Winnie Madikizela Mandela and Nelson Mandela were mythologised for the greater good.
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Would South Africa have been torn apart by civil war without the myth of Nelson Mandela?
A statue of Nelson Mandela in an upmarket shopping square.
C. Na Songkhla/Shutterstock
Commerce, culture and heritage mix in rather strange and sometimes unsettling ways in South Africa, especially when the struggle for freedom is commemorated.
Essop Pahad was a confidant of former president Thabo Mbeki.
Bongani Mnguni/Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images
When Essop Pahad was given a job, he did it efficiently. He surprised even his critics with his diligence.
Nelson Mandela, the late first president of democratic South Africa, is credited with the relatively peaceful transition from apartheid rule.
Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images
There is never going to be a final assessment of Mandela’s legacy. How it is regarded will continue to change, depending on the destination South Africa travels to.
Lilian Ngoyi, one of the leaders of the 1956 women’s march against apartheid, is immortalised on an abandoned building.
Justin Pearce
The sites provide a rare tangible record of the international solidarity that existed during the Cold War.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, left, hosts his Tanzanian counterpart during a state visit in March 2023.
GCIS/Flickr
Ties between the two nations date back to Tanzania’s solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle.
Anti-apartheid activist Neil Aggett (29) died in apartheid police detention in 1982.
Charcoal on paper by Dr Amitabh Mitra/Wiki Commons
Neil Agget’s passionate trade unionism proved fateful. It made him a target of a brutally repressive apartheid police state.
Pastors pray for former South African president and ANC leader Jacob Zuma.
Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images
Perhaps the combination of religious rhetoric and secular laws is a winning electoral strategy.
An artist’s impression of Gan Siyobonga memorial park in Israel.
Supplied by author
Gan Siyabonga is unique in Israel. It highlights a group that was both anti-apartheid and pro-Zionist.
Frene Ginwala addressing the media in 2017, tireless in her fight for justice.
Gulshan Khan/AFP via Getty Images
A younger generation of feminists will remember her, above all, for her remarkable championing of the struggle against patriarchy.
African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo during his exile in Botswana.
William Campbell/Sygma via Getty Images
A historian counters the popular view that the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall set in motion talks to end apartheid. The process was unstoppable by then.
Members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions sing political songs in 1987 in Johannesburg.
Walter Dhladhla/AFP via Getty Images
Struggle songs are relevant even in the post apartheid context because they continue to be an important way in which people deliberate on issues.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa (L) is congratulated by leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party Mangosuthu Buthelezi (R) after being elected president of South Africa during the swearing in of new members of the National Assembly.
Nic Bothma
The failure of the 2021 post-election deal is a missed opportunity for the African National Congress and Inkatha to work together.
Former South African president Jacob Zuma.
(Photo by Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images
The posturing is bound to continue. But at the age of 78 Jacob Zuma’s long day in the sun is over.
Former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda at the inauguration of former South African president Thabo Mbeki in 2004.
EFE-EPA
Kaunda will be remembered as a giant of 20th century African nationalism – a leader who gave refuge to revolutionary movements, a relatively benign autocrat and an international diplomat.
Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa as well as of the ruling party, the African National Congress.
Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Ramaphosa is set to go down in the annals of history as an ANC president who presided over a tumultuous epoch in the party’s evolution.
Former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki share a light moment at a meeting of the G8 and developing nations in Tokyo in 2000.
EFE-EPA/Michel Euler
Former presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki have arguably made the most important contribution to Africa in the 21st Century by promoting peace, democracy, regional integration and pan-Africanism.
A younger Dennis Brutus, president of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee in Montreal, Canada in 1976.
Neil Leifer /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images
That none of his collections were published in apartheid South Africa testifies to the police state’s censorship.
South African freedom struggle stalwart Andrew Mlangeni at the UN.
Although a commited veteran of the ANC, Mlangeni was no party apparatchik. He was outspoken against endemic corruption in government.
Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s freedom struggle icon and first black president, continues to be revered around the world.
Mandela left at the right time in 1999, when the country still seemed in a healthy state, after which he consolidated his international reputation.