His smile is still writ large, painted on several buildings in central Johannesburg. South Africa marks the tenth anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death on Tuesday December 5, between nostalgia for his integrity and disappointment at what followed.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa did not plan to speak. But at the end of the day, Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for her fight for education, was chosen to deliver the anniversary speech in a large Johannesburg theater.
It’s a bittersweet anniversary for South Africa. On the one hand, the memory of Madiba, the man who brought them democracy, the former Robben Island convict who became the country’s first black President after defeating the racist apartheid regime, a world star who died at the age of 95 on December 5, 2013,.
And on the other hand, in a mirror image, the current situation of the country, still ruled by its ANC party but plagued by corruption and power cuts, is now the most unequal in the world, according to the World Bank. Nelson Mandela died surrounded by his loved ones after a long twilight and months of agony and anguish for South Africans and his admirers around the world, during which his entourage was content to repeat that the wise old man was in “critical but stable” condition.