{"id":163195,"date":"2020-07-17T10:48:46","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T08:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2020-07-17T10:48:46","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T08:48:46","slug":"mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandela was a flawed icon. But without him South Africa would be a sadder place | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mandela was a flawed icon. But without him South Africa would be a sadder place<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Nelson Mandela, South Africa's freedom struggle icon and first black president, continues to be revered around the world. <\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was one of the thousands who watched Nelson Mandela, the South African liberation struggle hero, leave prison on 11 February 1990, and then mount the podium in front of Cape Town\u2019s City Hall, expressing the hope that the apartheid government would agree to negotiations so that there might no longer be the need for armed struggle against apartheid to continue. He said: <\/p>\n

\n

Today, the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognise that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our decisive mass action \u2026 We have waited too long for our freedom.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He appealed to white South Africans to <\/p>\n

\n

join us in the safety of a new South Africa. The freedom movement is a political home for you, too.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I was thrilled but also, underneath that, felt concern about the forces against him. I worried about the violence the apartheid military and its proxies would unleash.<\/p>\n

I fretted about what I\u2019d seen during my decade of membership of the African National Congress (ANC), the leading liberation movement for which he was jailed: the seeping corruption, elbowing for position, the exile old guard\u2019s insistence on primacy. And, as he left prison hand in hand with his wife, Winnie, I feared the influence of a woman who\u2019d already been convicted of kidnapping, and accused of so much more.<\/p>\n

As I will show, these concerns were borne out. But, three decades on since his release, it still feels that without Mandela South Africa would be a sadder place. <\/p>\n

The \u201cGreat Man\u201d take on the past so often misses the undercurrents that keep greatness afloat, and yet there are few moments in recent world history where one person made quite such a difference.<\/p>\n

Mandela\u2019s extraordinary gifts \u2013 his integrity and self-discipline, intelligence and intellectual curiosity, depth of perception, strategic vision and tactical nous, and his steely resolve \u2013 set him apart. Towards the end of his 27 years in prison, that meant leading in a direction that felt uncomfortable to some, through conducting secret talks with the government.<\/p>\n

Compromise and bargain<\/h2>\n

Throughout this period he kept Oliver Tambo\u2019s exile leadership of the ANC informed. But there were misgivings about his role. Mandela later went out of his way to allay these fears.<\/p>\n

The example I recall most vividly (because I had to rush around closing secret offices and bank accounts) came six months after his release when the leadership of \u201cOperation Vula\u201d (the ANC and South African Communist Party\u2019s underground network) were rounded up.<\/p>\n

FW De Klerk, the last apartheid president, used the arrests to demand that the Communist Party leader Joe Slovo be dropped from the ANC\u2019s negotiating team. But Mandela, who\u2019d once been a party member, dug in. De Klerk backed down, and eventually indemnified the group.<\/p>\n

The four years of negotiations saw more people killed in political violence \u2013 mostly from the state and its proxies, with an estimated 14,000 people dying. Mandela could not prevent this mayhem, but his authority and gravitas kept the negotiations to end apartheid afloat. Authority and momentum seeped from De Klerk into Mandela.<\/p>\n

\n

Read more: How Mandela stayed fit: from his ‘matchbox’ Soweto home to a prison cell <\/strong> <\/em> <\/p>\n

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Still, he and his team had to make compromises. One was that the apartheid military were mollycoddled because of the danger they presented. Another was that the ANC had to allow Inkatha, the Zulu-nationalist party led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, control of KwaZulu-Natal.<\/p>\n

In the end, Mandela\u2019s team got more than many expected \u2013 a one-person, one-vote election and a progressive constitution with no entrenched rights for racial minorities. Without Mandela none of this would have been certain, or even likely.<\/p>\n

Mandela\u2019s presidency<\/h2>\n

Mandela\u2019s five years as president were more ambiguous. He helped keep the peace through gestures like appointing De Klerk and Buthelezi to his cabinet, wearing Springbok colours in presenting the rugby World Cup trophy to the victorious South African side in 1995 and securing the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.<\/p>\n

There were real changes, including houses for the poor and water supplies for three million, with two million connected to the electricity grid. But job-creation programmes were abandoned and the gap between rich and poor remained even if the ranks of the rich became more racially mixed \u2013 and crime rates remained disturbingly high. <\/p>\n

It is sometimes said that the corruption that engulfed the country started during Thabo Mbeki\u2019s presidency (June 1999 to September 2008) and became endemic under Jacob Zuma (May 2009 to February 2018). But the seeds were sown earlier, and Mandela did little to curb its growth within the ANC while leader.<\/p>\n

He also neglected the HIV\/AIDS pandemic while president. When I discussed this with Edwin Cameron, the Constitutional Court judge and HIV\/AIDS activist, in an interview published in South Africa\u2019s Sunday Independent<\/em> in 2001, he shook his head sadly. <\/p>\n

\n

Of all the leaders of the 20th century who might have had an impact, Mandela was the one who could have done the most \u2013 without doubt this was one of the grievous omissions of his presidency\u2026 He did 199 things that contributed to our nation\u2019s salvation but the one thing he didn\u2019t do as president was take a lead on AIDS \u2013 and it\u2019s not because he wasn\u2019t begged to. We tried in every single way, but he didn\u2019t take it up and it was a tragedy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mandela\u2019s talent for reading the political runes was not always matched by his ability to read people. Internal political leaders who\u2019d publicly criticised Winnie were sidelined but his patrician\u2019s hope that he could have a benign influence on her evaporated. They separated in 1992 and divorced in 1995.<\/p>\n

Secure legacy<\/h2>\n

Mandela\u2019s tendency to defer to the exile leadership came at a cost. He appointed several dud former exiles to his cabinet, including the dozy Alfred Nzo as foreign affairs minister and the corrupt Joe Modise as defence minister.<\/p>\n

He also conceded to pressure from exile leaders to appoint Mbeki rather than Cyril Ramaphosa as deputy president, despite having earlier swapped them as negotiations head, regarding Mbeki as thin-skinned and inflexible, according to his official biographer, Anthony Sampson. Yet Mandela increasingly delegated power to his dauphin, who displayed the paranoia and obduracy he\u2019d feared.<\/p>\n

Mandela left at the right time in 1999, when the country still seemed in a healthy state, after which he consolidated his international reputation, while throwing himself into the HIV\/AIDS campaign on learning that his son, Makgatho, was HIV-positive. He described it as a war that had killed more than \u201call previous wars\u201d.<\/p>\n

This 18th of July marks what would have been his 102nd birthday. His legacy is secure, the rough edges smoothed \u2013 a figure of reconciliation more than a guerrilla leader, a statesman, not a former communist, an icon solidified in sculptor\u2019s stone rather than a magnificent, flawed and complex human being.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

Gavin Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong> The Conversation \u2013 Articles (AFRICA)<\/a><\/small>
\n<\/p>\n

Read more on The Conversation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Join the fun:<\/strong> Add Your event<\/a> | Submit a Press Release<\/a> | Add your listing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mandela was a flawed icon. But without him South Africa would be a sadder place: Nelson Mandela, South Africa's freedom struggle icon and first black president, continues to be revered around the world. I was one of the thousands who watched Nelson Mandela, the South African liberation struggle hero, leave prison on 11 February 1990, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[428,8890,10824,14668,3043,4329,38440,3576,6092,5494],"class_list":{"0":"post-163195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-africa-news-2","7":"tag-africa","8":"tag-conversation","9":"tag-flawed","10":"tag-icon","11":"tag-mandela","12":"tag-place","13":"tag-sadder","14":"tag-south","15":"tag-without","16":"tag-would","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}