WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MANDELA DIES?

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MANDELA DIES?

This has being the question on each and everyone’s mind since the African freedom icon Tata Madiba Mandela was admitted at the Pretoria hospital.

The former president Nelson Mandela marked two months in hospital on Thursday, as his compatriots extended their national vigil. The anti-apartheid hero was rushed to the Pretoria Medi-Clinic Heart Hospital on 8 June with a recurring lung infection.  His condition is still said to be "critical but stable". The government has been secretive about the Madiba’s health, issuing infrequent and barebones statements and declining to comment on the specifics of his condition

Some believe the anti-apartheid hero and paragon of racial reconciliation is the glue that holds the diverse nation together. “For as long as he lives, South Africans breathe a little easier and believe in their country a little more. When the day after Mandela dawns, that belief will be shaken, not dramatically or immediately, but slowly and perhaps imperceptibly. South Africa will, quite simply, be a different country.”  Say David Smith in his article “ what will become of South Africa after Nelson Mandela dies” With fewer nuances, a persistent myth holds that black people have been waiting for his passing before unleashing a “night of the long knives, genocide of whites” to “cleanse” South Africa.

The ANC is in trouble whether he is alive or dead, “I think it will lose more ground. I hope it does, because it has become arrogant. Its strength has been diminished in each election since 1994 and this time it may go under 60 percent. It is riven with factions and eventually it will disintegrate. That will not be bad for the country, but good for the country” smith added. The idea that South Africa is hanging on to one man and one party is a failure to understand the processes we have to go through.

It is time for South Africans to wake up and take responsibility, rather than depending on one man. Mandela will not live forever and nobody should expect him to live forever on this planet. It is time to grow up and get going and allow Mandela to rest in peace.