Mandela, South Africa’s greate

Mandela, South Africa’s greatest leader, leaves a fragile legacy

Despite a deeply flawed presidency, Nelson Mandela’s charisma, inclusiveness and forgiveness make him global South Africans’ favourite international statesman. Pieter de Lange looks at his successes and failures.

Mandela, South Africa’s greate

Mandela chairHas there ever been a more dramatic U-turn in popular image than that of Nelson Mandela? For decades, while I was growing up, he was the ultimate terrorist, public enemy number one, then after his release he became ‘Die Liewe Oom President’. Was it his personal charm, our feelings of relief at finding him eminently likeable, or part of an ANC strategy to placate the white population? Frederick van Zyl Slabbert, who led the opposition during the PW Botha era, maintained that Mandela cast a spell of “charismatic bewilderment” over Afrikaners. Was it a deliberate strategy?

Brenda, who left South Africa in 2001 with a BA degree, and now resides in Douglas on the Isle of Man, remarked that Mandela had the “capacity to study the Afrikaner and use this knowledge to disarm them totally…”  This ties in with what former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein told me, “Mandela’s time in jail was not wasted, he started learning Afrikaans and he became quite close to some of his Afrikaans warders, but he also utilised this period to understand the mindset of the enemy.”

Whatever it was, it certainly worked, both inside South Africa as well as internationally. The overseas South Africans who took part in my recent survey voted him their favourite international statesman by a massive margin, 51.3% versus 17.3% for FW de Klerk. No one else got more than 5% in the leadership stakes.

Mel, a respondent in the survey, who is a creative director in Sydney, Australia, summed up the general South African view of Mandela when he stated, “He imbued forgiveness, tolerance, compassion and love for SA and its people.”

International big shots could not get enough of him; Breyten Breytenbach felt he was treated “like some exotic teddy bear to slobber over”.  AA Gill observed the celebrities around Mandela and wrote in the London Sunday Times, “They hug him and get speechlessly lumpy, because he inoculates us against the fears and prejudices about the Third World in general, but Africa in particular.”

There is no doubt that many South Africans both at home and in ‘die buiteland’ now yearn after the special Mandela years. But were they really so good?

Flawed Presidency

In spite of the feel-good factor, the Mandela presidency was seriously flawed on many levels, with some policy disasters having significant long term consequences. It certainly started off badly when the first major move by the newly elected liberators was to negotiate a huge, tainted, and not fit for purpose, armaments transaction. The ANC came to power pledging drastic cuts to the spending on defence and then ended up spending billions, not on new hospitals or schools but on arms, corvettes, submarines and aircraft. In his book The Arms Deal In Your Pocket, Paul Holden illustrates that the Arms Deal actually cost South Africa R43 billion up to 2008, whilst the Aids and STI strategic health programme only received R 8.7 billion during this same period. This amount, R29 billion in 1999, could have financed the construction of a power station large enough to supply Johannesburg’s electricity needs. Sadly all three submarines and most of the Gripen fighter aircraft are now out of action or mothballed for lack of money.

Talking about power stations, while the ANC government inherited the world’s seventh biggest power utility, the lethal combination of mismanagement, corruption and affirmative action seriously undermined Escom’s capacity to deliver cheap electricity and to crown it all, in 1998 Escom was banned from building any new power stations, and incredibly this ban lasted until 2004.

Mandela’s almost blind loyalty to old friends and colleagues led him to defend and sell arms to repressive regimes. Referring to Syria, Cuba and Libya, he proclaimed, “They are our friends and that is the moral code I respect above everything else.” This made a mockery of his pledge that “South Africa’s future foreign relations (should) be based on our belief that human rights should be the core of international relations.”

This same stubborn  loyalty prevented him from removing ministers like Joe Modise and Stella Sigcau, who were seen as incompetent and almost certainly corrupt, from office, as Feinstein noted in After the Party.

The tragic Shell House shootings during which 16 Zulu demonstrators were shot dead by ANC marksmen operating from the top of the ANC headquarters in 1994 was a particular low point for the maintenance of law and order, as well as for the president’s integrity and peacemaker image. Justice Robert Nugent found that there had been no justification at all for this massacre, that no warning had been given and that the guards had continued firing into the crowd even after they had started to run away. Mandela took responsibility by announcing that he had personally told the security personnel to “defend Shell House if attacked, even if you have to kill people”, Anthony Sampson revealed in Mandela, The Authorised Biography.

Mandela also refused the police permission to enter Shell House to gather evidence after this tragic event in spite of earlier promises to the contrary. The result was that no one was charged with this mass murder and the Truth and Reconciliation Committee first tried to blame Inkatha for the attack and then later lamely decided not to mount a full investigation into this incident. The total death toll on this sad day came to 53, mostly Zulus, which is more than at Boipatong, but did not evoke nearly the same international response, as Anthea Jeffery pointed out in People’s War.

