South Africa: Life After Mandela

Though he had gone into political retirement in 2004 due to ill health, Nelson Mandela continued to remain the benevolent patriarch in South Africa. His successors were too tiny to step into his shoes and clung on to his legacy. So when the end finally came, after a long drawn battle with illness, it evoked spontaneous mourning and anxiety about South Africa's future.

It evoked tributes and half-mast flags around the world, even in countries like Britain and US which had in the 1980s described him as 'black terrorist' and some UK Tory MPs even wanted him shot. The former rulers of these countries Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan steadfastly opposed imposing economic sanctions against the then apartheid regime in South Africa. They argued it would only hurt poor South Africans. Though Mandela has never been known to hold a grudge, but he made an exception during his trip to Britain in 1990. He refused to meet the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, much to the indignation of Tories.

Though Mandela was seen as a cementing influence in South African society and has often been credited with peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy, but the fissures within the society still run deep. Not much has changed regarding the economic plight of blacks after apartheid was scrapped. South Africa continues to remain a very unequal society, even twenty years after the abolition of that hideous system, with blacks still languishing in the pits of pecking order.

The only saving grace is that unlike the past blacks are now free to go anywhere in the country, as no place is out of bounds for them and they needn't fear police witch-hunt. Even that idyll got dented at Marikana in August 2012, when policemen shot dead 30 striking miners, evoking memories of infamous Sharpeville (1960) and Soweto (1976) massacres. What was even more damning was that this time the policemen happened to be blacks themselves.

President Jacob Zuma and African National Congress will have lot of answering to do when the country goes to polls next year. Already there are murmurs of protest questioning whether ANC is concerned at all about the plight of blacks. Mandela's former wife Winnie has already fired the first salvo by accusing him and ANC for betraying black South Africans. She accused Mandela and other ANC leaders of being lackeys of the corporates.

Zuma can take heart from the fact that Mandela sympathy factor and absence of strong opposition could work in ANC's favour. The main opposition Democratic Alliance's support base is confined to whites and Asians, it has not made much inroads to the black electorate. However ANC can ill-afford to be complacent in the long run.

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