THE DEATH OF NELSON MANDELA
Nelson Mandela, who died on Thursday
at age 95, fully deserved the legendary stature he enjoyed around the world for
the last quarter-century of his life.He was one of the most extraordinary liberation leaders Africa, or any other continent, ever produced. Not only did he lead his people to triumph over the deeply entrenched system of apartheid that enforced racial segregation in every area of South African life; he achieved this victory without the blood bath so many had predicted and feared.
And, as South Africa’s first president elected by the full
democratic franchise of all its people, he presided over a landmark Truth and
Reconciliation process that finally allowed apartheid’s victims a measure of
official recognition and acknowledgment of their suffering.
Mr. Mandela’s enormous strength of character steeled
him for his long struggle and ultimate victory over apartheid. Even deeper
resources of political wisdom and courage steered him toward the course of
constructive reconciliation over destructive vengeance.
Mr. Mandela did not, of course, achieve all of this on
his own. The movement he led, the African national Congress, was sustained by
lesser-known activists and martyrs, many of whom did not live to see the day of
victory they had dreamed of for so long. And the country’s peaceful transition
owes a huge debt to the apartheid era’s last white president, F. W. de Klerk,
who in 1990 ordered an end to Mr. Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment and negotiated
with him and others the terms of the political transition. Three years later,
Mr. Mandela and Mr. de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize.
Having spent the prime years of his life in prison, Mr.
Mandela was already 75 when he first took office as president in 1994, 80 when
he retired in 1999.
His successors, even those he personally supported,
have, sadly, not been his equals. South Africa today faces many challenging
problems. Scandalous mismanagement of the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic by Thabo Mbeki brought
widespread, unnecessary suffering. South Africa under Mr. Mbeki and Jacob Zuma the
current president, has failed to provide the enlightened regional leadership
many had expected and has helped sustain the murderous Robert Mugabe in power
in neighboring Zimbabwe. Most ominously, the end of apartheid did not, and
still has not, brought an end to the deep poverty of millions of its victims.
It will be up to a new generation of South African
leaders to resolve these problems. All of them will owe a historic debt to
Nelson Mandela.
