No public figure this side of Mother Teresa has enjoyed such a forgiving press. But now Mandela must be held to a different standard. The history of postcolonial Africa is filled with examples of nationalist heroes who mismanaged – or swindled – their countries into ruin. And nobody knows that better than the potential investors whose confidence Mandela needs to keep if his ambitious development plans are to succeed. They’ll be hypersensitive to any sign that Mandela is becoming yet another Big Man. So will the blacks who have been overpromised quick material gains. But there’s already reason to worry that some of the same personality traits that saw Mandela through the lean years could quickly blot his crowning victory.
Often loyal to a fault, he is blind to the sins of old comrades. Mandela stood by his wife, Winnie, for months after she was convicted of kidnapping and accused of adultery and misspending ANC funds – all of which she denies. (They now are separated.) But the ANC’s decision last month to waive its rules and allow Winnie to run for the new Parliament smacks of cronyism. So does the treatment of Joe Modise and Mzwai Piliso, former ANC guerrilla leaders who were criticized in an ANC investigative report on human-rights abuses against suspected spies during the organization’s years of exile. Yet both have also been nominated for Parliament; Modise is touted for defense minister. A word from Mandela could end such talk. Will officials’ actions mean less to him than their antiapartheid pedigrees? Solidarity is a revolutionary virtue; in government, it can be a recipe for corruption and incompetence.
Mandela’s intemperate outbursts also square poorly with his saintly image. He flays President F. W. de Klerk, a man almost certain to serve under him as a deputy president. Twice Mandela snubbed de Klerk in Washington last summer; in Oslo last December, he called de Klerk and his cabinet ministers “political criminals.” Such open hostility may play well politically in the short term, but it could hobble his administration. Mandela doesn’t seem to see that. He accuses the press of giving a “misleading impression” about his relationship with de Klerk. “We will say very cruel things about each other, but that does not affect our ability to come together to address the problems facing the country,” he said last month. To some observers, that looks like the same kind of double-talk Mandela has used when addressing such issues as how the ANC will accommodate right-wing demands for a homeland. “It’s OK to do that if you’re in the opposition,” says Eugene Nyati, director of the Center for African Studies in Johannesburg. “But it is very confusing to his supporters and to outsiders who are trying to figure out in what direction he’s taking the country.”
Most worrisome is Mandela’s inability to shut down his most radical followers. One of his first acts as a free man was to urge ANC sympathizers and their Inkatha rivals in Natal province to throw their weapons into the sea. The violence there has raged unabated. More recently, Mandela called on his militant supporters to allow de Klerk to campaign in black neighborhoods. A few days later, pro-ANC youths tried to drive the president out of a township and threatened to kill residents who had joined de Klerk’s National Party. After years of urging blacks to render the townships ungovernable, Mandela now has to govern them. That means somehow persuading Soweto residents to start paying rent and utility bills, and persuading the goonish self-defense units to lay down their AK-47s. “I’m very impressed by the top [leaders] of the ANC,” said Hessel Turkstra. a 23-year-old white student who heard Mandela speak in the town of Potchefstroom last month. “What concerns me is the angry masses.”
Mandela has proven that he can change. After leaving prison, he quickly called off the ANC’s sputtering “armed struggle” and ditched such Marxist vestiges as its call for the nationalization of mines and banks. But his next job will test that flexibility to the limit. At 75, an age when many politicians become elder statesmen, be will be called upon to manage a fractious Parliament dominated by ambitious young politicians. The dignity he brings to the office as a hereditary tribal chief may not see him through the endless compromises modern government entails. Will President Mandela be willing to send in troops to crack down on the “comrades”? Can he reach beyond the ranks of revolutionary faithful in staffing his government? Mandela may have been indispensable to the democratic transition that South Africa will soon complete. But if his presidential administration is to succeed, he will have to be a lot more vigilant about his own shortcomings.
