SA’s light of hope dims

by Editor · February 4, 2015

Twenty-five years ago, on February 11, 1990, tens of thousands of people crowded on Cape Town�s Grand Parade, and millions of people in South Africa and around the world sat in front of their television sets, to get the first public glimpse of Nelson Mandela following his release from 27 years in captivity.

“In 2015 the dream for a brighter future is dimming. ” (CNS photo/Thomas Mukoya, Reuters)

Even then it was clear that new doors in South Africa�s history were being opened. The following four years were mired in violence and uncertainty, but from the rubble of apartheid and the confusion of the transitional years arose a democratic society that looked into the future with optimism, with Mr Mandela as its president.

In his speech from the balcony of Cape Town�s city hall that hot Sunday 25 years ago, Mr Mandela summed up his mission in one phrase: �The need to unite the people of our country is as important a task now as it always has been.� A quarter of a century later, these words have lost none of their urgency.

The post-democracy honeymoon of relative unity, when South Africa projected to a fascinated world the miracle of a peaceful transition and the �Rainbow Nation�, was brief. By the time Mr Mandela went into retirement in 1999, South Africa was already becoming gripped by a racial, social and political discourse that has done little since to build the unity of which the Father of the Nation spoke.

The �New South Africa� promised that a racist, violent, undemocratic, corruptible, venal, vain and paranoid regime would be replaced by a government that was none of these things.

Alas, already under Mr Mandela�s presidency, and cumulatively more so after, the African National Congress has shown itself to be as corruptible, venal, vain and paranoid as the Nats of old. And even the ANC�s performance regarding race, violence and the spirit of democracy has not been without challenge.

White South Africans are not blameless in the greying of the rainbow. Collectively�though not always individually�white South Africans have failed to own up to the apartheid past which created the systemic inequality that persists even today.

There is an unwillingness among many whites to offer unqualified collective contrition for the past, and an expectation that forgiveness be extended without repentance. But as Pope Francis pointed out in Sri Lanka last month, national reconciliation is not possible without repentance and forgiveness.

Such contrition does not require whites to perpetually apologise or to wear metaphorical sackcloth, but an affirmation in humility that white privilege even today is predicated on the sins of the past.

The betrayal of Mr Mandela�s vision defines many of our present problems.

We see it in a country where those who fight corruption and mismanagement are not encourage by the government, but are systematically undermined, vilified, redeployed and treated as the enemy.

We see it in a country where foreign nationals, some from countries which aided the liberation movement in the struggle, are attacked, robbed, displaced and even killed by mobs.

We see it in a country where the impoverished masses remain at the margins, their children still deprived of quality education.

We see it in a country where the government invokes racism where none exists, and where racists still find a place in the white mainstream.

When Mr Mandela walked through the gates of Victor Verster prison 25 years ago, and when he stood on the steps of the Union Buildings to be sworn in as the first representative president of South Africa in May 1994, he faced a nation that was filled with hope for a brighter future.

In 2015 the dream for a brighter future is dimming.

So entrenched has governmental incompetence and corruptibility become, so� short have we fallen in alleviating mass poverty, so little progress has been made in realising national unity, so broken has our economy become, so much has our democracy been bruised, that instead of translating our aspirations into reality, we are prepared to just muddle through.

And in this way South Africa has ultimately failed the Mandela vision: by extinguishing the light of hope.