In a world that has, not without good reason, become more jaded about leaders, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, affectionately known by his clan name of Madiba, stood out for his generosity of spirit.
In the annals of world history, there are few parallels with the peaceful transfer of power he engineered in South Africa, deconstructing the system of apartheid in which the overwhelming majority of the country were officially denied their basic human rights.
In a 1993 speech, while unveiling a statue in honour of Mohandas Mahatma Gandhi at Pietermaritzburg, the architect of the decision to abandon the African National Congress (ANC) policy of non-violent struggle and plunge into guerrilla warfare, said of the Gandhian philosophy of non-violence: “It was a philosophy that achieved the mobilisation of millions of South Africans during the 1952 defiance campaign, which established the ANC as a mass based organisation.”
About Gandhi, he noted: “He negotiated in good faith and without bitterness.”
Mandela exhibited the identical qualities as he sat down with his former oppressors to create a stable South Africa.
All comparisons, it has been said, are odious but our present crop of leaders can do worse than apply the philosophy of Mandela to our political context, which are light years less stark than that in South Africa when Mandela was released in 1990 after 27 years imprisonment.
While it is true that the Forbes Burnham regime had established a dictatorship during its 28 year rule in Guyana, and that the latter was based on exploitation of blatant racism, we cannot really say it was as institutionalised as the system of apartheid.
After the ANC under Mandela won the 1994 elections, he pursued a policy of no victimisation and no witch-hunting, much as Dr Cheddi Jagan had done in Guyana after our free and fair elections of 1992.
The latter, however, thought that actions such as not making any changes in the armed forces that had supported the dictatorial regime or not continuing to downsize the public service, would have led to national reconciliation.
While Mandela also allowed much of the white-dominated institutions to continue unchanged, he made a most important innovation: a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Spearheaded by Bishop Desmond Tutu, this institution more than anything helped South Africans move past the bitterness and rancour engendered after the violence and atrocities inflicted from both sides of their divide.
In Guyana, we have never been able to do the same, and rather than moving on, new reminders of old wounds are being established to remind constituencies of the divisive past. The monument to the victims of the Son Chapman tragedy of 1964 was only established in Linden last year by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), led by David Granger, a historian who has taken an unabashed anti-Mandela line to continue invoking old sores in his writings, speeches and actions.
Another parallel with Mandela and Dr Jagan is that while both of them were committed to a dominant role of the state in economic activities towards protecting the interest of the poor and the powerless, both pragmatically accepted the liberalisation, stabilisation of privatisation premises of the neo-liberal world order they found themselves enmeshed in during the 1990s.
Both countries achieved the economic stability that eluded some of their neighbours, but South Africa’s growth rate, averaging 3.5 per cent annually within the ambit of their 1996 economic framework, known as “Growth, Employment and Redistribution”, has drawn criticism for not achieving the ends implied in the goals – greater upliftment of the Blacks who continued to be excluded from the wealth of the country.
In Guyana, even though we have achieved higher growth rates, averaging five per cent, we also need to raise this to overcome the destruction of the economy wrought by the previous People’s National Congress (PNC) regime. But we hope that all politicians will follow the example of Mandela towards this end and eschew sterile political one-upmanship.
