\n \t\t\t \t\t\t
![\"mandela](\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/plugins\/rss-poster\/cache\/ff5cf_1908840295.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n \t
\n \t\t\t \t\t\t <\/p>\n
INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS<\/p>\n
Former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk are flanked by the members of South Africas first democratic cabinet.<\/p>\n
\n
\t\t \t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t \t\t <\/p>\n
Johannesburg – Nelson Mandela\u2019s current relapse, as we know, has attracted a tremendous amount of local and foreign media interest and has prompted much \u2013 let us hope very premature \u2013 reflection about his legacy. <\/p>\n
For instance, Trudy Rubin wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer: \u201cI can\u2019t help thinking how different the world would be if the former South African leader could have been cloned. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo many times, in countries plagued by sectarian conflicts and bloodshed, I\u2019ve heard people say: \u2018If only we had a Mandela.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cMandela\u2019s genius was his ability to forgive former enemies, along with a charisma that persuaded his black countrymen to do likewise \u2013 and convinced his white countrymen that he meant what he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSuch generosity of spirit is so rarely found among leaders of other troubled nations \u2013 think Syria or Iraq \u2013 as to be almost unique to Mandela.\u201d <\/p>\n
Rubin is right, of course. Check the website of the Yemen Post, for instance, where editor Hakim Almasmari expresses heartfelt regret that \u201cone year into (Abdo) Hadi\u2019s presidency, Yemen is still searching for its Nelson Mandela\u201d. <\/p>\n
However, it\u2019s also true that Mandela is perhaps more revered by such foreigners and \u2013 for obvious reasons \u2013 white South Africans than by many black South Africans including his own ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, evidently. <\/p>\n
Remember the story written by the journalist Nadira Naipaul in 2010 after she and her husband, the novelist VS Naipaul, met Madikizela-Mandela. <\/p>\n
She reported Madikizela-Mandela saying \u201cthe name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family,\u201d and lamenting that \u201cMandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside\u201d. Etc. <\/p>\n
Like many black people, Mandela\u2019s ex-wife presumably thinks that he was soft in the head, that reconciliation and forgiveness were just sentimental fancies. <\/p>\n
But as Rubin discovered when she interviewed Mandela in 2000, he was driven not by sainthood but rational strategy. Faced with \u201cthe confrontation between our emotions and our brains\u201d, he chose the path suggested by the brain, a transfer of power without bloodshed \u2013 and, Mandela has suggested elsewhere, without a flight of white capital and skills which would have set South Africa back decades. <\/p>\n
This week some Bahraini opposition politicians were in South Africa, searching, like many others before them, for ideas and inspiration from South Africans who had been involved in the transition here, to help them with their own stuck transition, their false Arab Spring. In Bahrain a minority Sunni monarchy rules over a majority Shia population and doesn\u2019t want to let go. <\/p>\n
Someone suggested to the visiting Bahrainis that it might help if they \u2013 like Mandela \u2013 provided more assurances of protection to the Sunni minority to convince them that democracy would not be a catastrophe. They replied that protecting minorities would play into the hands of their government which is in any case playing off the Sunnis against the Shias in a divide-and-rule strategy to help itself stay in power. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are offering full protection of all individual rights and freedoms. Why shouldn\u2019t that be enough?\u201d one of them asked. That was a useful reminder that Mandela also refused to give in to the demands of the old National Party for any sort of built-in veto right for the white \u2013 or indeed any other \u2013 minority. <\/p>\n
Yet Mandela still managed to reassure whites, essentially by the great force of his personality, within the ANC and without, and by powerful symbolic gestures \u2013 like donning the No 6 green jersey at the World Cup final in 1995, inviting his jailers to his inauguration and having tea with Betsy Verwoerd. <\/p>\n
But he conceded nothing of democracy, his detractors today should be reminded. <\/p>\n
Could he have done more for black South Africans, as his ex-wife evidently believes? Should he have seized white farms and businesses, like Robert Mugabe? Perhaps. But then he would have had a war on his hands because whites, remember, still controlled all of the security agencies. Not even Mugabe tried that, at the point of transition. <\/p>\n
* Peter Fabricius is Foreign Editor for Independent Newspapers. <\/p>\n
The Mercury<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS Former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk are flanked by the members of South Africas first democratic cabinet. Johannesburg – Nelson Mandela\u2019s current relapse, as we know, has attracted a tremendous amount of local and foreign media interest and has prompted much \u2013 let us hope very premature \u2013 reflection about his […]<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-20421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"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\/20421","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=20421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}