To the spirit of Mandela

To the spirit of Mandela,

You are now canonised among other saints.

This beautification began immediately after your release from prison and whilst you shook hands with your former political enemies.

You moved with resounding applause and acclaim from ‘terrorist’ to sainthood as you reconciled with all apart from the one who you said your ‘love remains undiminished,’ as you officially announced marital separation.

Was there no way to reconcile with Winnie? Or was this part of the hidden price of maintaining the ANC alongside personal and political respectability?

To the spirit of Mandela,

I deeply respect your 27 years in jail and like most
Africans believe we must not speak ill of the dead.

Whilst your place in the history books is assured, perhaps it will take another generation of South Africans to objectively re-assess your meaning and contribution to South Africa?

But right now the mourning occurs and rightly so, for any loss of life is a sorrow only for those living and not for those gone.

YET, we must also be truthful, sober and reflective in analysing your achievements in power and your legacy as a political leader and global ‘resistance icon.’

As for your achievements, there is no doubt, you – along with your comrades, steered the ANC towards political liberation with an admirable determination and strategy.

This political liberation has yet to be translated into economic freedom for the vast majority.

Class apartheid has now replaced racial apartheid.
And in the mythmaking that now engulfs your passing, few fail to grasp it was your leadership in the first democratically elected government of a ‘free’ South Africa of 1994-1999, that committed and entrenched itself to neo-liberalism capitalism

It is these policies that globally and in South Africa enslave black South Africans to poverty, exploitation and wealth creation on the backs of the poor.

It is these policies of trickle down growth that your government of 1994-1999 hailed.

Twenty years on, the people are legitimately asking: when will the growth trickle down and translate into jobs and housing?

To the spirit of Mandela,

It was your government that negotiated for whites to retain control of the land and its resources and for a few black compradors to ‘chop’- as we say in Ghana, a few crumbs from the capitalist cake whilst the majority go hungry.

Was this negotiated settlement inevitable as some may argue? Were other options not feasible and viable?
Historical conjecture proves futile but it allows us to dare to invent and re-invent the past and future.

To the spirit of Mandela,
Was it not your government under your leadership that tried to humanise neoliberal capitalism in South Africa with GEAR [1] and the RDP [2] as it continued to suck the blood out of black South Africans?

Is it not these economic policies that have ushered in ‘service delivery protests’ for electricity, housing and proper sanitation as ordinary people quickly became disillusioned with the new South Africa they dreamed of during the decades of brutal apartheid?

My problem is that a disconnect has emerged in which your halo blinds people to the policies you ushered in whilst in power.

These policies commit the wealth of South Africa not to all those who live in it as a once historic document once proclaimed - but to an internal and global comprador bourgeoisie of black and white united at the altar of capitalism

To the spirit of Mandela,

like all human beings, you possessed your faults and committed errors.

Did you compromise too much in those years leading up to and during the negotiated settlement?

To the spirit of Mandela,

did you compromise too much during the post-apartheid government that you led?

When I join you Madiba, maybe we can continue to debate some of these issues.

1. Growth Employment and Redistribution strategy
2. Reconstruction and Development Programme

* Ama Biney (Dr) is the Acting Editor of Pambazuka News and a scholar-activist.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM
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