The Mandela Cult

A recent opinion piece in the secular press by a young writer took issue with the Mandelification of the struggle. In her Sunday Independent article, Mailaka wa Azania points to a deliberate process of socialisation spanning decades that constructed a personality cult around Nelson Mandela which ignores the contribution of others individuals, movements and the unnamed masses to the struggle against apartheid.

They rightly reject the notion that the African National Congress (ANC) was the only significant agent of liberation, and object to the primacy given to Mr Mandela as the liberator of the oppressed.

There is a hazard, however, in a revisionism that could serve to diminish the crucial role which Mr Mandela played in the struggle and in the transition to democracy.

In jail, he was an important symbol of apartheid repression; as a free man his example shaped the future of South Africa. Before he sported his casual range of shirts and became the loveable grandfather of the world, Mr Mandela was a formidable and thoroughly principled politician whose pragmatism was rooted in true courage, not deceitful expedience.

It was this integrity, and that of other struggle icons, which created the conditions for South Africa’s relatively peaceful transition.

Much as one may object to the hagiographies, the commercialisation and the mythologising of Madiba, and much as one might interrogate whether the reconciliation project has failed, Mr Mandela cannot be regarded as anything else but the Father of the Nation.

But as the figurehead Father of the Nation, Mr Mandela is also an open canvas upon whom people project their own perspectives.

He shares this with the other figureheads in history: the likes of Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr, on whom we project notions of decency and goodness; or the likes of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, who epitomise evil. Of course, none of these men acted in isolation.

Unlike Gandhi and King (or, indeed, Hitler), Mr Mandela enjoyed a long retirement during which the Madiba brand was built, with the incessant audiences for international celebrities and the industrial-strength charities that carry his name.

The longer Mr Mandela lived, the more he became loved. This love finds enthusiastic expression even after his death, as the annual 67 Minutes for Mandela days demonstrate.

As past elections have shown, the ANC continues to profit from the Mandela cult, the liberator.

During the struggle in the 1980s, the ANC capitalised on Mr Mandela’s incarceration, no doubt more helped than hindered by the apartheid regime’s banning of the man. Free Nelson Mandela was the succinct rallying cry, with the name of Mandela representative of the oppressed.

This, alongside the 1983 founding of the charterist United Democratic Front, gave the ANC a pre-eminence in the struggle which it had lacked after its banning in 1960. Indeed, the pivotal Soweto uprising of 1976 was spearheaded by the Black Consciousness Movement, not the ANC.

The ANC has appropriated the liberation from apartheid solely for itself, with Nelson Mandela as the figurehead. One may rightly take exception to that.

But if the ANC wants to be seen as the party of Mandela and liberation, then it must be measured by the model of integrity provided by Mandela, and by the objectives of the liberation struggle. At present, the governing party is failing on both counts.

Instead, the present government, which in practice is inseparable from the ANC’s leadership, is dogged by a ceaseless stream of charges of corruption, aggressive cronyism, careless incompetence and a resistance to engage accountable and transparent leadership. It is self-evident that President Jacob Zuma is no Nelson Mandela.

The liberation struggle sought a post-apartheid society where race would be of secondary importance, and where a democratic government would serve all South Africans, including and especially the poor, with integrity and aptitude. We have not succeeded.

The necessary question, therefore, is not whether Mr Mandela’s status as a liberator is being exaggerated, but how South Africa can be truly liberated.