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JOHANNESBURG — At a time when the world seems sorely lacking in global statesmen — larger than life figures who manage to shape world events, transcend national borders and become universally admired — I always hark back to Nelson Mandela.
The South African anti-apartheid stalwart emerged from 27 years in prison eschewing bitterness and counseling a policy of reconciliation and racial unity. He used his moral suasion to build a “rainbow nation” in a country then teetering on the brink of an all-out civil war. He was elected South Africa’s first Black president in 1994 and served just one term — a rare example of humility on a continent where “Big Man” leaders are often loath to relinquish power.
But more than a decade after Mandela’s death in 2013, his legacy is undergoing something of a reassessment in his country. Less than the canonized figure he remains in the West, Mandela to many young South Africans is linked to today’s problems — searing poverty, widespread unemployment and a yawning racial economic gap. The ruling party he led, the African National Congress has lately become more identified with corruption and incompetent management than the liberation struggle.
Tourists still line up for selfies at the base of the 20-foot bronze statue of “Madiba” (his familiar clan name) overlooking Nelson Mandela Square, a plaza of high-end restaurants adjoining Sandton City, South Africa’s ritziest shopping mall.
Three miles and half a world away, in the teeming township of Alexandra, known as “Alex,” there’s little running water or electricity, and unemployed young men idle their days over bottles of warm beer. Here, views of South Africa’s first Black president are more mixed. Most South Africans were born after Mandela left office, and these “Born Frees” — the post-apartheid generation — have no living memory of the horrid system of racial segregation or the liberation movement that toppled it. Theirs is a daily reality of poverty, crime and despair.
“I only know what we were taught in school,” said a jobless young woman, who turns 27 this year. “Nelson Mandela is a hero, he fought for our freedom, he spent 27 years in jail. But what did he do for us exactly? He got power. He should have looked out for us.”
Her friend, 25, also unemployed, agreed. “They say he fought for our freedom. I don’t know what freedom, when you look around,” she said, surveying the squalor of the slum, the uncollected garbage and the row of port-a-potties used for toilets.
“The only thing that changed is freedom,” the older woman said. “Before, when they battled, they had hope. Now we are fighting a losing battle.”
It was a sentiment I heard again and again during a recent trip to South Africa, especially in Alex. The country is due for elections on May 29, and all indications are that the ANC might be about to lose its absolute majority for the first time since Mandela was elected 30 years ago.
If this happens, it will be because young voters like these see that the largely peaceful change of power that captivated the world three decades ago has not benefited them. Many have lost faith in the ANC — and in democracy itself.
“Our democracy is not doing anything so far,” one unemployed man, who is 29, told me.
“It’s the old apartheid system still intact,” said a 27-year-old man who was born in Alex and works in an outlet selling plastic containers. “We vote, but there’s no difference.”
“We have political freedom,” said Michael Ngobeni, who runs a small tavern and restaurant in Alex. “But we don’t have economic freedom. The White people are still here. They are the ones who have power, who have economic power.”
Like others I spoke with, Ngobeni said he was drawn to the far-left, militaristic Economic Freedom Fighters, a socialist-oriented party founded by a charismatic beret-wearing former ANC firebrand named Julius Malema, who was expelled from the ruling party. Malema has long been openly critical of Mandela, whom he accuses of making too many compromises and associating with “those White men who owned the South African economy at the time.”
“I don’t belong to a religion called Mandela,” Malema said.
The most common criticism, from Malema and others, is that Mandela cared too much about reconciliation, was more concerned with White fear than Black grievance. Apartheid’s inequities persist, in this view, because the negotiations to end the system left White economic power largely intact. A key early compromise protected private property, and rejected the kind of wholesale confiscation of White farmland that sent neighboring Zimbabwe spiraling into an economic collapse.
Another fault, in this view, was Mandela’s unwillingness or inability to address corruption and self-dealing within the ANC. The party’s “Black Economic Empowerment” program created a new class of wealthy Black elites — some of them billionaires — and virtually all connected to the ANC.
A more critical look at Mandala and his legacy is certainly justified, to balance the near-saintly image presented in the hagiographies. Something similar is happening in the United States, where, since the racial reckoning of 2020, the Founding Fathers and past presidents have been reassessed in a more critical and accurate light that shows their flaws as well as their achievements.
But providing a more accurate assessment does not mean their contributions should be diminished, their statues taken down or their names removed from schools or streets.
Mandela was the right person at the right time for South Africa. He singularly averted what could have been a bloody civil war. South Africa’s “truth and reconciliation” process, in which past perpetrators of injustice have received amnesty in exchange for full disclosure, has become a model for resolving conflicts around the world, from Rwanda to Colombia and even Canada, where it was used to investigate the past treatment of Indigenous children in residential schools.
Madiba was no saint. But he bequeathed his political heirs and successors a nation at peace, relatively prosperous and with promise. One up-and-coming political newcomer, Songezo Zibi, leader of a new party called Rise Mzansi, put it to me this way; “Mandela is the standard. He is the base. He is the starting point.” He added, “We just failed.”
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