Italian campaign of 1524–1525, prompted the Pope to quit the Imperial–Spanish side and to ally himself with other Italian princes, including the Republic of Venice, and France in January 1525. This treaty granted the definitive acquisition of Parma and Piacenza for the Papal States, the rule of Medici over Florence and the free passage of the French troops to Naples. This policy in itself was sound and patriotic, but Clement VII's zeal soon cooled; by his want of foresight and unseasonable economy, he laid himself open to an attack from the turbulent Roman barons, which obliged him to invoke the mediation of the emperor, Charles V. One month later, Francis I was crushed and imprisoned in the Battle of Pavia, and Clement VII went deeper in his former engagements with Charles V, signing an alliance with the viceroy of Naples.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: But deeply concerned about Imperial arrogance, he was to pick up with France again when Francis I was freed after the Treaty of Madrid (1526): the Pope entered into the League of Cognac together with France, Venice, and Francesco II Sforza of Milan. Clement VII issued an invective against Charles V, who in reply defined him a "wolf" instead of a "shepherd", menacing the summoning of a council about the Lutheran question.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Like his cousin Pope Leo X, Clement was considered too generous to his Medici relatives, draining the Vatican treasuries. This included the assignment of positions all the way up to Cardinal, lands, titles, and money. These actions prompted reform measures after Clement's death to help prevent such excessive nepotism.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: In his 1529 bull "Intra Arcana" Clement VII gave a grant of permissions and privileges to Charles V and the Spanish Empire, which included the power of patronage within their colonies in the Americas.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: The Pope's wavering politics also caused the rise of the Imperial party inside the Curia: Cardinal Pompeo Colonna's soldiers pillaged Vatican Hill and gained control of the whole of Rome in his name. The humiliated Pope promised therefore to bring the Papal States to the Imperial side again. But soon after, Colonna left the siege and went to Naples, not keeping his promises and dismissing the Cardinal from his charge. From this point on, Clement VII could do nothing but follow the fate of the French party to the end.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Soon he found himself alone in Italy too, as Alfonso d'Este, duke of Ferrara, had supplied artillery to the Imperial army, causing the League Army to keep a distance behind the horde of Landsknechts led by Charles III, Duke of Bourbon and Georg von Frundsberg, allowing them to reach Rome without harm.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Charles of Bourbon died while mounting a ladder during the short siege and his starving troops, unpaid and left without a guide, felt free to ravage Rome from 6 May 1527. The many incidents of murder, rape, and vandalism that followed ended the splendours of Renaissance Rome forever. Clement VII, who had displayed no more resolution in his military than in his political conduct, was shortly afterwards (6 June) obliged to surrender himself together with the Castel Sant'Angelo, where he had taken refuge. He agreed to pay a ransom of 400,000 ducati in exchange for his life; conditions included the cession of Parma, Piacenza, Civitavecchia, and Modena to the Holy Roman Empire. (Only the last could be occupied in fact.) At the same time, Venice took advantage of his situation to capture Cervia and Ravenna while Sigismondo Malatesta returned in Rimini.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Clement was kept as a prisoner in Castel Sant'Angelo for six months. After having bought off some Imperial officers, he escaped disguised as a peddler and took shelter in Orvieto and then in Viterbo. He came back to a depopulated and devastated Rome only in October 1528.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Meanwhile, in Florence, Republican enemies of the Medici took advantage of the chaos to again expel the Pope's family from the city.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: In June 1529 the warring parties signed the Peace of Barcelona. The Papal States regained some cities and Charles V agreed to restore the Medici to power in Florence. In 1530, after an eleven-month siege, the Tuscan city capitulated and Clement VII installed his illegitimate nephew Alessandro as duke. Subsequently, the Pope followed a policy of subservience to the emperor, endeavouring on the one hand to induce him to act with severity against the Lutherans in Germany and on the other to avoid his demands for a general council.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: During his half-year imprisonment in 1527, Clement VII grew a full beard as a sign of mourning for the sack of Rome. This was in contradiction to Catholic canon law, which required priests to be clean-shaven but had as precedent the beard Pope Julius II wore for nine months in 1511–12 as a sign of mourning for the papal city of Bologna.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Unlike Julius II, however, Clement kept his beard until his death in 1534. His example in wearing a beard was followed by his successor, Paul III, and indeed by 24 popes after him, down to Innocent XII, who died in 1700. Clement was thus the unintentional originator of a fashion that lasted well over a century.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: In 1532, Clement VII took possession of Ancona, which definitively lost its freedom and became part of the Papal States, ending hundreds of years when the Republic of Ancona was an important maritime power.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: By the late 1520s, King Henry VIII wanted to have his marriage to Charles's aunt Catherine of Aragon annulled. The couple's sons died in infancy, threatening the future of the House of Tudor, although Henry did have a daughter, Mary Tudor. Henry claimed that this lack of a male heir was because his marriage was "blighted in the eyes of God". Catherine had been his brother's widow, but the marriage had been childless, so the marriage was not against Old Testament law, which forbids such unions only if the brother had children. Moreover, Pope Julius II had given a dispensation to allow the wedding. Henry now argued that this had been wrong and that his marriage had never been valid. In 1527 Henry asked Clement to annul the marriage, but the Pope, possibly acting under pressure from Catherine's nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, whose effective prisoner he was, refused. According to Catholic teaching, a validly contracted marriage is indivisible until death, and thus the pope cannot annul a marriage on the basis of an impediment previously dispensed. Many people close to Henry wished simply to ignore Clement, but in October 1530 a meeting of clergy and lawyers advised that the English Parliament could not empower the Archbishop of Canterbury to act against the Pope's prohibition. In Parliament, Bishop John Fisher was the Pope's champion.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Henry subsequently underwent a marriage ceremony with Anne Boleyn, in either late 1532 or early 1533. The marriage was made easier by the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham, a stalwart friend of the Pope, after which Henry persuaded Clement to appoint Thomas Cranmer, a friend of the Boleyn family, as his successor. The Pope granted the papal bulls necessary for Cranmer's promotion to Canterbury, and also demanded that Cranmer take the customary oath of allegiance to the pope before his consecration. Laws made under Henry already declared that bishops would be consecrated even without papal approval. Cranmer was consecrated, while declaring beforehand that he did not agree with the oath he would take. Cranmer was prepared to grant the annulment of the marriage to Catherine as Henry required. The Pope responded to the marriage by excommunicating both Henry and Cranmer from the Catholic Church.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Consequently, in England, in the same year, the Act of Conditional Restraint of Annates transferred the taxes on ecclesiastical income from the Pope to the Crown. The Peter's Pence Act outlawed the annual payment by landowners of one penny to the Pope. This act also reiterated that England had "no superior under God, but only your Grace" and that Henry's "imperial crown" had been diminished by the Pope's "unreasonable and uncharitable usurpations and exactions". Ultimately, in 1534, Henry led the English Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy that established the independent Church of England and broke from the Catholic Church.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: In 1533, Clement married his cousin's granddaughter, Catherine de Medici, to the future King Henry II of France, son of King Francis I. Due to an illness, before setting out to Marseilles for the wedding, Clement issued a Bull on 3 September 1533 giving instructions on what to do if he died outside Rome. The wedding ceremony took place at Église Saint-Ferréol les Augustins on 28 October 1533 and was conducted by Clement himself. It was "followed by nine days of lavish banquets, pageants, and festivities." On 7 November in Marseilles, Clement created four new cardinals, all of them French. He also held separate, private meetings with Francis I and Charles V. Charles’ daughter, Margaret of Austria was set to marry Clement's relative, Duke Alessandro de’ Medici in 1536.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: According to Medici historian Paul Strathern, Clement marrying Catherine into France's royal family; and Alessandro becoming Duke of Florence and marrying into the Hapsburg family, "marked perhaps the most significant turning point in the history of the Medici family—the ascent into nobility in Florence, and the joining of the French royal family. Without the guiding hand of Clement VII, the Medici would never have been able to achieve the pinnacles of greatness that were yet to come" in the following centuries.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Clement returned to Rome on 10 December 1533 with a fever and complaining of stomach problems. He had been ill for months and "was aging rapidly." Strathern writes, "his liver was failing and his skin turned yellow; he also lost the sight of one eye and became partially blind in the other." He was so ill at the beginning of August 1534 that Cardinal Agostino Trivulzio wrote to King Francis that the Pope's doctors feared for his life. On 23 September 1534, Clement wrote a long letter of farewell to Emperor Charles. He also affirmed, just days before his death, that Michelangelo should paint "The Last Judgment" above the altar in the Sistine Chapel. Clement VII died on 25 September 1534, having lived 56 years and four months and reigned for 10 years, 10 months, and 7 days. His body was interred in Saint Peter's Basilica, and later transferred to a tomb in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, which was designed by Baccio Bandinelli.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Clement's biographer Emmanuel Rodocanachi writes, "in accordance with the custom of those times, people attributed his death to poison"—specifically, poisoning by death cap mushroom. Clement's symptoms and the length of his illness do not support this hypothesis.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Clement VII's papacy is generally regarded as one of history's most tumultuous; opinions of Clement himself are often nuanced. For example, Clement's contemporary Francesco Vettori writes that he "endured a great labor to become, from a great and respected cardinal, a small and little-esteemed pope", but also that "if one considers the lives of previous popes one may truly say that, for more than a hundred years, no better man than Clement VII sat upon the Throne. Nevertheless, it was in his day that the disaster took place while these others, who were filled with all vices, lived and died in felicity—as the world sees it. Neither should we seek to question the Lord, our God, who will punish—or not punish–in what manner and in what time it pleases him.’"


