ll of a sudden, South Africa was cool: university delegations stumbled over each other in a rush to re-establish former academic ties or forge new ones. Droves of students wanted to visit the country for fieldwork or internships and wrote glowing dissertations about the miracle being accomplished on Africa’s southernmost tip: reconciliation in a nation that until recently teetered on the brink of racial war. Democracy and equal rights were introduced after a century of colour bars and denied rights.
The miracle was not the work of one man; nonetheless, the amazing appeal of South Africa is largely due to one person, Nelson Mandela, who died last week, at home in Johannesburg, aged 95.
From the moment, on 11 February 1990, when Nelson Mandela, after spending 27 years in gaol, walked through the prison gates to freedom with his fist held high, South Africa was no longer “the world’s skunk”– as he called it in his inaugural address as President in 1994 – but its favourite pet. Long years of isolation, sanctions and boycotts came to an abrupt end.
Mandela had demanded that he should be in control of his release: he left when he chose. On his arrival on Robben Island more than a quarter of century earlier, he had also refused to conform to his guards’ script: they were waiting for the newly arrived prisoners with dogs and clubs and ordered the prisoners to move at a jog trot. Mandela made sure he was walking in front and as a result, the little group, their heads held high, marched through the prison gates at a normal walking pace.
Staying in control was the main theme of his life. He could be charming and persuasive when he wanted, stubborn and tenacious when he deemed it necessary. He used his remarkable charisma initially to help his fellow prisoners and later for the good of his country. He accepted countless invitations from places in South Africa and the rest of the world, but always discreetly tried to get something in return, not for himself but to combat Aids or to boost the chances of South Africa’s children.
In the university race for a strategic position in the South Africa, Leiden University won the star prize: 12 March 1999 saw Rector Magnificus Willem Albert Wagenaar present the eighty-year old freedom fighter with an honorary doctorate in the Pieterskerk.
Mandela, on a state visit to the Netherlands, had made sure, in his engaging way, that he got something in return: the university announced the founding of the Mandela Scholarship Fund, a scholarship scheme for South-African students who want to do part of their course in Leiden. In the past, Leiden University had been careful to keep its distance from the struggle for freedom in South Africa, but now both parties were happily united under Mandela’s motto: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.
The miracle of the rainbow nation – as Archbishop Desmond Tutu called the new South Africa – appealed to many. South Africa served as a model for Africa, even as an example for the world. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Tutu, attempted to defuse the past by rewarding the disclosure of crimes committed in the past by dropping charges. The criminals were not required to express their regret and the victims could have their say and found a sympathetic ear. But for many, this did not give them the satisfaction they required after all the injustice that they had suffered, partly because the financial redress was rather meagre.
Nonetheless, the Commission remained a popular subject for dissertations among Dutch students who regarded it as a prime example of reconciliation. In South Africa, however, it was often said the Commission discovered much truth but brought about little reconciliation. The chairman of the Commission, Tutu, regarded reconciliation as a moral command, but President Mandela viewed it more as a political necessity.
Black South-Africans did not really want reconciliation either: surely they had not made their great sacrifices during the long struggle against apartheid just to patch things up with the white population? Their hopes were fixed on a fairer, more equal society, on “a better life for all”, as the African National Congress promised.
Nelson Mandela, the Champion of Reconciliation, is an image held dear particularly in the West and among white South-Africans: a man who, after 27 years of prison, did not show any resentment, bitterness or rancour; a leader who put aside all his personal sentiments for the good of his country and his people. But the euphoric moments of shared rainbow pride were few and far between and despite Mandela’s tireless attempts to build bridges, South Africa remains deeply severed along the old racial dividing lines.
Black South Africans regard Mandela as a larger-than-life hero, but they admire him more as the leader of the armed struggle, the man who challenged the apartheid regime, who was not broken by years of imprisonment and who would respond sharply if he suspected any double-crossing in the negotiations on the transition to a democratic majority administration.
Nelson Mandela remains a paradox. His irresistible charm concealed a core of indomitability and his smooth manners concealed iron discipline, the product of an education at Methodist boarding schools and 27 years of incarceration. He was a quintessential, British-style gentleman without ever denying his African roots.
Mandela would often quote his favourite lines of poetry to which he had clung during those hopeless years on Robben Island: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”. In the scarce moments he lost control, he would seem completely lost: when asked in Court to explain why he had applied to divorce Winnie, he was suddenly a lonely old man. He found a new partner in Graça Machel, a strong woman with a turbulent past as the widow of Mozambican freedom fighter and President Samara Machel.
Nelson Mandela was, consecutively, the inquisitive boy at the court of his guardian in Tembuland, the passionate lawyer, the dandy stealing the limelight in the nineteen-fifties night-life of Johannesburg, the political leader who led campaigns of civil disobedience, the captain of the armed underground resistance, the world’s most famous political prisoner, the nation’s first democratically elected President, the man with whom everyone wanted to be seen: the black and the white population of South Africa and world leaders, from Clinton to Castro.
White South-Africans would ask for an autographed picture as a gift for their grandmothers – grandmothers who had grown up in an era in which Mandela’s name was linked to the threat of terrorism and communism, an era in which the possession of his portrait and quoting from his publications or speeches were criminal offences.
In 1999, after his first term as President, he withdrew to dedicate himself to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, to promoting South Africa internationally and to combating Aids.
His activism resulted in clashes with his successor, Thabo Mbeki, whose politics of denial signed the death warrants of countless sufferers.
This was one of the few times that Mandela – a loyal and senior member of the ANC, a loyalty that made him wont, all to often, to shield incompetent or corrupt comrades – openly opposed government policy. But the ANC proved incapable of maintaining Mandela’s high standards of integrity and was crippled by bickering factions and tainted by corruption scandals.
Mandela’s many images will continue to flourish after his death, inspiring new generations. But if everyone can foster his or her personal Mandela legend as he or she sees fit, we also run the risk of opportunism and commercialization. The Great Director can’t control the use or abuse of the Mandela brand, which is said to be second only to Coca-Cola in global recognition.
Ineke van Kessel is a researcher at the Africa Studies Centre Leiden