South Africa's Huveane

The other day, former South African President Nelson Mandela died.  What makes his passing so heartbreaking was the singular nature of his personality and his governance.  Others have led great movements.  Others have endured torture and imprisonment.  Others have led countries.  Others have inspired.  However, it is rare indeed for someone to have done all these things.  Destiny and history converged to provide Mr. Mandela a path towards a pedestal that few obtain and even fewer deserve.  Nelson Mandela was indeed a singular figure and therein lies his greatness.   

Mr. Mandela lived in a country that was filled with fearless activists; people who challenged the apartheid authorities and risked everything including Stephen Biko, Robert Sobukwe and Walter and Albertina Sisulu.  Like these people, Nelson Mandela found a home in the African National Congress (ANC) when he joined the organization in the mid-1940s.  He championed non-violent resistance against the dominating white government.  However, in the aftermath of the 1960 police massacre of black protestors in Sharpeville, Mr. Mandela abandoned his pacifist ways and joined a militant arm of the ANC.  It was this period of his life that defined his reputation for many of today’s eldest white South Africans – some who still refer to him as a terrorist.  In 1964, the South African government sentenced him to the prison on Robben Island.  By all accounts, it was imprisonment that helped define the man who would emerge from incarceration in 1990.  When he emerged, he was an activist with few equals having refused conditional release that would have limited his political activities.   

Upon his release, he immediately visited the ANC to help organize continued activities against the apartheid government.  The next year, he took over the presidency of the ANC and over the subsequent years, he worked with South Africa’s president F.W. de Klerk to dismantle the policy that had protected the minority white government unofficially since the late 1800s and officially since the 1950s.  In work that would be recognized by the Nobel Prize committee, the two men worked to create and conduct non-racial elections under a new constitution.  In 1994, he was elected president of South Africa.  In a stroke of political genius and political practicality, Mr. Mandela reached out to the segment of population that viewed him with the greatest mistrust.  He combined the faith of black South Africans with the grudging respect that whites had to create the first halting steps toward a color-blind democracy.  In every sense of the word, he was a transforming and transcending individual.   

However, what makes his passing so impactful for both whites and blacks in South Africa is that its leaders since have seldom lived up to the promise and power of Mr. Mandela.  His immediate successor, Thabo Mbeki, resigned amidst charges of manipulating the prosecution of a political rival.  His backward views on the causes of AIDS further diminished his and the country’s reputation within the global community.  While he did oversee economic growth and foreign affairs, his resignation was seen as a setback.  The presidency of Kgalema Motlanthe is largely seen as that of a caretaker until the rise of Jacob Zuma, the current South African president since 2009.  President Zuma has dodged corruption charges for the better part of the last decade.  Meanwhile, economic disparity, racial violence and uncertainty have plagued a nation desperately wanting a place among other developed countries. 

With the death of who many have called the “moral compass of South Africa,” the man known as Madiba looms large over the future country.  With his death, it will be impossible for future leaders to measure up to the myth and man that is Nelson Mandela.  However, it is possible that his death will make room for a new generation of leaders who could catapult South Africa into the 21^st century.  Yet, whatever success happens in the coming decades, should South Africa prosper and emerge from this period of uncertainty, it will be through the example left by the man who rotted in a prison cell for over a quarter of a century to emerge as a modern “founding father.”