title: Pope Clement VII

text: The disasters of Clement's pontificate—the Sack of Rome and the English Reformation—are regarded as turning points in the histories of Catholicism, Europe, and the Renaissance. Modern historian Kenneth Gouwens writes, "Clement's failures must be viewed above all in the context of major changes in the dynamics of European politics. As warfare on the Italian peninsula intensified in the mid-1520s, the imperative of autonomy [for the Catholic Church and Italy] required enormous financial outlays to field standing armies. Political survival perforce eclipsed ecclesiastical reform as a short-term goal, and the costs of war necessitated the curtailment of expenditure on culture. Clement pursued policies consistent with those of his illustrious predecessors Julius II and Leo X; but in the 1520s, those policies could but fail... Reform of the Church, to which his successors would turn, required resources and concerted secular support that the second Medici pope was unable to muster."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Regarding Clement's struggle to liberate Italy and the Catholic Church from foreign domination, historian Fred Dotolo writes that "one might see in his papacy a vigorous defense of papal rights against the growth of monarchial power, a diplomatic and even pastoral struggle to retain the ancient division within Christendom of the priestly and kingly offices. Should the new monarchs of the early modern period reduce the papacy to a mere appendage of secular authority, religious issues would become little more than state policy... Clement VII attempted to restrain the expansion of royal power and maintain the independence of Rome and of papal prerogatives."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Ecclesiastically, Clement is remembered for orders protecting Jews from the Inquisition, approving the Theatine, Barnabite, and Capuchin Orders, and securing the island of Malta for the Knights of Malta.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: In a final analysis of Clement's papacy, historian E.R. Chamberlin writes, "in all but his personal attributes, Clement VII was a protagonist in a Greek tragedy, the victim called upon to endure the results of actions committed long before. Each temporal claim of his predecessors had entangled the Papacy just a little more in the lethal game of politics, even while each moral debasement divorced it just a little more from the vast body of Christians from whom ultimately it drew its strength." More charitably, modern historian James Grubb writes, "indeed, at a certain point it is difficult to see how he might have fared much better, given the obstacles he faced. Certainly his predecessors since the end of the Schism had experienced their share of opposition, but did any have to fight on so many fronts as Clement, and against such overwhelming odds? At one time or another he battled the Holy Roman Empire (now fueled by precious metals from America), the French, the Turks, rival Italian powers, fractious forces within the papal states, and entrenched interests within the Curia itself. That the precious liberta d’Italia (freedom from outside domination) should have been lost irrevocably seems more an inevitability than a product of Clement's particular failings. He tried his utmost..."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: The life of the second Medici pope has been portrayed in numerous films and tv accounts, notably the Netflix show 'Medici; The Magnificent' where the figure is portrayed by British actor Jacob Dudman.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: As both a cardinal and Pope, Giulio de’ Medici "commissioned or supervised many of the best-known artistic undertakings of the cinquecento." Of those works, he's best known for Michelangelo's monumental fresco in the Sistine Chapel, "The Last Judgment"; Raphael’s iconic altarpiece "The Transfiguration"; Michelangelo's sculptures for the "Medici Chapel" in Florence; Raphael's architectural "Villa Madama" in Rome; and Michelangelo's innovative "Laurentian Library" in Florence. "As a patron, [Giulio de’ Medici] proved extraordinarily confident in technical affairs," which allowed him to suggest workable architectural and artistic solutions for commissions ranging from Michelangelo’s "Laurentian Library" to Benvenuto Cellini’s celebrated Papal Morse. As Pope, he appointed goldsmith Cellini head of the Papal Mint; and painter Sebastiano del Piombo keeper of the Papal Seal. Sebastiano's tour de force, "The Raising of Lazarus", was produced via a contest arranged by Cardinal Giulio, pitting Sebastiano in direct competition with Raphael over who could produce the better altarpiece for the Narbonne Cathedral.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Giulio de’ Medici's patronage extended to theology, literature, and science. Some of the best known works associated with him are Erasmus’ "On the Bondage of the Will", which he encouraged in response to Martin Luther’s critiques of the Catholic Church; Machiavelli’s "Florentine Histories", which he commissioned; and Copernicus’ heliocentric idea, which he personally approved in 1533. When Johann Widmanstetter explained the Copernican system to him, he was so grateful that he gave Widmanstetter a valuable gift. In 1531 Clement issued rules for the oversight of human cadaver dissection and medical test trials, a sort of primitive code of medical ethics. Humanist and author Paolo Giovio was his personal physician.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Giulio de’ Medici was a talented musician, and his circle included many well-known artists and thinkers of the Italian High Renaissance. For example, "in the days before his papacy, the future Clement VII had been close to Leonardo da Vinci," with Leonardo gifting him a painting, the "Madonna of the Carnation". He was a patron of the satirist Pietro Aretino, who "wrote a series of viciously satirical lampoons supporting the candidacy of Giulio de’ Medici for the papacy." As Pope, he appointed author Baldassare Castiglione as Papal diplomat to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; and historian Francesco Guicciardini as governor of the Romagna, the northernmost province of the Papal States.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Italian Renaissance artistic trends from 1523 to 1527 are sometimes called the "Clementine style," and notable for their technical virtuosity. In 1527, the Sack of Rome "put a brutal end to an artistic golden age, the Clementine style that had developed in Rome since the coronation of the Medici Pope". André Chastel describes the artists who worked in the Clementine style as Parmigianino, Rosso Fiorentino, Sebastiano del Piombo, Benvenuto Cellini, Marcantonio Raimondi, and numerous associates of Raphael: Giulio Romano, Giovanni da Udine; Perino del Vaga; and Polidoro da Caravaggio. During the Sack, several of these artists were either killed, made prisoner, or took part in the fighting.


