WHY IS MANDELA'S MORTALITY SUCH A BIG DEAL?

Nelson Mandela will probably not be around in ten years’ times. This fact is so hard to accept that some of us would literally kill anyone daring to assert it. Just ask Yiull Damasa, a local artist who recently enjoyed fifteen minutes of infamy for producing a painting that depicts the body of Mandela as undergoing an autopsy. He received death threats for daring to imagine Mandela as human. But why should Mandela’s mortality be such a big existential deal for so many of us?
The uncomfortable answer is that Mandela has become a myth onto which we have projected the apparent resolution of fears and disagreements which, in reality, we have not even really confronted. And so, at the risk of inviting similar scorn as that heaped on Damasa, I found myself trying to make sense of why many react to a Damasa painting with such melodrama.
If we don’t reduce our obsession with both Mandela-the-man and Mandela-the-myth, then we will find ourselves confused, disoriented and deeply depressed for many mornings after His departure.
First we need to get a grip on what, exactly, is going on. South Africans from across the racial, political and class divide have a psychological dependence on Mandela. Their – our - sense of comfort about this post-democratic space of ours, with all its trials and tribulations, require the distortions of reality that Mandela myth making is about. In that sense, Mandela has become a slate on which aspirations are inscribed.
These aspirations include such lofty ideals as non-racialism, forgiveness, moral fortitude, hope and sheer longevity, that sense of a dream that must be kept alive until Jesus comes. In a very visceral sense, the death of Mandela means, for many, the death of these aspirations.
The brutal truth, however, is that there are effective concrete steps we ourselves can, but never did, take towards achieving most of these “national goals”. If non-racialism is an ideal worth striving for (and this is a ‘truth’ which itself goes uncontested for fear of upsetting the fragile intergroup harmony we all conveniently take as a given), then we must ask whether we are closer now to a non-racial society than in 1994 and, if not, what the stumbling blocks are, and how we might overcome them?
Instead of engaging these questions dispassionately and honestly, we revert to colourful motifs that offer comfort and a sense of resolution. Mandela-the-myth plays that role. Supported by other motifs like Desmond Tutu’s Rainbow Nation, and bolstered by events such as Afrikaners sitting on beer crates in Soweto waiting for a photographer to capture the Ayobaness of it all ahead of a soccer match, this myth making allows us to avoid discomfort by dismissing such discomfort as the mere figment of doomsayers’ imaginations.
But we are lying to ourselves. And we are lying in His innocent, elderly name. Of course some strides have been made in small pockets of post-apartheid life – think, for example, of that multicultural darkie bobbing to Bon Jovi as if he has long blond hair waving through the air and his white friend dancing awkwardly to Mandoza’s Nkalakatha . The more lingering truth, however, is that much more has to be done before the Ayobaness of the Soccer World Cup fame can be declared real.
The desire to roll Mandela out in front of 90 000 fans and millions watching on television is an act of grand self-deception. Though his absence at the Soccer World Cup opening event was brought about by profound familial tragedy, hopefully it will mark an end to the inappropriate clinging onto yesteryear’s hero.
Instead, we have to reflect harder on some tough questions about privately held suspicions towards one another; non-violent but poisonous remnants of racism; a deep sense of alienation among sections of the white community; a deep sense of disappointment among countless black South Africans who are not sharing in the economic spoils of political freedom. To imagine Mandela as no longer alive is to imagine the centre of our fragile sense of community giving way. No wonder the thought can lead some to perform violent speech acts.
Thank goodness no actual violence followed the threats to deal with Damasa, as one caller promised, as one might deal with a poisonous snake. It cuts to the existential core of the proverbial new South Africa to ask what we will all do when Mandela goes. How did we even get to the point where an old-timer has come to take on such a larger than life role in our collective lives?
Myth making is not intrinsically bad. Myths, not unlike religion and opiates, can play a useful role in our lives. If making your toddler believe that Santa Clause will bring her great gifts will get the brat to calm stop crying, then you should certainly force-feed her the myth. Similarly, we needed Mandela-the-myth during the early years of democracy. But we must now move on. Myths are not a sustainable substitute for authenticity. Authenticity requires us to keep our eye on both the material and psycho-social challenges that need to be overcome as a precondition for, and in fact as the very definition of, meaningful nationhood. This requires of us to work harder at reducing inequality, eradicating poverty, and learning to be honest about, and speaking sensitively to, our differences and different lived realities.
That is, as opposed to sustaining the lie of a monolithic national people created in the singular, comforting, smiling image of one Nelson Mandela. But we need not wait for Mandela’s bodily demise to bury Mandela-the-myth. We must let go already.

[ THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN THE HERITAGE EDITION OF THE NEW AGE]