Invictus - Carlin [117]
Mandela stopped a war from happening but that did not mean that he bequeathed to South Africa a state of perfect peace and harmony, any more than Washington did in the United States. After apartheid South Africa shed its global singularity, it ceased to be the paragon of injustice and the (entirely merited) scapegoat for humanity’s incapacity to overcome its racial, tribal, nationalistic, ideological, and religious antagonisms. It became a country that had the same challenges as others in similar economic circumstances: how to deliver housing for the poor, how to combat violent crime, how to fight AIDS. And there was corruption, there were unsavory examples of political patronage, there were doubts as to the ANC’s efficiency in government. And humanity’s eternal bane, the regressive problem of skin color, did not magically disappear either, though by the start of the twenty-first century the transformation was such that there were not too many countries whose black and white citizens engaged as naturally as they did in South Africa.
It was also true that the political fundamentals remained as sound as Mandela had left them at the end of his five-year presidential term: the country remained a model of democratic stability and the rule of law remained firm.
Whether this would remain the case forever, who could possibly know? What would endure was Mandela’s example, and that glimpse of Utopia his people saw from the mountaintop to which he led them on June 24, 1995. When I asked Tutu what the lasting value of that day would be, he replied, “It’s simple. A friend in New York gave the answer when he said to me, ‘You know what? The great thing about everything good that has happened is that it can happen again.’ Simple as that.”
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
NIËL BARNARD: held a senior National Party position in Mandela’s power-sharing government until his retirement from the post in August 1996, when Mandela hosted a farewell banquet at his official residence in Pretoria to honor his contribution to peaceful change. Today he works as a consultant, using his “experience and expertise,” as he puts it, advising African leaders throughout the continent “on governing and governance.”
JUSTICE BEKEBEKE: became chief electoral officer for the Northern Cape Province of South Africa and in 2004 formed part of a team of independent international monitors that traveled to the United States to help certify that the presidential elections that year were free and fair.
P. W. BOTHA: died of a heart attack aged ninety in 2006. Mandela sent his condolences to Botha’s family and said, “While to many Mr Botha will remain a symbol of apartheid, we also remember him for the steps he took to pave the way towards the eventual peacefully negotiated settlement in our country.”
CHRISTO BRAND: runs the official tourist shop on Robben Island. His son Riaan, the one Mandela secretly cradled in prison when he was eight months old, died in a car crash in 2005. Mandela, whose own son died at a similar age in a car accident while Mandela was on Robben Island, flew down to Cape Town to comfort his old jailer.
KOBIE COET SEE: died of a heart attack aged sixty-nine in 2000. Mandela said, “We shall always cherish and hold dear the memory of Kobie Coetsee as one of the major architects of transformation towards a democratic South Africa. It saddens us that he passed away before we, and the country, could adequately pay our tribute to this quiet and unassuming man for his pioneering contributions we are now experiencing the fruits of.”
NICHOLAS HAYSOM: worked for the United Nations in conflict resolution and nation-building in Lebanon, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, East Timor, Sudan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Lesotho, Colombia, Congo, Tanzania,