Remembering Mandela's legacy

The chapters are thematic, each examining the evolution of transformation and national unity, covering the presidency and the Constitution and social and economic challenges

Dare Not Linger 

The Presidential Years

Nelson Mandela and Mandla Langa

Macmillan

359 + xix pages; Rs 999

This book carries forward the story of Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography,   (made into a film documentary in 2013), covering mainly his five years as President (1994-99), in an offbeat format. When he died in 2013, he left behind 10 chapters, repeatedly chewed over in longhand, yet none finalised. Mandela’s unremitting struggle against apartheid, leadership qualities, sunny personality and unimpeachable charisma, had captivated South Africans and the world. I picked up the book with near-reverence

Mandela’s initial 10 chapters have been reorganised, blended with selections from his diary and other notes, and supplemented with material from principal aides, with co-author Mandla Langa finalising the text with his own writing. The reader assumes that the lead voice in this chorus is Mandela’s. But one does not know which paragraphs are the “Mandela text” and which ones are contributions by others. The narrative is in the third person, a kind of eagle’s view of events, seemingly objective.

The book starts with his release from prison on 6 February 1990, and traces the subsequent convoluted negotiation with the apartheid era’s last president F W de Klerk, éminence grise P W Botha, and diehards of the old regime, plus Mangosuthu Buthelezi and his Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party, as also Mandela’s own African National Congress (ANC) stalwarts, who often proved to be a handful. It stresses that at different stages the outcome was far from pre-ordained. A new South Africa emerged when a democratic and representative Government of National Unity took office on 9 May 1994, jointly with Mr de Klerk and his National Party and Mr Buthelezi; Mr de Klerk quit government and his office of second deputy president two years later. 

The chapters are thematic, each examining the evolution of transformation and national unity, covering the presidency and the Constitution, traditional leadership and democracy, transformation of the state, and social and economic challenges. For a book written over a decade after Mandela demitted office, there are few evocations of hindsight, or exploration into what might have been done. The Epilogue is bland, with no comment on post-1999 events.
 

South Africa liberated itself from an oppressive, quasi-colonial domestic regime, but it had to live with the instruments of that regime and its protagonists, crafting the kind of internal transformation that no other state had undergone. Mandela’s genius was in creating, through his own intuitive understanding, the methods for this purpose. No template was available. An apartheid-enforcing police force had to be refashioned to serve all citizens. 

The armed forces, against which the ANC liberators had fought, were to become the instrument of a democratic state. A special challenge was refashioning the intelligence agencies that had been the pre-1991 regime’s oppressive spearhead. All this had to be achieved in real time, commencing with the four-year interregnum, before his Government of National Unity took office on 6 May 1994, often using albeit temporarily, those very leading personnel that had been the ANC’s opponents in the pre-1990 armed struggle.

This entailed for Mandela pragmatic comprehension of the complexity of national governance, primarily self-taught through observation and consultation. The book narrates how Mandela patiently engaged openly with former enemies, while struggling to convince sceptics, as much within the ANC as among the old regime. This was democratic consultation, tempered with decisiveness. He was ruthless at times, soft in personal accommodation, but undeviating in implementing his decisions. This is narrated in rich detail, with names, events, and case histories. His close associate Sathyandranath Ragunanan “Mac” Maharaj is quoted: “Mandela’s greatest achievements stem from engaging with others by proceeding from <i>their<p> assumptions and carefully marshaling arguments to move them to his conclusions… he never stops trying to understand the other side, be it an enemy, an adversary, an opponent, or his own colleague.”

A chapter titled Reconciliation narrates the process that led to the 1995 establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) headed by Desmond Tutu, endowed with amnesty-grant powers, culminating its shocking, even traumatic revelations in a seven-volume 1997 report. The TRC has become a global model, despite its flaws, of how as long-tortured people, finally masters in a shared house, can deal and live with past oppressors for the sake of a shared polity. One wishes more detail was offered. 

At the time of Mandela’s death on 5 December 2013, aged 95, the book was four years in the making. It comes, 23 years into “self-liberation”, at a time when South Africa confronts those very domestic challenges of governance that “Madiba” had foretold at his final 1997 ANC Congress as president, a speech cited at length in the book. An editorial in The Economist of 23 December 2017, assessing President Jacob Zuma’s regime said: “…corruption thrives, state resources have been looted, and democratic institutions have been undermined.” Will such a publication make a difference? 

Here is the vision of one of the greatest leaders of our times, offering through patient examples vital lessons in governance, the management of antagonistic pluralities and domestic divisions, to build a holistic, participatory polity. Which country or people can treat this as redundant?

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The reviewer is a former diplomat, teacher and author. kishanrana@gmail.com