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Clement was renowned for his intelligence and counsel, but maligned for his inability to take timely and decisive action. Historian G.F. Young writes, "he spoke with equal knowledge of his subject whether that were philosophy and theology, or mechanics and hydraulic architecture. In all affairs he displayed an extraordinary acuteness; the most perplexing questions were unravelled, the most difficult circumstances penetrated to the very bottom, by his extreme sagacity. No man could debate a point with more address." Historian Paul Strathern writes, "his inner life was illuminated by an unwavering faith;" he was also in "surprisingly close contact with the ideals [of Renaissance humanism], and even more surprisingly was deeply sympathetic to them." For example, "Clement VII had no difficulty in accepting Copernicus’s heliocentric idea, and appeared to see no challenge to his faith in its implications; his Renaissance humanism was open to such progressive theories." Of Clement's other qualities, Strathern writes "he had inherited his murdered father’s good looks, though these tended to lapse into a dark scowl rather than a smile. He also inherited something of his great-grandfather Cosimo de’ Medici’s skill with accounts, as well as a strong inclination to his legendary caution, making the new pope hesitant when it came to taking important decisions; and unlike his cousin Leo X, he possessed a deep understanding of art."


title: Pope Clement VII

text: Of Clement's limitations, historian Francesco Guicciardini writes, "although he had a most capable intelligence and marvelous knowledge of world affairs, he lacked the corresponding resolution and execution... He remained almost always in suspension and ambiguous when he was faced with deciding those things that from afar he had many times foreseen, considered, and almost revealed." Strathern writes that Clement was "a man of almost icy self-control, but in him the Medici trait of self-contained caution had deepened into a flaw... If anything, Clement VII had too much understanding—he could always see both sides of any particular argument. This had made him an excellent close adviser to his cousin Leo X, but hampered his ability to take matters into his own hands." The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that while his "private life was free from reproach and he had many excellent impulses ... despite good intention, all qualities of heroism and greatness must emphatically be denied him."


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki KStJ (; born 18 June 1942) is a South African politician who was the second president of South Africa from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008, when he resigned at the request of his party, the African National Congress (ANC). Before that, he was deputy president under Nelson Mandela between 1994 and 1999.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: The son of Govan Mbeki, a renowned ANC intellectual, Mbeki has been involved in ANC politics since 1956, when he joined the ANC Youth League, and has been a member of the party's National Executive Committee since 1975. Born in the Transkei, he left South Africa aged twenty to attend university in England, and spent almost three decades in exile abroad, until the ANC was unbanned in 1990. He rose through the organisation in its information and publicity section and as Oliver Tambo's protégé, but he was also an experienced diplomat, serving as the ANC's official representative in several of its African outposts. He was an early advocate for and leader of the diplomatic engagements which led to the negotiations to end apartheid. After South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, he was appointed national deputy president. In subsequent years, it became apparent that he was Mandela's chosen successor, and he was elected unopposed as ANC president in 1997, enabling his rise to the presidency as the ANC's candidate in the 1999 elections.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: While deputy president, Mbeki had been regarded as a steward of the government's Growth, Employment and Redistribution policy, introduced in 1996, and as president he continued to subscribe to relatively conservative, market-friendly macroeconomic policies. During his presidency, South Africa experienced falling public debt, a narrowing budget deficit, and consistent, moderate economic growth. However, despite his retention of various social democratic programmes, and notable expansions to the black economic empowerment programme, critics often regarded Mbeki's economic policies as neoliberal, with insufficient consideration for developmental and redistributive objectives. On these grounds, Mbeki grew increasingly alienated from the left wing of the ANC, and from the leaders of the ANC's Tripartite Alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and South African Communist Party. It was these leftist elements which supported Jacob Zuma over Mbeki in the political rivalry that erupted after Mbeki removed the latter from his post as deputy president in 2005.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: As president, Mbeki had an apparent predilection for foreign policy and particularly for multilateralism. His Pan-Africanism and vision for an "African renaissance" are central parts of his political persona, and commentators suggest that he secured for South Africa a role in African and global politics that was disproportionate to the country's size and historical influence. He was the central architect of the New Partnership for Africa's Development and, as the inaugural chairperson of the African Union, spearheaded the introduction of the African Peer Review Mechanism. After the IBSA Dialogue Forum was launched in 2003, his government collaborated with India and Brazil to lobby for reforms at the United Nations, advocating for a stronger role for developing countries. Among South Africa's various peacekeeping commitments during his presidency, Mbeki was the primary mediator in the conflict between ZANU-PF and the Zimbabwean opposition in the 2000s. However, he was frequently criticised for his policy of "quiet diplomacy" in Zimbabwe, under which he refused to condemn Robert Mugabe's regime or institute sanctions against it.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Also highly controversial worldwide was Mbeki's HIV/AIDS policy. His government did not introduce a national mother-to-child transmission prevention programme until 2002, when it was mandated by the Constitutional Court, nor did it make antiretroviral therapy available in the public healthcare system until late 2003. Subsequent studies have estimated that these delays caused hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. Mbeki himself, like his Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, has been described as an AIDS denialist, "dissident," or sceptic. Although he did not explicitly deny the causal link between HIV and AIDS, he often posited a need to investigate alternate causes of and alternative treatments for AIDS, frequently suggesting that immunodeficiency was the indirect result of poverty.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: His political descent began at the ANC's Polokwane conference in December 2007, when he was replaced as ANC president by Zuma. His term as national president was not due to expire until June 2009, but, on 20 September 2008, he announced that he would resign at the request of the ANC National Executive Committee. The ANC's decision to "recall" Mbeki was understood to be linked to a high court judgement, handed down earlier that month, in which judge Chris Nicholson had alleged improper political interference in the National Prosecuting Authority and specifically in the corruption charges against Zuma. Nicholson's judgement was overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeal in January 2009, by which time Mbeki had been replaced as president by Kgalema Motlanthe.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki was born on 18 June 1942 in Mbewuleni, a small village in the former homeland of Transkei, now part of the Eastern Cape. The second of four siblings, he had one sister, Linda (born 1941, died 2003), and two brothers, Moeletsi (born 1945) and Jama (born 1948, died 1982).' His parents were Epainette (died 2014), a trained teacher, and Govan (died 2001), a shopkeeper, teacher, journalist, and senior activist in the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Both Epainette and Govan came from educated, Christian, land-owning families, and Govan's father was Sikelewu Mbeki, a colonially appointed headman.' The couple had met in Durban, where Epainette had become the second black woman to join the SACP (then still called the Communist Party of South Africa). However, while Mbeki was a child, his family was separated when Govan moved alone to Ladismith for a teaching job. Mbeki has said that he was "born into the struggle," and recalls that his childhood home was decorated with portraits of Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi. Indeed, Govan named him after senior South African communist Thabo Mofutsanyana.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki began attending school in 1948, the same year that the National Party was elected with a mandate to legislate apartheid.' The Bantu Education Act was implemented towards the end of his school career, and in 1955 he arrived at the Lovedale Institute, an eminent mission school outside Alice, as part of the last class which would be permitted to follow the same curriculum as white students. At Lovedale, he was a year behind Chris Hani, his future colleague and rival in the ANC.' Mbeki joined the ANC Youth League at age fourteen and in 1958 became the secretary of its Lovedale branch. Shortly afterwards, at the start of his final year of high school, he was identified as one of the leaders of a March 1959 boycott of classes, and was summarily expelled from Lovedale.' He nonetheless sat for matric examinations and obtained a second-class pass.'


