Mandela’s incomplete mission

S P SETH

So much has been written about Nelson Mandela that he has increasingly come to be cast as a saint. He probably would have cringed at the kind of accolades bestowed on him by so many people. It is not that he didn’t deserve much of the praise heaped on his life and achievements against heavy, if not impossible, odds. His 27 years’ long incarceration under most difficult conditions for a cause he strongly believed in and championed unceasingly is testimony to one man’s odyssey to achieve, what to most, appeared a hopeless task. And that task was to rid South Africa of apartheid where a very small minority of whites ruled over the country’s majority black population. It wasn’t even as simple as that. In the process, a system of governance based on an ideology of separate development for the two races was intellectually and morally advanced and justified as if it was the most normal thing to do.

Not only that. It was also considered necessary to make blacks believe in the system that condemned them to systemic abuse and violence by consigning them to the so-called separate homelands--Bantustans. Nelson Mandela and his movement challenged the theory and practice of dividing people into superior and inferior races and finally, after many unequal battles, long periods of incarceration and unbelievable state violence, succeeded in achieving their main goal of a new South Africa based on one person, one vote. And thus was born a new South Africa, with Mandela as its first black President in 1994. By any standard it was a revolutionary development brought about without violence at the end, though it was preceded by a lot of state violence inflicted on the blacks and their movement, the African National Congress (ANC), for daring to oppose and fight back the country’s apartheid system.

The release from jail of Nelson Mandela in 1990 was the first clear sign that the white regime was finding governance, based on apartheid, increasingly problematic. And there were important reasons for this. First, the resistance from the ANC and its leadership was creating a crisis of governance and the old methodology of mindless and ruthless violence was proving counterproductive. Even some of the white liberals were becoming supportive of the disbandment of the apartheid system. The second factor was that the white business establishment was increasingly finding it hard to conduct their business as state violence, even at its vicious, wasn’t producing a sufficiently submissive work force. The black trade union movement was growing active and strong, and both the state and the business establishment were finding that the state of affairs in the country was not as conducive to business as usual. Third: the developed world, which provided much of the capital and markets for South African exports, was finally persuaded to impose economic sanctions on such an abhorrent regime. This wasn’t so simple.

Apparently, before Mandela’s release in 1990 and his becoming President in 1994, there were extensive consultations between the white president F. W. de Klerk’s regime and Mandela about the status of the country’s white minority. And their worries were two-fold. First, they worried about retribution from a black majority-governed South Africa. That was addressed in the new constitution. And the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to broadly go through a process of airing and forgiving the bitterness of the past. Second, the whites wanted to maintain control of the economy, which they have continued to do largely. It had the added advantage of assuring investors at home and abroad about a benevolent business climate with the new black majority regime committed to facilitate.

In other words, the transition to black majority rule was more political than economic. As Bernadette Atuahene wrote in a 2011 issue of Foreign Affairs, “Political apartheid may have ended, but economic apartheid lives on.” The question then is: why didn’t Mandela insist on a more equitable economic deal for the country’s black majority? One can only surmise why Mandela put more emphasis on political over the economic? First: the tantalizing prospect of democratic rule, based on one person, one vote, after a long and bloody struggle, was quite enticing. The alternative of holding out for a redistribute and restructured economic blueprint to help blacks out of poverty and destitution had the potential, on surface at least, of a possible descent into civil war. Mandela and the ANC were not willing to take that risk.

Second, over a long struggle and 27-year incarceration, Mandela apparently went through a process of introspection which led him to genuinely opt for national reconciliation based on a broad church  (rainbow coalition) that looked more to the future than past. And he probably hoped that out of this might emerge a pact of sorts aimed at helping the weak and poor blacks with the genuine participation of the country’s rich and privileged white citizens. And if this was Mandela’s hope, it hasn’t materialized. The country’s prosperous and privileged whites are in no mood to share their wealth and opportunities. Indeed, they seem to have coopted the country’s black governing class to maintain and perpetuate economic apartheid and inequities of the old system, and in the process helping themselves to new riches and and privileges from this new nexus between politics and economics of the country. The most glaring example of this was the brutal shooting recently of striking mining workers, reminiscent of the indiscriminate use of state violence against helpless blacks. And the popular disenchantment with the ANC-led government was very much in evidence when the country’s President, Jacob Zuma, was booed by his own people when he sought to speak at the memorial gathering.

While Mandela was a towering figure with moral principles to match, he has left behind him a clutch of unprincipled and corrupt politicians trying to live off his legacy. But that won’t work unless they deliver on improving people’s lives. In a country where unemployment is over 25 per cent, youth unemployment at 50 per cent, corruption rampant and crime is on the upswing, there is not much scope for dillydallying with people’s lives. Otherwise, South Africa might go Zimbabwe’s way with an emerging Robert Mugabe-like figure raising popular passions for political reasons without helping the blacks and destroying South Africa’s economy in the process. There is a lesson in this for South Africa’s economically dominant white minority. Which is that they should devise ways with the government to help the country’s poor reap the benefits of Mandela’s long and arduous struggle for his people.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au