After Mandela

"The 1980s and up until the elections in 1994 was in a sense the heroic age, and one that will probably resound through South African history. Quite a lot of books have been written about that period. Fewer books have been written about the post-apartheid period. It’s a period that is much more morally complex. Before, it was literally black and white. It was humanity’s great parable – nobody had any doubt about who was good and who was evil and who we should all be supporting. Now everything has become murkier and more complex, but at the same time no less fascinating. As Alec Russell writes from the very beginning, Mandela was always going to be a hell of an act to follow. And, regrettably, the person who took over from Mandela as president [in 1999], Thabo Mbeki, failed pretty abysmally. He was not Mandela’s first choice, which in turn imbued Mbeki with a certain measure of resentment towards Mandela. Mbeki was, in many ways, the polar opposite of Mandela. Mandela is a big, generous man, confident of his authority, at one with himself, comfortable in his own skin. Mbeki is the opposite of all that. Quite a lot of the divisions he fostered in society once he became president were very much a response to that anti-Mandela personality of Mbeki. Alec Russell describes that post-Mandela period of disillusionment with rich anecdote, with very intelligent and consistently measured analysis. Russell writes in a very readable, easy style. He’s the opposite of pretentious. He’s lucid and he really gives you a sense of the post-Mandela period under Mbeki before moving on to his successor Jacob Zuma, and how corruption has crept in, and the worry that the ANC will forget its moral roots. The concern is that they are going to become a party that just wants to stay in power for power’s sake. And that has actually been my own concern pretty much from the time they came to power. But, in terms of drawing an analogy with Zanu-PF, Alec Russell says in the book pretty much what I think: That to make an analogy between South Africa and Zimbabwe is both simplistic and insulting. There is an enormous difference between Zimbabwe and South Africa as societies and as political bodies. Certainly, at this stage, to imagine and to say that South Africa is going to go the way of Zimbabwe is way off the mark. Who knows what could be the case in 50 years’ time, but the fact is that today South Africa is a country with powerful institutions, a very powerful judiciary and a fundamental respect for the rule of law. There is also a very outspoken free press and there are powerful trade unions. Civil society is strong and carries with it a very fresh and vivid memory of what it was that the ANC fought for. I think one of the more encouraging things that Alec Russell describes in the book is the ANC meeting at which Thabo Mbeki was ousted. And as Russell describes it, a very large part of the impetus behind the move to oust him was that South Africa shouldn’t become like Zimbabwe. “No Zimbabwe here” was one of the slogans in the hall. They did not want a repetition of what had happened in Zimbabwe, of one leader entrenching himself in power for ever. That democratic impulse remains strong in South Africa. I certainly think that. As I said before, South Africa is not in the news. It’s not a country where you are seeing the slightest glimmer of a notion of political conflict, of civil war. And having lived in South Africa in the early 1990s, having seen what the potential there was for an appalling bloodbath, I never cease to be amazed that South Africa today remains a solid and stable democracy."