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In June 1960, Mbeki moved to Johannesburg, where he lived in the home of ANC secretary general Duma Nokwe and where he intended to sit for A-level examinations. The ANC had recently been banned in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, but Mbeki remained highly politically active, becoming national secretary of the African Students' Association, a new (and short-lived) youth movement envisaged as replacing the now illegal ANC Youth League. It was also during this period that Nokwe recruited Mbeki into the SACP.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In early 1962, Mbeki was accepted to study economics by correspondence at the University of London, but shortly afterwards it was arranged for him to take the degree in person at the University of Sussex near Brighton, England.' Thus the ANC instructed him to join the growing cohort of cadres who were leaving South Africa to evade police attention, receive training, and establish the overt ANC structures that were now illegal inside the country. Mbeki was detained twice by the police while attempting to leave the country, first in Rustenberg, when the group he was travelling with failed to pass themselves off as a touring football team, and then in Rhodesia.' He arrived at the ANC's new headquarters in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in November 1962, and left shortly afterwards for England.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: While at Sussex, Mbeki was involved in ANC work and in broader organising for the English Anti-Apartheid Movement. Months after his arrival, his father was arrested during a Security Branch raid at Liliesleaf Farm in July 1963. During the ensuing Rivonia Trial, Mbeki appeared before the United Nations (UN) Special Committee on Apartheid and later led a student march from Brighton to London, a distance of fifty miles. At the conclusion of the trial, Govan and seven other ANC leaders, among them Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, were sentenced to life imprisonment.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki completed his bachelor's degree in economics in May 1965 but, at the exhortation of O. R. Tambo, enrolled for a Master's in economics and development instead of returning to Africa to join Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC's armed wing. His Master's dissertation was in economic geography.' In addition to this and his political organising, he developed a deep fondness for Yeats, Brecht, Shakespeare, and blues music.'After completing his Master's, in October 1966 he moved to London to work full-time for the propaganda section of the ANC's English headquarters.'He remained active in the SACP, which was very closely allied to the ANC, and in 1967 he was appointed to the editorial board of its official magazine, the "African Communist".'


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Throughout his time in England, Mbeki was the ward of O. R. Tambo and his wife Adelaide Tambo – in the absence of his parents, it was Adelaide and senior communist Michael Harmel who attended Mbeki's graduation ceremony in 1965.' O. R. Tambo later became the ANC's longest-serving president, and he acted as Mbeki's "political mentor and patron" until his death in 1993. Other friends Mbeki made in England, including Ronnie Kasrils and brothers Essop Pahad and Aziz Pahad, were also among his key political allies in his later career.'


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In February 1969, Mbeki was sent to Moscow in the Soviet Union to receive Marxist–Leninist political and ideological training – a fairly common practice, and even a rite of passage, among young people identified as belonging to the future generation of ANC and SACP political leaders. He was educated at the Lenin Institute, where, because of the secrecy required, he went by the alias "Jack Fortune."' He excelled at the institute and in June 1970 was appointed to the Central Committee of the SACP, alongside Chris Hani.' The last part of his training entailed military training, also a rite of passage, including in intelligence, guerrilla tactics, and weaponry. However, his biographer Mark Gevisser adduces that he was "not the ideal candidate for military life," and Max Sisulu, who trained alongside him, says that he always regarded Mbeki as better suited to political leadership than military leadership.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In April 1971, having been pulled out from military training, Mbeki was sent to Lusaka, Zambia, where the ANC-in-exile had set up its new headquarters under acting president Tambo. He was to fill the post of administrative secretary to the ANC Revolutionary Council, a body newly established to coordinate the political and military efforts of the ANC and SACP.' He was later moved to the propaganda section, but continued to attend the council's meetings, and in 1975 he (again alongside Hani) was elected onto the ANC's top decision-making organ, the National Executive Committee.' It was during this period that he began to ghostwrite some of Tambo's speeches and reports, and he accompanied Tambo on important occasions, such as to the infamous December 1972 meeting with Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the head of Inkatha, in London.' In 1973, he helped to establish the ANC's office in Botswana, considered a "frontline" country because of its shared border with South Africa, where the ANC was attempting to re-establish its underground.' However, although he travelled frequently in subsequent years, the ANC's Lusaka headquarters remained his central base.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Between 1975 and 1976, Mbeki was instrumental in establishing the ANC's frontline base in Swaziland. He was first sent there to assess the political landscape in January 1975, under the cover of attending a UN conference. As part of this reconnaissance trip, he and his colleague Max Sisulu spent time with S'bu Ndebele, Max's sister Lindiwe Sisulu, and their associates in the Black Consciousness movement, which at the time was ascendent in neighbouring South Africa.' Mbeki made a positive report to the ANC executive, and he was sent back to Swaziland to begin establishing the base. In Swaziland, he lived at Stanley Mabizela's family home in Manzini. Working with Albert Dhlomo, Mbeki was responsible for helping to re-establish underground ANC networks in the South African provinces of Natal and Transvaal, which shared a border with Swaziland. His counterpart inside South Africa was MK operative Jacob Zuma, who ran the Natal underground. According to Gevisser, the pair developed "an unlikely rapport."' Mbeki was also responsible for recruiting new MK operatives, for liaising with South African student and labour activists, and for liaising with Inkatha, which was becoming dominant in Natal.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: However, still another part of his duties was to act as the ANC's official representative in the country, and to maintain good diplomatic relations with the Swazi government. In March 1976, the government discovered that Mbeki was involved in military activity inside Swaziland, and he and Dhlomo – as well as Zuma, who was in the country illegally – were detained and then deported, though they managed to negotiate their deportation to the neutral territory of Mozambique rather than to South Africa.' Mbeki's management of the Swaziland base later became a point of contention between him and Mac Maharaj, with whom his relationship has remained acrimonious decades later. In 1978, Maharaj and Mbeki argued at a top-level strategic meeting in Luanda, Angola, when Maharaj, who had been tasked with running the political underground, claimed that Mbeki's records from the Swaziland office were in fact "just an empty folder."'


