Recent television pictures of a frail, listless-looking Nelson Mandela accompanying news reports of a bout of illness which took him into hospital briefly serve as a poignant reminder of the mortality of South Africa’s iconic first black President.
Mr Mandela’s larger than life image is linked to a lesser degree to his five-year term as President of South Africa and to a considerably greater extent to his twenty-eight years in prison as a symbol of hope for an end to apartheid rule in South Africa. That is why his iconic image has persisted way beyond his presidential term and even in his condition of physical frailty he remains a powerful symbol, as much for the world as for his country. It is because of the power of what he symbolizes that the state of Mr Mandela’s health will continue to be a matter of interest to South Africans and to the world at large. Even the most inconsequential health episodes, however, will shift attention to the issue of a post-Mandela South Africa.
Much has changed in South Africa in the post-apartheid period. While its role as the best-known contemporary outpost of struggle against race-based minority rule remains a fact of history, it is generally accepted that the country is changing and that the ANC’s entrenchment as South Africa’s political colossus is becoming more pronounced. For all that Mr Mandela continues to embody the virtues of the ANC, with his image as the imprisoned leader of the struggle for an end to white minority rule persisting as the most poignant symbol of both the power and the legitimacy of the ruling party.
The reality is, however, that South Africa has moved on and so has the ANC, though there are those who argue that movement has not always been in the desired direction. The post-apartheid era has seen the ANC suffer huge dents in its once much-vaunted image. From inside South Africa have come reports of hefty pockets of official corruption involving members of the ANC’s elite, including serving President Jacob Zuma. Relatives of both Mr Mandela and President Zuma have been named as beneficiaries of business opportunities reportedly arising out of nepotistic political practices.
Beyond corruption, the ANC under Zuma is accused of mismanaging the country’s economy, failing to rein in escalating crime and not doing nearly enough to change the fortunes of millions of South Africans whose economic circumstances today are no different from those which they endured under apartheid.
If there is no immediate concern that the ANC might find itself in danger of losing power, the perceived drift under Mr Zuma’s presidency recently prompted a surprisingly open expression of concern and criticism from his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, over what Mr Mbeki says is the likelihood that South Africa might be “losing its sense of direction” and progressing “towards a costly disaster of a protracted and endemic general crisis.
“I for one am not certain about where our country and nation will be tomorrow and what I should do in this regard to respond to what is obviously a dangerous and unacceptable situation of directionless and unguided national drift,” Mr Mbeke was reported as saying. It is difficult to see this as anything less than a forthright condemnation of the Zuma administration.
Such credibility as the ANC retains both inside and outside South Africa – even in the condition of drift and corruption-related scandals in which the political administration finds itself – is due almost entirely to Nelson Mandela. The problem is that Mr Mandela is now too feeble to continue to serve anywhere near as effectively as he did in the past as the ANC’s moral compass. South Africans, understandably, remind themselves each time that there is less than good news about the state of his health, that at 94 Mr Mandela will not be around forever. It is, many believe, the sheer physical presence of Mr Mandela that not only places restraints on the worst excesses of cliques inside the ruling South African elite but also forestalls political upheaval inside South Africa that could see the ANC face challenges from within its own presumed power base.
In the years since the ANC secured political power in South Africa it has undergone a radical transformation from an organisation shaped to wage a liberation struggle to the country’s ‘paramount party.’ Its support within the country’s now considerable black and coloured middle class has to do with neither ideology nor a freedom struggle, but with what the country’s most influential political institution can deliver in government. Indeed, there are those who contend that what now passes for Mr Mandela’s ANC is a mere chimera. South Africa could arrive at its next major political junction once it has to wake up to life without Mandiba.
