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South Africa: Nation readies to bid Nelson Mandela farewell
Former South African President Nelson Mandela. PHOTO/PETER DEJONG /AP
Nelson Mandela’s lengthy absence from the spotlight has forced his adoring country to envisage what their hard-won and often fraught multi-racial democracy means without the man who forged it.
The beloved and frail 94-year-old, who is back in hospital with a lung infection, still embodies for most South Africans the “Rainbow Nation” he strived for despite endless persecution at the hands of white apartheid rulers.
However having stepped out of the public eye nearly a decade ago, analysts say Mandela’s influence has waned.
“The bottom line is that Mr Mandela has not been at the moral and political center of South Africa for a very long time,” political commentator Eusebius McKaiser said of the former president last seen in public in 2010. “We have let go of him ages ago.”
Despite his absence, South Africa’s first black president, remains a powerful symbol of racial unity nearly 20 years after he pledged a new era for his bitterly divided nation.
Testimony to this is the emotional bond that South Africans feel to him. With familial affection, he is often simply known as “tata” (father) or “tatamkhulu” (grandfather) by young and old, black and white. But analysts agree that his influence on daily life has long faded.
“I think there will be concerns from outside South Africa that Mandela is seen as the glue that holds South Africa together,” an analyst told reporters.