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: After being deported, Mbeki returned to Lusaka, where he was made Duma Nokwe's deputy in the ANC's Department of Information and Propaganda (DIP). In January 1977, he was posted to Lagos, Nigeria, where he was to be – as in Swaziland – the ANC's first representative to the country. Although there was some debate about whether the appointment was a signal that he had been sidelined, Gevisser says that Mbeki performed well in Lagos, establishing good relations with Olusegun Obasanjo's regime and establishing an ANC presence to eclipse that of its rival Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: When he returned to Lusaka from Lagos in 1978, he was promoted again: he replaced Nokwe as head of DIP, and simultaneously was appointed Tambo's political secretary, an extremely influential position in which he became one of Tambo's closest advisors and confidantes. He also continued to ghostwrite for Tambo, now in a formal capacity.' At DIP, his approach was encapsulated by the change he made to the department's name, replacing "propaganda" with "publicity." He eschewed the secrecy of earlier years and openly gave interviews and access to American journalists, to the disapproval of some hardline communists. According to various sources, he was responsible for reforming the public image of the ANC from that of a terrorist organisation to that of a "government-in-waiting."'


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: He established some of his own high-level intelligence networks, with key underground operatives reporting directly to him, and Gevisser claims that these led to the initiation of relationships with many of the domestic activists who later became his political allies. Moreover, he was responsible for innovating some of the vocabulary which became emblematic of the 1980s anti-apartheid struggle, which burgeoned in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising. Such phrases as "mass democratic movement," "people's power," and the exhortation to "make the country ungovernable" are attributed to Mbeki, and gained widespread popularity inside South Africa through Radio Freedom broadcasts written by DIP or by Mbeki personally.' Zuma has said that it was Mbeki's "drafting skills" which enabled his ascendancy in the ANC and ultimately to the presidency.'


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In 1980, Mbeki led the ANC's delegation to Zimbabwe, where the party hoped to establish relations with Robert Mugabe's newly elected government. This was a sensitive mission, because the ANC had historically been strongly allied to the Zimbabwe African People's Union, the arch rival of Mugabe's ZANU-PF. Working primarily through Mugabe's righthand man, future Zimbabwean president Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mbeki negotiated an extraordinarily congenial agreement between ZANU-PF and the ANC. The agreement allowed the ANC to open an office in Zimbabwe and to move MK weapons and cadres over Zimbabwean borders; moreover, it committed the Zimbabwean military to assisting the ANC, and the government to providing MK cadres with Zimbabwean identity documents. However, Mbeki handed the running of the Salisbury office over to another ANC official, and the deal later collapsed.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In 1985, PW Botha declared a State of Emergency and gave the army and police special powers. In 1986, the South African Army sent a captain in the South African Defence Force (SADF) to kill Mbeki. The plan was to put a bomb in his house in Lusaka, but the assassin was arrested by the Zambian police before he could go through with the plan.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In 1985, Mbeki became the ANC's director of the Department of Information and Publicity and coordinated diplomatic campaigns to involve more white South Africans in anti-apartheid activities. In 1989, he rose in the ranks to head the ANC's Department of International Affairs and was involved in the ANC's negotiations with the South African government.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki played a major role in turning the international media against apartheid. Raising the diplomatic profile of the ANC, Mbeki acted as a point of contact for foreign governments and international organisations and he was extremely successful in this position. Mbeki also played the role of ambassador to the steady flow of delegates from the elite sectors of white South Africa. These included academics, clerics, business people and representatives of liberal white groups who travelled to Lusaka to assess the ANC's views on a democratic, free South Africa.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki was seen as pragmatic, eloquent, rational and urbane. He was known for his diplomatic style and sophistication.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In the early 1980s, Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and Aziz Pahad were appointed by Tambo to conduct private talks with representatives of the National Party government. Twelve meetings between the parties took place between November 1987 and May 1990, most of them held at Mells Park House, a country house near Bath in Somerset, England. By September 1989, the team secretly met with Maritz Spaarwater and Mike Louw in a hotel in Switzerland. Known as "Operation Flair", PW Botha was kept informed of all the meetings. At the same time, Mandela and Kobie Coetzee, the Minister of Justice, were also holding secret talks.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: When Mbeki finally was able to return home to South Africa and was reunited with his own father, the elder Mbeki told a reporter, "You must remember that Thabo Mbeki is no longer my son. He is my comrade!" A news article pointed out that this was an expression of pride, explaining, "For Govan Mbeki, a son was a mere biological appendage; to be called a comrade, on the other hand, was the highest honour."


