The bridge-builder who led a nation to democracy

South Africa was exceedingly fortunate to have had a man of the stature and charisma of Nelson Mandela – a man forged, in important respects, by the court process and 27-year incarceration that was meant to discredit and destroy him.
Mandela’s speech at the 1962 trial in which he and his comrades where sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island catapulted him to international stardom. He became the symbol of the international campaign against apartheid, an effective weapon against the South African government and won the stature to stand up to the African National Congress’s radical fringes.
Prison may also have saved and prepared Mandela for his later role. His soulmate, Oliver Tambo, ANC leader, was so wearied by a rootless life in of exile and the effort to keep a fractious party together that he suffered a debilitating stroke. He died a year before South Africa became a democracy.
Mandela’s imprisonment also allowed him time to think, not as a parochial partisan, but as a leader who would take the interests of all his compatriots into account. Jail shielded him from some of the negative aspects of ANC politics. His conviction and sentence moulded the man who became the first president of a democratic South Africa.
That much was evident in his actions. After his release in 1990, when he was negotiating with F W de Klerk, the last president of apartheid South Africa, he wanted everybody in the tent – victors and vanquished. He sought triumph without humiliation for his adversaries. That was the basis of his reconciliation policy.
Yes, he had some luck: the communists, who wanted radical reforms, had been weakened by the collapse of the Soviet Union. That is why he was able to agree to guarantee property rights for all South Africans – defying calls for expropriation of land and property from hardliners in his party and the Communist party.
Yet who but Mandela, the freed prisoner, could have formed a government of national unity with the old white National party, with Mr de Klerk as one of his deputies? And who but him, in that situation, would have wanted to?
A significant expression of this approach was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a platform for victims and perpetrators of apartheid violence to relate their respective experiences. It was an exercise intended to to enable them to deal with the past and, ideally, bury the hatchet.
Views on the TRC are mixed: perpetrators who gave evidence were footsoldiers who carried out orders while their political masters were not called to account. But it kickstarted a national dialogue. The TRC was a classic Mandela compromise between an amnesty and wholesale recrimination – and it was groundbreaking. A similar process is being attempted elsewhere, notably in Liberia.
This was just all part of his bridge-building – he realised significant gestures were needed to win the trust of white South Africa. In 1995 he travelled to the whites-only enclave of Orania to have tea with Betsie Verwoerd, widow of H F Verwoerd, the spiritual father of apartheid. He retained the Springbok emblem, long regarded as a symbol of white sport.
He insisted that the new national anthem be an amalgamation of “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” and “Die Stem van Suid Afrika”. For many black people that was just too much. “Die Stem” was for years regarded as a celebration of their subjugation. Once at a function when Mandela was still president, a black choir left out the Afrikaner parts. He called them back and insisted they sing the whole anthem.
Probably the most prominent display of Mandela’s reconciliation was during the 1995 Rugby World Cup final in Johannesburg, when he arrived at the stadium wearing Springbok captain Francois Pienaar’s number six jersey. He won the hearts of the mainly Afrikaans community who follow the sport. A week before, wearing the same garment, he had urged black youth to support “our boys” – and black South Africans celebrated the eventual Springbok triumph.
Mandela did not always have his way within his party. He failed to have Cyril Ramaphosa, the party’s secretary-general, elected as his deputy. The party chose Thabo Mbeki instead. Mandela’s view was that the party hierarchy was dominated by former exiles who did not always have an accurate appreciation of conditions on the ground. He was also wary of the possible domination of the country’s politics by one tribe: he and Mr Mbeki were both Xhosa from the Eastern Cape province. But the party saw differently.
Mandela also posed some difficulty for those who followed him. His commanding performance is often used as a yardstick – and they are found wanting. Mr Mbeki was once asked how he hoped to fill his predecessor’s big shoes. He did not like Mandela’s ugly shoes, he curtly responded.
People such as Mr Mbeki did not like the fact that Mandela seemed to hog the credit for the destruction of apartheid. He had also eclipsed the role played by Tambo, their hero. But more importantly, Mr Mbeki did not share Mandela’s world view. Once in office, he set about undermining or dismantling Mandela’s reconciliation policies and initiatives. The country became more racially polarised.
There is also a view, held by a vocal minority – critics mainly on the left of the ANC who would have preferred the nationalisation of the economy – that Mandela did not drive a hard enough bargain for black South Africa during the negotiations. This was reflected in the recent statement by Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, that Mandela was “saintly” in giving in too much to white fears.
But despite such reservations, Mandela is held in great affection by people of all races – a rare accomplishment for a South African politician. Democracy may not be all they want, but South Africans see the freedoms they enjoy today as the result of his sacrifice. He took their hands and led them across the bridge from apartheid to democracy and their promised land. South Africa was lucky to have him. Damned lucky.

Barney Mthombothi is former editor of South Africa’s Financial Mail