More interesting times lie ahead for South Africans

Thursday, June 18, was Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday. As the world continues to fret over the icon’s illness, a few of his compatriots cannot wait to see the last of him.

They are clearly in the fringes of society, but their carping carries a sting.

One of them is called Amukelani Ngobeni, the youth leader of the Azania People’s Organisation (Azapo), a black consciousness group that draws its lineage from Steve Biko. He accuses Mandela of “selling out the black people’s struggle”. He wants an apology from the old man to the people of South Africa before he dies.

Similar views are coming from the youth spokesman of South Africa’s Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), a chap called Sello Tladi. “Mandela and his friends could not wait to occupy the global political space at the expense of the struggle for complete political, social and economic emancipation,” he argues.

Whoever expresses such views is sure to get a backlash from irate South Africans who idolise Mandela. And, as has become the norm, those who utter the blasphemy are forced to quickly backpedal.

Both Azapo and the PAC have dismissed their youth spokesmen as “cranks”. Maybe they are, but the South African landscape seems to be having quite a number of these disagreeable types.

Last year, the mighty ANC was forced to expel its youth leader, Julius Malema, because he is very much alike in his opinions to Mr Ngobeni and Mr Tladi.

Though Mr Malema is careful not to criticise Mandela personally, he nonetheless loudly proclaims that the post-apartheid era has been a failure in as far as meeting black aspirations is concerned.

He has lately launched a movement to push for Mugabe-style land redistribution and the nationalisation of mines.

One conclusion to draw from this noise is that the youth wings of South African black parties are stuffed full with unusually rude types.

But going by the crowds they draw, it does not look as though they can be dismissed as a simple entertainers.

Again, Azapo and PAC are hardly fringe outfits. They were founded at the height of apartheid out of a conviction that the ANC had become bloated and corporatist.

If anything, Azapo and PAC, though much smaller than the ANC, have more committed and disciplined cadres in their ranks. Of course, they preach a more radical faith, too.

Basically, the gripe is that Mandela failed to use his enormous global prestige to cut a better deal for blacks in his country.

Indeed it is true the lot of the blacks remains as bad as it was under apartheid.

Over 80 per cent of the land remains in the hands of whites, who form only about 10 per cent of the population, and the bulk of the wealth of the country still remains in white hands.

If Mr Malema and his ilk are loonies, then they share company with a distinguished member of the Mandela family – Winnie, the freedom fighter’s feisty ex-wife.

In an unguarded interview she gave in 2010 to the wife of Nobel literature laureate V.S. Naipaul, she said: “Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside.” Predictably, the interview caused an uproar.

Among the few not on the “economic outside” is Cyrille Ramaphosa, the ANC’s chief negotiator in 1994 and who has made quite a pile for himself from some token arrangement with white business called BEE (Black Economic Empowerment).

One thing seems certain: Once Mandela goes, the Malemas will be less inhibited to push on with their radical message.

And since there will be nobody to restrain them with the clout of Mandela, expect more interesting times in South Africa.

The writer is a senior editor with the Nation Media Group