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In the late 1970s, Mbeki made a number of trips to the United States in search of support among US corporations. Literate and funny, he made a wide circle of friends in New York City. Mbeki was appointed head of the ANC's information department in 1984 and then became head of the international department in 1989, reporting directly to Oliver Tambo, then President of the ANC. Tambo was Mbeki's long-time mentor.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In 1985, Mbeki was a member of a delegation that began meeting secretly with representatives of the South African business community, and in 1989, he led the ANC delegation that conducted secret talks with the South African government. These talks led to the unbanning of the ANC and the release of political prisoners. He also participated in many of the other important negotiations between the ANC and the government that eventually led to the democratisation of South Africa. As a sign of goodwill, De Klerk set free a few of the ANC's top leadership at the end of 1989, among them Govan Mbeki.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: On 2 February 1990, Botha's successor as state president, F. W. de Klerk, announced that the ANC and other political organisations would be unbanned, and ANC exiles began to return to South Africa. At the same time that it was to negotiate the end of apartheid, the ANC had to implement a significant internal reorganisation, absorbing into its official exile bodies the domestic ANC underground, released political prisoners, and other activists from the trade unions and the United Democratic Front. It also had an ageing leadership, meaning that a new generation of leaders had to be prepared for succession.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mbeki's key role in the early negotiations made him a likely contender for top leadership positions in the party, and he was even considered to be in line for the ANC presidency. However, at the ANC's 48th National Conference in July 1991, its first national elective conference since 1960, Mbeki was not elected to any of the "Top Six" leadership positions. Sisulu was elected ANC deputy president, almost certainly as a compromise candidate, and trade unionist Cyril Ramaphosa was elected secretary general. According to historian Tom Lodge, Ramaphosa's election was a putsch carried out by the party's "internal wing," in defiance of the former exiles and political prisoners who had hitherto dominated the ANC's leadership. Over the next three years, Ramaphosa also came to eclipse Mbeki as the party's central negotiator when he, not Mbeki, was appointed to lead the ANC's delegation to the CODESA talks. Once SACP leader Chris Hani was assassinated in April 1993, Ramaphosa became Mbeki's primary competition in the ANC succession battle. When Tambo died later the same month, Mbeki succeeded him as ANC national chairperson.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Following the 1994 elections, South Africa's first under universal suffrage, Mbeki became one of the two national deputy presidents in the ANC-led Government of National Unity, in which Mandela was president. At the ANC's next national conference, held in December that year, Mbeki was elected unopposed to the ANC deputy presidency, also under Mandela. In June 1996, the National Party withdrew from the Government of National Unity and, with the second deputy, de Klerk, having thereby resigned, Mbeki became the sole deputy president.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: The same year, as deputy president, Mbeki acted as a peace broker in what was then known as Zaire, following the First Congo War and the deposition of Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko. Mbeki also took on increasing domestic responsibilities, including executive powers delegated to him by Mandela, to such an extent that Mandela called him "a "de facto" president." Mandela had made it clear publicly since early 1995 or earlier that he intended to retire after one term in office, and by then Mbeki was already seen as his most likely successor.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In December 1997, the ANC's 50th National Conference elected Mbeki unopposed to succeed Mandela as ANC president. On some accounts, the election was not contested because the top leadership had prepared assiduously for the conference, lobbying and negotiating on Mbeki's behalf in the interest of unity and continuity. Pursuant to the 1999 national elections, which the ANC won by a significant majority, Mbeki was elected president of South Africa. He was re-elected for a second term in 2004.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki had been highly involved in economic policy as deputy president, especially in spearheading the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme, which was introduced in 1996 and remained a cornerstone of Mbeki's administration after 1999. In comparison to the Reconstruction and Development Programme policy which had been the basis of the ANC's platform in 1994, GEAR placed less emphasis on developmental and redistributive imperatives, and subscribed to elements of the liberalisation, deregulation, and privatisation at the centre of Washington Consensus-style reforms. It was therefore viewed by some as a "policy reversal" and embrace of neoliberalism, and thus as an abandonment of the ANC's socialist principles. Mbeki also emphasised communication between government, business, and labour, establishing four working groups – for big business, black business, trade unions, and commercial agriculture – under which ministers, senior officials, and Mbeki himself met regularly with business and union leaders to build trust and explore solutions to structural economic problems.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Conservative groups such as the Cato Institute commended Mbeki's macroeconomic policies, which reduced the budget deficit and public debt and which likely played a role in increasing economic growth. According to the Free Market Foundation, during the Mbeki presidency, average annualised quarter-on-quarter GDP growth was 4.2%, and average annual inflation was 5.7%. On the other hand, the shift alienated leftists, including inside in the ANC and its Tripartite Alliance. Zwelinzima Vavi of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) was an outspoken critic of Mbeki's "market-friendly" economic policies, claiming that Mbeki's "flirtation" with neoliberalism had been "absolutely disastrous" for development, and especially for the labour-intensive development required to address South Africa's high unemployment rate. The discord between Mbeki and the left was on public display by December 2002, when Mbeki attacked what he called divisive "ultra-leftists" in a speech to the ANC's 51st National Conference.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: However, Mbeki clearly never subscribed to undiluted neoliberalism. He retained various social democratic programmes and principles, and generally endorsed a mixed economy in South Africa. One of the ANC's slogans in the campaign for his 2004 re-election was, "A people's contract for growth and development." He popularised the concept of a dual or two-track economy in South Africa, with severe underdevelopment in one segment of the population, and, for example in a 2003 newsletter, argued that high growth alone would only benefit the developed segment, without significant trickle-down benefits for the rest of the population. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, he explicitly advocated state support for the creation of a black capitalist class in South Africa. The government's black economic empowerment policy, which was expanded and consolidated under his administration, was criticised precisely for benefitting only a small black elite and thereby failing to address inequality.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: According to academic and diplomat Gerrit Olivier, during his presidency Mbeki "succeeded in placing Africa high on the global agenda." He was known for his Pan-Africanism, having emphasised related themes both in his famous "I am an African" speech in 1996 and in his first speech to Parliament as president in June 1999, when he foregrounded his trademark ideal of an "African renaissance." He advocated for greater solidarity among African countries and, in place of reliance on Western intervention and aid, for greater self-sufficiency for the African continent. Simultaneously, however, he argued for increased developmental aid to Africa. He called for Western leaders to address global apartheid and unequal development, most memorably in a speech to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Although Mbeki also forged strategic individual relationships with key African leaders, especially the heads of state of Nigeria, Algeria, Mozambique, and Tanzania, perhaps his central foreign policy instrument was multilateral cooperation. Mbeki's government, and Mbeki personally, are frequently cited as the single most significant driving force behind the creation in 2001 of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which aims to develop a framework for accelerating economic development and cooperation in Africa. Olivier calls Mbeki the "seminal thinker" behind NEPAD and its "principal author and articulator." According to academic Chris Landsberg, NEPAD's central principle – "African leaders holding one another accountable in exchange for the recommitment of the industrialised world to Africa's development" – epitomised Mbeki's strategy in Africa. Mbeki was also involved in the dissolution of the Organisation of African Unity and its replacement by the African Union (AU), of which he became the inaugural chairperson in 2002, and his government spearheaded the introduction of the AU's African Peer Review Mechanism in 2003. He was twice chairperson of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), first from 1999 to 2000 and second, briefly, in 2008. Through these multilateral organisations and by contributing forces to various United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions, Mbeki and his government were involved in peacekeeping initiatives in African countries including Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burundi.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Outside Africa, Mbeki was the chairperson of the Non-Aligned Movement between 1999 and 2003 and the chairperson of the Group of 77 + China in 2006. He also pursued South-South solidarity in a coalition with India and Brazil under the IBSA Dialogue Forum, which was launched in June 2003 and held its first summit in September 2006. The IBSA countries together pressed for changes in the agricultural subsidy regimes of developed countries at the 2003 World Trade Organisation conference, and also pressed for reforms at the UN which would allow developing countries a stronger role. Indeed, Mbeki had called for reform at the UN as early as 1999 and 2000. In 2007, following a prolonged diplomatic campaign, South Africa secured a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for a two-year term. Controversially, in February 2007, South Africa followed Russia and China in voting against a draft resolution calling for an end to political detentions and military attacks against ethnic minorities in Myanmar. Mbeki later told the media that the resolution exceeded the Security Council's mandate, and that its tabling had been illegal in terms of international law.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki's presidency coincided with an escalating political and economic crisis in South Africa's neighbour, Zimbabwe, under president Mugabe of ZANU-PF. Problems included land invasions under the "fast-track" land reform programme, political violence and state-sponsored human rights violations, and hyperinflation. With SADC's endorsement, Mbeki frequently acted as a mediator between ZANU-PF and the Zimbabwean opposition. However, controversially, his policy towards the Mugabe regime was one of non-confrontational "quiet diplomacy" and "constructive engagement": he refused to condemn Mugabe and instead attempted to persuade him to accept gradual political reforms. He was firmly opposed to forcible or manufactured regime change in Zimbabwe, and also opposed the use of sanctions. The "Economist" posited an "Mbeki doctrine" holding that South Africa "cannot impose its will on others, but it can help to deal with instability in African countries by offering its resources and its leadership to bring rival groups together, and to keep things calm until an election is safely held." Mbeki said in 2004:The motives behind Mbeki's Zimbabwe policy have been interpreted in various ways: for example, some suggest that he was attempting to maintain economic stability in Zimbabwe and therefore to protect South African economic interests, while others cite his attachment to ideals of African solidarity and opposition to what he perceived as quasi-imperial Western interference in Africa. In any case, Mbeki's policy on Zimbabwe attracted widespread criticism both domestically and internationally. Some also questioned Mbeki's neutrality in his role as mediator. After a South African observer mission endorsed the result of the Zimbabwean presidential election of 2002, in which Mugabe was re-elected, Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai accused Mbeki of being a "dishonest broker" and his government of becoming "part of the Zimbabwe problem because its actions are worsening the crisis." Commentators later said that Mbeki's soft stance on Mugabe during this period permanently damaged relations between South Africa and the Zimbabwean opposition. A South African government observer mission also endorsed the result of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections of 2005, apparently leading Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), to effectively sever relations with Mbeki's administration.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Following another contested election in Zimbabwe – after which Mbeki controversially denied that there was a "crisis" in Zimbabwe – the MDC and ZANU-PF entered into negotiations towards the formation of a power-sharing government, with talks beginning in July 2008. Mbeki mediated the negotiations and brokered the resulting power-sharing agreement, signed on 15 September 2008, which retained Mugabe as president but diluted his executive power across posts to be held by opposition leaders.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: According to political scientist Jeffrey Herbst, Mbeki's HIV/AIDS policies were "bizarre at best, severely negligent at worst." In 2000, amid a burgeoning HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, Mbeki's government launched the "HIV/AIDS/STD Strategic Plan for South Africa, 2000–2005", a "multi-sectoral" plan which was criticised by HIV/AIDS activists for lacking concrete timeframes and failing to commit to antiretroviral treatment programmes. Indeed, according to economist Nicoli Nattrass, resistance to the roll-out of antiretroviral drugs for prevention and treatment became central to the HIV/AIDS policy of Mbeki's government in subsequent years. A national mother-to-child transmission prevention programme was not introduced until 2002, when it was mandated by the Constitutional Court in response to a successful legal challenge by the Treatment Action Campaign. Similarly, chronic highly active antiretroviral therapy for AIDS-sick people was not introduced in the public healthcare system until late 2003, reportedly at the insistence of some members of Mbeki's cabinet. According to Nattrass, better access to antiretroviral drugs in South Africa could have prevented about 171,000 HIV infections and 343,000 deaths between 1999 and 2007. In November 2008, a Harvard University study estimated that more than 330,000 people died between 2000 and 2005 due to insufficient antiretroviral programmes under Mbeki's government.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Even after these programmes were introduced, Mbeki's appointee as Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, continued to advocate publicly for unproven alternative treatments in place of antiretrovirals, leading to continual calls by civil society for her dismissal. In late 2006, the cabinet transferred responsibility for AIDS policy from Tshabalala-Msimang to Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who subsequently spearheaded a new draft National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: While president, Mbeki was also criticised for his public messaging on HIV/AIDS. He was viewed as sympathetic to or influenced by the views of a small minority of scientists who challenged the scientific consensus that HIV caused AIDS and that antiretroviral drugs were the most effective means of treatment. In an April 2000 letter to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and the heads of state of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France, Mbeki pointed to differences in how the AIDS epidemic had manifested in Africa and in the West, and committed to "the search for specific and targeted responses to the specifically African incidence of HIV-AIDS." He also defended scientists who had challenged the scientific consensus on AIDS: The letter was leaked to "The Washington Post" and caused controversy. During the same period, Mbeki convened a panel to investigate the cause of AIDS, staffed by researchers who believed that AIDS was caused by malnutrition and parasites as well as by orthodox researchers. In July 2000, opening the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, he proposed that the "disturbing phenomenon of the collapse of immune systems among millions of our people" was the result of various factors, especially poverty, and that "we could not blame everything on a single virus." It was characteristic of Mbeki's stance on HIV/AIDS to draw attention to socioeconomic differences between the West and Africa, emphasising the importance of poverty in poor health outcomes in Africa, and to insist that African countries should not be asked blindly to accept Western scientific theories and policy models. Commentators speculate that his stance was motivated by suspicion of the West and was a response to what he perceived as racist stereotypes of the continent and its people. For example, in October 2001, in a speech at the University of Fort Hare, he said of the West: "Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust."


