A large photograph of former president Nelson Mandela the day before he went to prison in 1962 hangs inside the Mandela House and Museum on Vilakazi Street in Soweto on 31 March 2013.
PHOTO: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
- Nelson Mandela’s legacy has become rundown in the decade since his death.
- Voter numbers have fallen with every election since 1994 and voters are increasingly turning against the ruling party.
- Critics say the leaders who took over the ANC quickly dropped Mandela’s torch.
Soweto’s Vilakazi Street is packed each day with tourists and hawkers, outside the home of late struggle stalwart and former president Nelson Mandela, which has been meticulously kept even as his legacy has become run down in the decade since his death.
Ntsiki Madela, who lives nearby and sells jewellery and hats on a table near the matchbox house museum at number 8115, is among many South Africans who feel let down.
READ | PICS: Madiba’s former Joburg home converted into boutique hotel
While thankful that Mandela’s 16-year presence in the township now draws tourists, the 47-year-old said: “from Mandela’s democracy and I don’t even see the need to vote.”
With the elections due in months – the 30th anniversary of the first democratic vote – authorities are struggling to get people like Madela to register.
Voter numbers have fallen with every election since the first in 1994. And the people who do vote are increasingly turning against the ANC.
Polls suggest the scandal-tainted ruling party’s vote share could fall below 50% for the first time as SA’s economy slumbers and corruption taints the country’s image.
Unemployment is among the world’s highest, at 32% of adults, and wages for those employed are low.
SA also has the world’s lowest equality ranking, according to the World Bank.
The government and state-owned entities are carrying more than R5 trillion of debt and the figure worsens every day.
Crime and the murder rate have also grown over the past decade and some days Madela and her neighbours go without electricity for almost 12 hours a day.
“We only have enough income to feed our kids, there is constant load shedding and the cost of living is unbearable,” said Madela.
READ | 10 years behind bars for man who stole Mandela’s Sugar Ray Leonard boxing belt
Mandela is seen around the world as a moral compass for the way he wore down apartheid rule and his vision of a multiracial South Africa.
Critics say the ANC leaders who took over quickly dropped Mandela’s torch.
Mandela’s legacy has been “undermined” by his own party officials who are “corrupt” and have “deviated” from his “moral consciousness”, independent political analyst Prince Mashele told AFP.
Nic Borain, a political analyst working in financial markets, said there was a “kind of mythology” around the Mandela years that meant anyone following would struggle.
Power crisis
The government and the ANC have as big a fight on their hands to tackle apathy as they do debt.
Corruption-accused former president Jacob Zuma only avoided prison because of his poor health and a remission approved this year by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
In June, Ramaphosa was cleared of allegations that he breached ethics by not reporting the theft of reportedly more than $500 000 in cash hidden in a sofa at his Phala Phala farm.
READ | Electoral Amendment Bill: ConCourt ruling on independent candidates set to be a game-changer for SA’s democracy
Down the road from Mandela’s house, 27-year-old teacher Sive Jizana sat with friends at a popular pub. Mandela’s legacy was “dying”, she said.
She noted the lack of running water and proper roads outside main cities. “And now we don’t have electricity,” she said.
Zandile Cubeni, a 24-year-old unemployed sociology graduate, said she would not join the voters’ list.
“A lot of my peers are jobless, we aren’t getting any tangible benefits,” Cubeni said, adding that Mandela’s legacy “has been made out to seem like something without any flaws, that’s not true”.
Some say Mandela’s name was overhyped.
Thobile Cele, a 43-year-old cashier, told AFP:
We don’t really see what Mandela and all the others did for us… we are still poor.
“We simply don’t even have a democracy anymore as long as…ANC is in power,” said EFF MP Leigh-Ann Mathys.
She said courts had been “captured” to operate in the ANC’s favour and there are doubts about institutions like the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) during the 2024 vote.
Some Mandela loyalists are trying to make the public look beyond the anti-apartheid icon’s name to map out a future direction. But Mandela’s family is publicly keeping the faith.
His grandson, Mandla Mandela, an ANC lawmaker, said the party had achieved many successes and some “spectacular failures”, but overall South Africa’s democracy was still “healthy”.
“The key evil of colonialism was that it robbed our people of their land, and this remains the litmus test for how we measure transformation,” the 49-year-old said.