Most people have forgotten about the ill prepared and humiliating intervention in Lesotho in 1998, by the South African army to support the government threatened by a coup. “But the bungled operation made South Africa look like a clumsy bully, and damaged Mandela’s image as a peacemaker,” according to Sampson, his biographer.

Mandela’s stature, charm and people skills are so apparent that most people are mesmerised by it; however viruses are sadly immune to it.  The reality is that while prolonged power games between the ANC and the SARB were taking place, HIV infections among South Africans were shooting up at a frightening rate. In 1992 the HIV infection rate of women attending antenatal clinics was 2.2%; by 1998 this had risen to 22.8%, and it reached an alarming 30% by 2005.

As for educating the youth of the New South Africa, things were not good. According to RW Johnson, author of South Africa: The First Man, The Last Nation,“The enforced retirement en masse of the country’s best schoolteachers was a blunder of historic proportions.” The imposition and abandonment of Outcomes Based Education was another blow to the education system, which was still reeling under the loss of the country’s finest teachers.

Generosity of Spirit

In spite of all these serious policy failures we know Nelson Mandela will go down in history as our greatest leader. Why? What is it that makes him so special? The first word that comes to mind is inclusiveness. Mandela did more than allay our fears about black leaders. He made us all feel as though we belonged. He is the only South African leader who has been able to overcome our deep tribal and racial differences to make us feel like one nation. His attitude of forgiveness and reconciliation appeals to many people’s core religious values.  He certainly went to great lengths to reach out to whites and Afrikaners in particular. This did not go down well with the trendy lefties of this world, who do not like to share heroes with ‘Bosveld Boere’. At a workshop on Southern African Migration at Loughborough University, one outspoken British lecturer told me he saw Mandela as a traitor.

Apart from all the political analyses, what was Mandela really like as a person?

The experience of someone who crossed swords with him gives a clue as to why he was so special. Eminent Pretoria advocate Mike Maritz had a serious run in with the then President when he was called as a witness during the South African Rugby Board versus Government court case. In our interview, Maritz admitted that it was quite a daunting prospect for him to cross-examine the formidable State President. Mandela, a qualified lawyer himself, certainly tried his best to unnerve him by saying things like, “I am getting irritated by Mr Maritz asking the questions in different forms, he assumes the president of this country has told lies.” And as usual with any Mandela event, the local and international media interest was huge, which only added to the pressure. But Maritz just concentrated on the legal aspects and proved a formidable opponent in court, with Louis Luyt winning the case.

A few months later there was a phone call from Mandela’s office and an invitation extended to Maritz and his staff to a function held to welcome the then French President Jacques Chirac. Maritz’s secretary first confirmed that the invitation was indeed meant for Maritz and not a mistake; she was worried that there might have been a mix-up with the lawyers representing the ANC and those opposing it. But the president’s spokesperson was adamant that Mandela would like Maritz and his team to attend. Mike was more than a bit surprised by this unexpected development, yet decided to attend. At the function Mandela approached and greeted him warmly and had a friendly chat with him. Mandela somehow knew that Maritz was a direct descendant of Voortrekker leader Manie Maritz and mentioned this when they spoke. Maritz told me that his abiding memory of Mandela is of the old man’s warmth and inclusive nature, which overcame any animosity that might still have lingered after their heated exchanges in court.

I tried to get an interview with Madiba’s long time secretary Zelda Le Grange about 18 months ago to get some more anecdotes from her, but was told she was not keen to speak to South Africans living overseas who might snipe from the sidelines. So much for Mandela’s example of inclusivity, I thought.

Fragile Legacy

Mandela was fiercely loyal to his ANC, but his vision of reconciliation was never bought by the ANC as such and is rarely seen in government circles today. As we have seen in the Maritz encounter, Mandela admired the Boer heroes of the Anglo Boer War, he also got on surprisingly well with PW Botha, because he understood where we come from, warts and all. Mandela intuitively knew that we are like a zebra; you cannot harm either the black or white without damaging the whole.

In contrast, the ANC government cannot get rid of Afrikaans or other colonial era place names quickly enough. Despite massive house-building programmes, the government’s poverty alleviation measures are not working and unemployment is dangerously close to 40%. Coloured voters have mostly gone over to the opposition DA. In my survey, 34% of overseas South Africans are not going back, 27% are definitely going back home, so this means that 39% are hoping and praying for things to improve.

Mandela’s was a unique era; the crime, grime and sleaze was also there but as president he rose above it, because he had a clear vision that addressed our main weakness. His legacy is still evident in the way citizens of different races work and play together on a daily basis. Will this be enough to heal our troubled country?

– (c) Pieter de Lange 2013