Kilps' Blog

Is Mandela’s legacy in danger?

About a week ago I received an email from a person living in Germany who I met a couple of years ago when she visited South Africa. She was looking for advice on a presentation titled ‘The ANC wins again, South African elections – is the legacy/heritage of Nelson Mandela in danger?’ As some of my Twitter followers where interested in my response I’ve adapted it for here.

The first problem one encounters is the question as to what Mandela’s legacy really means – I put it as his ability to reach out – to (amongst other things) encourage reconciliation, political tolerance and human rights. While the top brass of the ANC will continue to preach this when confronted, most will agree that all too often they are silent.

The Battle for the Western Cape
A while back I blogged about Julius Malema making a fool of himself when he spoke at UCT. One of his statements was that “people in the Western Cape engage with the coloniser”. Fast forward to post the elections and we have an ANC rep writing in the Cape Times the following:

The key message is that uncivilised Africans want to wrest the last European outpost from white liberal dominance. These divisions are so severe that were it to be put to a referendum right now, the majority of citizens would support a Unilateral Declaration of Independence – The Republic of the Western Cape.

The growing, but still obscure, debate around secession aside – this statement is nothing less than insulting. It suggests that the only reason the opposition won the Western Cape is because of racism and that the province does not subscribe to the ideals of a united and non-racial South Africa.

This sentiment along with the MK Vets and Casatu threatening to make the province ‘ungovernable’ show a serious disregard for democracy and more importantly the values I’d like to think Nelson Mandela holds. To my knowledge he wasn’t too phased, at least in this manner, with the ANC not winning all provinces back in ‘94.

Satire
But the main contradiction I’ve found between the days of Mandela and the current ANC leadership lies in the role of the media – and one Zapiro. This is best illustrated with the following two videos; I’ve summarised the important bits if you’re not up to watching them.

In this video, of Zapiro launching one of his books, he talks of being called by Mandela who was complaining about him changing the newspapers he was being published in. Watch the video for the full story – but essentially what Zapiro found so impressive was that Mandela considered the cartoonist’s critism of him being part of his job.

Then we get to the infamous leaked Special Assigmnent documentary on satire.

In this video we see the ANC’s spokesperson accusing satirists of being right wing counter-revolutionary racists (I forget her exact words – but that was the general message).

The two viewpoints – that satire is important and that it is despicable – highlight for me the biggest shift from the days of Mandela. Jacob Zuma can go on for as long as he wants about working together, but his party’s members are making baseless and inflamiatory statements and his party refuses to give the chairmanship of Scopa (which is held by an opposition party) to the official opposition simply as ‘punishment’ for what Helen Zille said – disregarding the voter’s second choice. This is a clear contradiction with the Mandela days.

The rest of my response had to do with democratic values and the rule of law; but essentially my conclusion was that things could go either way in South Africa. I don’t think the country is simply going to collapse – but the kind of attitudes I’ve written about here are certainly worrying.