Mandela’s Big Footprints

When South Africa’s presidential succession takes place Wednesday, Nelson Mandela will become the first elected African president who did not attempt to settle in for life after overseeing independence from white rule. That is just part of his greatness; he leaves his country in far better shape than when he was elected five years ago in the first general election open to voters of all races. He is a giant figure, and Mandela the man, his struggles and triumphs over apartheid, will be the stuff of history.

As Mandela leaves the presidency, there are less lofty and more practical challenges facing his successor, Thabo Mbeki, not the least of them massive unemployment, high crime, an AIDS epidemic and a black majority increasingly impatient with the pace of progress.

Mbeki won the presidency June 2, and in the elections his African National Congress party increased its dominance of parliament, falling only one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed to unilaterally change the constitution. Mbeki promises not to abuse that clout or tamper with the nation’s liberal constitution, a model of racial tolerance that Mandela signed in 1996 and that guarantees, at least on paper, freedom from discrimination based on race, gender and disability.

As head of the ANC and onetime deputy president, South Africa’s new leader has had plenty of on-the-job training, but no matter what he accomplishes he will suffer in comparison with the iconic Mandela, who transformed a brutal, bitterly divided country that had become the pariah of the world into a peaceful and mostly optimistic model of democracy.

Among his triumphs, Mandela taught black and white South Africans that forgiveness need not be confused with weakness. His Truth and Reconciliation Commission led to significant healing, amnesty, justice and, most important, truth, long suppressed under white-minority rule.

His followers will remember practical achievements as well. Heading a racially inclusive government, Mandela delivered water and power to black townships and villages, built schools, opened free clinics and raised pay for blacks fortunate enough to be employed. Life got better for many, but a chasm remains.

Mbeki, an economist, is expected to continue Mandela’s approach. The new president campaigned on the promise of “A Better Life for All,” but translating that slogan into reality will require a reallocation of resources that by law were controlled by whites until the dismantling of apartheid began shortly before Mandela’s 1990 release from prison.

Black unemployment hovers at 40%, while the jobless rate for whites is 6%. Mbeki will need an economic renaissance and bountiful foreign investment to create enough jobs to make a dent in the harsh poverty still pervasive among black South Africans. Mandela could not deliver on his promise of millions of new jobs in part because the Asian economic crisis reduced a steady source of foreign investment.

Today, despite innovative housing programs, millions of blacks live in squatter camps or other substandard dwellings. Most black farmers have no access to the better land--a legacy of apartheid laws that restricted the majority to 13% of the land.

These are deep problems, but as Mandela, now 80, retires from public service, South Africans living in a forward-looking multiracial democracy, at peace with its neighbors, understand whom they have to thank.