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki announced in October 2000 that he would withdraw from the public debate on HIV/AIDS science, and in 2002 his cabinet staunchly affirmed that HIV causes AIDS. However, critics claimed that he continued to influence – and impede – HIV/AIDS policy, a charge which Mbeki denied. AIDS activist Zackie Achmat said in 2002 that "Mbeki epitomizes leadership in denial and his stand has fuelled government inaction." Gevisser writes that in 2007 Mbeki continued to defend his position on HIV/AIDS, and directed Gevisser to a controversial and anonymous ANC discussion document titled "Castro Hlongwane, Caravans, Cats, Geese, Foot & Mouth and Statistics: HIV/Aids and the Struggle for the Humanisation of the African". The Gevisser biography also says that, while Mbeki never explicitly denied the link between HIV and AIDS, he is a "profound sceptic" – as Mbeki himself wrote in 2016, in a newsletter cautioning "great care and caution" in the use of antiretrovirals, he had not denied that HIV caused AIDS but that "a virus [could] cause a syndrome." He is generally referred to as an HIV/AIDS "dissident" rather than an outright denialist, although Nattrass questions the value of that distinction.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: As president, Mbeki spearheaded South Africa's successful bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Commentators, and Mbeki himself, frequently linked the bid to his vision for an African renaissance. In 2015, amid an American investigation into corruption at FIFA, soccer administrator Chuck Blazer testified that, between 2004 and 2011, he and other FIFA executives had received bribes in connection with South Africa's bid. Mbeki denied any knowledge of the bribes.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In late 2007, Mbeki's government announced that the public power utility, Eskom, would introduce electricity rationing or rolling blackouts, commonly known in South Africa as loadshedding. In subsequent months, Mbeki publicly apologised, acknowledging that the government had failed to heed Eskom's warnings, offered regularly for several consecutive years, that infrastructure investments were required to avoid energy shortages – in his words, "Eskom was right and government was wrong." However, some analysts suggested that insufficient investment was not the hindrance to electricity supply, and that other policy decisions by government and at Eskom, including the implementation of black economic empowerment criteria in coal procurement contracts, had contributed to the crisis. In his last State of the Nation address in February 2008, Mbeki repeated the apology and devoted nearly three pages of his speech to government's plans for addressing the energy crisis.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In May 2008, a series of riots took place in a number of South African townships, mainly in Gauteng province, when South African residents violently attacked migrants from other African countries. At least 62 people were killed, several hundred injured, and many thousand displaced. To contain the violence, Mbeki deployed the army to affected areas – the first such deployment to a civilian area since the end of apartheid. In a televised address towards the end of the saga, Mbeki called the attacks "an absolute disgrace," saying, "Never since the birth of our democracy have we witnessed such callousness."


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Some commentators argued that Mbeki's government had failed to acknowledge or sufficiently to address growing xenophobia in South Africa in the years preceding the attacks. Indeed, the AU's African Peer Review Mechanism had reported in 2006 that xenophobia was an urgent concern in South Africa. These criticisms were often linked to criticisms of Mbeki's policy in Zimbabwe, because a large proportion of South Africa's growing foreign-born population were Zimbabwean refugees. Moreover, when Mbeki argued that the attacks had other motives, both economic and "criminal," some critics accused him of "xenophobia denialism" and of refusing to acknowledge the genuine xenophobic sentiment in parts of the population.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In June 2005, Mbeki removed Zuma from his post as national deputy president, after Zuma's associate Schabir Shaik was convicted of making corrupt payments to Zuma in relation to the 1999 Arms Deal. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) charged Zuma with corruption later that year. However, Zuma remained deputy president of the ANC, and in subsequent years, the rivalry between Zuma and Mbeki and their allies intensified, with Zuma supporters frequently alleging that the charges against Zuma were politically motivated.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: By 2007, Zuma had emerged as an apparent contender in the ANC's next presidential elections, to be held at the party's 52nd National Conference in Polokwane, Limpopo. By April of that year, it was also clear that Mbeki intended to stand for a third term as ANC president. Mbeki's term as national president would expire in 2009, and he had said in 2006 that he had no intention of having the Constitution changed to permit him a third term in office, saying, "By the end of 2009, I will have been in a senior position in government for 15 years. I think that's too long." However, the ANC lacked internal term limits, and some suspected that he intended to continue to exert substantial influence over the government through the ANC presidency.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Zuma drew substantial support from the left wing of the party, especially through the ANC Youth League and the ANC's partners in the Tripartite Alliance, the SACP and COSATU, with whom Mbeki's relationship was extremely poor. At the elective conference, on 18 December, Mbeki lost the presidential election to Zuma, gaining less than 40% of the vote. According to ANC tradition, as ANC president Zuma would become the party's presidential candidate in the 2009 general election, and therefore, given the ANC's substantial electoral majority, was overwhelmingly likely to succeed Mbeki as national president in 2009.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: On 12 September 2008, Pietermaritzburg High Court judge Chris Nicholson set aside the corruption charges against Zuma. He found that the charges were unlawful on the procedural grounds that the NPA had not given Zuma adequate opportunity to make representations. Nicholson also lent his support to allegations that Zuma's charges had been politically motivated, saying that he was "not convinced that [Zuma] was incorrect when he averred political meddling in his prosecution" and that the case seemed to be part of "some great political contest or game." Mbeki later applied to the Constitutional Court to appeal the judgement, calling Nicholson's findings about political interference "vexatious, scandalous and prejudicial." The NPA also appealed, and in January 2009 the Supreme Court of Appeal found in its favour and overturned Nicholson's ruling. Partially redeeming Mbeki, the appellate court said that Nicholson's allegations of political interference had been irrelevant to Nicholson's decision and had apparently derived from Nicholson's "own conspiracy theory."


