Abstract

It is impossible to discount Nelson Mandela’s significance to South Africa. Proof came with his latest hospitalisation for a chronic lung infection. An anxious nation parsed official characterisation of his condition as “serious” as this descriptor had not been used during prior hospital stays. Uncertainty prompted a longtime friend and fellow inmate on Robben Island to urge the former president’s family and, really, the nation to “release him so that God may have his own way.” This piece assesses what South Africa will be and do after Mandela.