December 15, 2013
The point about Nelson Mandela is that he was equally willing to go along with both the Stalinist and the lizard-skin-shoe school of economic thought. When Stalinism was the fashion, he was not opposed to it. Nor did he appear to mind much when the lizard-skin-shoe brigade became predominant. He was fortunate that, due to historical circumstances, the second prevailed and prevented him from passing into history as a failed socialist despot. He would have become the latter only after the conclusion of a hideous racial war, but having been head of a guerrilla organization, he had no very settled objection to political violence or to those who employed it.
It does not seem to me fair, however, to blame Mandela for the fact that liberation has left many of the liberated worse off than they were before they were liberated. Liberation has the nasty habit of doing precisely that, and the circumstances in South Africa were particularly inauspicious for a happy liberation. All in all it could have been considerably worse. In the event the compromise”political without economic reform, co-option of a few into the elite, lizard-skin shoes for the truly important”was about the best that could be hoped for, and Mandela fit the bill admirably. He was a nice old gentleman.
The settlement of which he was the figurehead will not be stable, however. I doubt that black South Africans will forever be satisfied with promises about the glorious future or with an economic and social situation that, for them, does not improve. One day an irresistible leader will arise who will persuade them that they must act on the belief that wealth is theft and that with justice prosperity will come. The rich will flee, famine will stalk the land, and the lizard-skin-shoe class will prosper as never before.
When I think of my time in South Africa”my second time actually, the first time I nearly fell afoul of BOSS, the Bureau of State Security”and of the admirable people I met there (there is nothing like adversity to produce both swine and admirable people), I do not think of the leaders of the ANC, I think rather of the African doorman of the public art gallery in Johannesburg, who perhaps saved my life, or at least my wallet.
I was leaving the gallery (I love colonial painting) when he said to me, “Where do you think you”re going?”
“To look for a taxi,” I replied.
“Don”t you know it’s the killing fields out there?” he said. “You”ll be set upon before you”ve gone a few yards. I”ll call a taxi for you.”
I was impressed by his solicitude for me, evidence of a firm, nonracial, nonpolitical ethic. I recall him to this day”he couldn”t have been paid much”with admiration and gratitude.
Johannesburg hadn”t been like that the last time I was there, fifteen years previously. Liberation had begun.