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: However, shortly after Nicholson delivered his judgement and months before the appeal was heard, the Zuma-aligned ANC National Executive Committee, as elected at the Polokwane conference, "recalled" Mbeki, asking him to resign as national president. The National Executive Committee is a party political body and therefore lacked the constitutional authority to remove Mbeki directly, but the ANC-controlled Parliament could have effected his removal had he not acquiesced voluntarily. On 20 September 2008, a spokesman announced that Mbeki would resign. In court papers filed later that week, Mbeki said that it was Nicholson's findings which had "led to my being recalled by my political party, the ANC – a request I have acceded to as a committed and loyal member of the ANC for the past 52 years."


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In the aftermath of his announcement, at least 11 cabinet ministers and three deputy ministers – including Deputy President Mlambo-Ngcuka and Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel – announced that they would also resign. Mbeki's resignation took effect on 25 September, and he was replaced as national president by Kgalema Motlanthe, who had been elected ANC deputy president at the Polokwane conference.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: After his resignation from the presidency, Mbeki retained his ANC membership but retreated from party politics. In the meantime, the Congress of the People (Cope) was founded as a breakaway party, composed largely of former ANC members known to be Mbeki loyalists. There were rumours that Mbeki was involved in Cope and would perhaps defect to it, especially after his mother Epainette, widow of ANC stalwart Govan, began attending Cope election rallies in the family's native Eastern Cape. According to political analyst Susan Booysen, although Mbeki "would never emerge from the silent, invisible wings onto centre stage... the whole Cope plot carried the 'Mbeki' stamp."


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki began again to appear at ANC events and to comment on ANC politics from around 2011. Although he has since said that he continued to vote for the ANC in the interim, he did not campaign on its behalf at any time during the Zuma presidency, which lasted between 2009 and 2018. In more recent years, he has been fairly vocal in reflecting publicly about perceived problems in the ANC and its leadership and about the country's economic problems and policies.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Motlanthe asked Mbeki to remain in his role as mediator in Zimbabwe after his resignation in 2008, and he later returned to Zimbabwe, in 2020, to mediate a further political dispute. He also continued to chair the long-serving AU High-level Implementation Panel for Sudan and South Sudan, which in 2016 brokered an agreement between warring Sudanese parties to begin peace negotiations. Although he remained critical of the UN's interventions in Africa, he also chaired the UN Economic Commission for Africa High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, which was established in collaboration with the AU in 2011.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: The Thabo Mbeki Foundation was launched on 10 October 2010, ahead of a three-day conference. Its mission centres around Mbeki's trademark "African renaissance," and the objective of promoting Africa's political, social, economic, and cultural development. It was launched in tandem with the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, which aims to train leaders capable of contributing to the foundation's objectives.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki has sometimes been characterised as remote and academic, although in his second campaign for the Presidency in 2004, many observers described him as finally relaxing into more traditional ways of campaigning, sometimes dancing at events and even kissing babies. Mbeki used his weekly column in the ANC newsletter "ANC Today", to produce discussions on a variety of topics. He sometimes used his column to deliver pointed invective against political opponents, and at other times used it as a kind of professor of political theory, educating ANC cadres on the intellectual justifications for African National Congress policy. Although these columns were remarkable for their dense prose, they often were used to influence news. Although Mbeki did not generally make a point of befriending or courting reporters, his columns and news events often yielded good results for his administration by ensuring that his message is a primary driving force of news coverage. Indeed, in initiating his columns, Mbeki stated his view that the bulk of South African media sources did not speak for or to the South African majority, and stated his intent to use "ANC Today" to speak directly to his constituents rather than through the media.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: Mbeki appears to have been at ease with the Internet and willing to quote from it. For instance, in a column discussing Hurricane Katrina, he cited Wikipedia, quoted at length a discussion of Katrina's lessons on American inequality from the Native American publication "Indian Country Today", and then included excerpts from a David Brooks column in "The New York Times" in a discussion of why the events of Katrina illustrated the necessity for global development and redistribution of wealth.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: His penchant for quoting diverse and sometimes obscure sources, both from the Internet and from a wide variety of books, made his column an interesting parallel to political blogs although the ANC does not describe it in these terms. His views on AIDS were supported by Internet searching which led him to so-called "AIDS denialist" websites; in this case, Mbeki's use of the Internet was roundly criticised and even ridiculed by opponents.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: There have been rumours and allegations, never proven or prosecuted and denied by Mbeki, that Mbeki was involved in or aware of corruption in the 1999 Arms Deal, a major defence procurement package negotiated while he was deputy president.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In 2004 President Thabo Mbeki made an attack on commentators who argued that violent crime was out of control in South Africa, calling them white racists who want the country to fail. He alleged that crime was falling and some journalists were distorting reality by depicting black people as "barbaric savages" who liked to rape and kill. Annual statistics published in September 2004 showed that most categories of crime were down, but some had challenged the figures' credibility and said that South Africa remained extremely dangerous, especially for women. In a column for the African National Congress website, the president rebuked the doubters. Mr Mbeki did not name journalist Charlene Smith who had championed victims of sexual violence since writing about her own rape, but quoted a recent article in which she said South Africa had the highest rate of rape and referred (apparently sarcastically) to her as an "internationally recognised expert on sexual violence". He said: "She was saying our cultures, traditions and religions as Africans inherently make every African man a potential rapist ... [a] view which defines the African people as barbaric savages." Mr Mbeki also described the newspaper "The Citizen", and other commentators who challenged the apparent fall in crime, as pessimists who did not trust black rule.


title: Thabo Mbeki

text: In January 2007, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) "draft" report on South Africa was released. This noted that South Africa had the world's second-highest murder rate, with about 50 people a day being killed, and that although serious crime was reported as falling, security analysts said that the use of violence in robberies, and rape, were more common. Mbeki in response said in an interview that fears of crime were exaggerated.