Recently President Robert Mugabe blamed Mandela for "leaving whites with too much power" in South Africa. He is not the first to sing that refrain. Few may understand his thinking, but an important clue is that his criticism started during the course of the incident involving his wife bashing a young South African lady.
I will explain that later but first let me make it clear that Mandela is not to blame for South Africa's current situation.
If a man leads you across a difficult desert up to the edge of a sea, you should praise him for navigating the desert and not blame him for leaving you without boats.
Those who want total economic emancipation should not blame Mandela for bringing an end to statutory apartheid but not leaving the boats to cross the sea of total economic emancipation. Blaming him for that is like blaming your father-in-law for not delivering your wife already pregnant. He has done his bringing her up. What job do you expect of yourself if you want her already pregnant?
An end to the idiotic but nonetheless statutory apartheid was a necessary first step. That crossing of that desert may not have been sufficient to complete the journey, but it is up to the current leadership to build the boats to go the rest of the way.
Some like in my country Zimbabwe have even set off back in the direction of the desert. Despite all the bravado about liberation, the truth is that the moment you dis-empower your people economically you leave them vulnerable to recolonization. Like a fish to bait, a hungry man will swallow anything that looks like food.
People should also remember that CODESA was not a one man show. Mandela was not sitting alone in front of a platoon of Afrikaners nodding like a jumping jack saying "Yes Baas! Yes Baas!" to everything they said..
A comprehensive delegation on the ANC side attended the negotiations and they consulted, and were closely advised, by the Frontline States. So any Frontline State leader who says Mandela made the wrong concessions should bear in mind that it was probably because they gave him the wrong advice.
The liberation of South Africa was a collective effort by the region and Africa. Therefore it is wrong to blame one man for what is not perfect while wanting to take credit for what is right. The success was collective and any shortcomings are also collective, not just on the South African people but on the Frontline States leaders who made their input as well.
Many of them wanted the wars and destabilization efforts sponsored by the apartheid idiots in their countries to end. The ANC as a collective, who had been hosted by various Frontline states, would have understood the difficulties in the states hosting them particularly Angola and Mozambique and would not have wanted to prolong those situations.
As for President Mugabe, his irritation with "too much white power" probably stemmed from Afriforum's involvement in his wife's saga. In Zimbabwe hordes of supposed veterans from the liberation war would have invaded the farms Afriforum members in retaliation.
He probably perceives it a weakness of the ANC's position, not a strength of South African law, that the same cannot happen in South Africa.
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