Is Mandelas heir one of the worlds worst presidents?
No offence was meant, presumably, but it still felt vaguely insulting to see Nelson Mandela identified in the photo caption of a British newspaper this week as a ‘black leader’. As it would be to see Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln, whose statues are, like his, in Parliament Square, described merely as ‘white leaders’. To identify Mandela by his race is to diminish him, and to miss the point of the magnanimous example he has left us. Tony Benn got closer to the mark at the unveiling of his statue last Wednesday when he said: ‘If Diana was the people’s princess, Nelson Mandela is the president of humanity.’ Pity, then, about his successor, Thabo Mbeki, who chose the month when Mandela is immortalised in bronze to remind us of just how far short he falls of the best his country has to offer; how strong a candidate he is to rank, with his friend Robert Mugabe, among the worst Presidents in the world. The backdrop is Mbeki’s twisted relationship with Aids, a disease that affects one i
