The Leadership Traits and Footsteps of Nelson Mandela: How Nelson Mandela Restored a Nation to Its Rightful Owners

By Ervin Williams

This book chronicles the life of Nelson Mandela from his early childhood, his lifetime struggle, his twenty-seven years in prison on Robbens Island, including his being elected as the first black president of South Africa to his death in December 2013.

The book also provides a brief history of the development of South Africa from its early days that laid the foundation for the oppressive Apartheid System. The apartheid era stripped blacks of most of their rights, their dignity, and individual freedom. It was through Mandelas personal leadership, over his lifetime, which gave rise to South Africa becoming a new democratic nation with political and economic freedom for all.

A major transition took place in South Africa in 1995 when all government agencies, previously ran by white people, were then turned over to black people to run. Very few, if any, black people had been previously trained in government administration and there was widespread fear that the country would collapse under such a transition. The country began to grow economically even though most of the black population continued to live below the poverty level.

Perhaps unbeknownst to many people in the United States, there are a number of similarities between South Africa and America. Both countries had black slaves, both countries fought the British for independence with South Africa doing so twice, and both countries had segregation, with apartheid in South Africa being a far more severe form of punitive segregation for blacks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499058666

Ervin Williams

Ervin Williams, PhD, is a global entrepreneur, world traveler, and author who lived in South Africa during Nelson Mandela’s presidency. He witnessed the struggles of white Africans in adjusting to the new, black-run government. He resides in St. Simons Island, Georgia, USA.

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SOUTH AFRICA

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Chapter 1

T oday, after 20 years, we can see the dividends of a new democracy in South Africa that was substantially created by Nelson Mandela and his fellow-freedom fighters. Now after Mandela’s election and twenty years of freedom, the gross domestic product (GDP) of South Africa has achieved sustained and unprecedented growth along with a significant drop in inflation level in the country.

A low and stagnant gross domestic product coupled with high inflation was the rule of the day under the apartheid era in South Africa. In 1994, South Africa’s first democratically elected government inherited an economy with deep structural flaws after having various economic crises for more than a decade. International isolation, economic sanctions, and the apartheid state’s resulting import-substitution approach to industrialization had created an insular economy.

With two decades of freedom, much work has gone into revitalizing the moribund economy bequeathed to the new democracy by apartheid. Between 1994 and 2012, the South African economy experienced positive growth in every quarter except for two of the seventy-eight quarters. The two quarters of negative growth were precipitated by a world crisis where almost every country suffered. At no previous time has South Africa ever had such a continuous economic expansion since its Federal Reserve first started keeping records.

Since 1994, a wide range of policies has been initiated to bring back black South Africans into the economy where they were previously excluded under apartheid. A broad-based black economic empowerment initiative (B-BBEE) and sharing of business equity were initiated; thus, allowing black South Africans to participate meaningfully in the economy in their work and at the business ownership level. However, this has only affected just a few thousand people.

On April 27, 2014, South Africa celebrated twenty years of the end of apartheid. The day was marked by street parades, speeches, prayers, music, and military salutes and displays. Desmond Tutu, Nobel peace laureate, said the day felt like falling in love again. Even F. W. de Klerk, the apartheid South Africa’s last white president, showed up and described the day as our proudest moment as South Africans. However, at the same time he was critical of the ruling party squandering its democratic inheritance through rampant government corruption.

In spite of the celebrations, South Africa has serious growing pains and massive unemployment. In the upcoming elections this year, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is expected to retain power, even with anger over graft, corruption, and glaring socio-economic disparities under its rule. In spite of mismanagement and poor government under the black rule, the majority of blacks in the country feel incomparably better today than they did under the white minority racist Apartheid System.

Job creation in South Africa has been disappointing and has not alleviated poverty and income inequity. The country was ranked among the most unequal societies in the world. As this inequity continues to grow, we have seen the poor South Africans take their anger to the streets, protesting over a lack of jobs, but also a lack of basic services in certain areas such as water, sanitation, electricity, and housing. Every city still has pockets of blacks in unsanctioned, informal squatter areas where they live in tin and cardboard shacks with no running water or electricity.

Unfortunately, having democracy does not equate with creating educational and income opportunities in South Africa. We see that 58 percent of white people are entering some form of higher education, whereas, only 14 percent of blacks are doing so. This means 75 percent of the population of South Africa (the blacks) will continue to be an economic drain on the economy in the future due to a lack of advanced education.

Financially, income distribution studies show that income inequity has increased aggregately and specifically between the racial group. In 2008, the wealthiest 10 percent earned 58 percent of the country’s total income and the top 5 percent of this group earned 43 percent of total income. This is a worsened situation from 1993, where the top 5 percent earned 38 percent of total income. Therefore, the rich are getting richer and the poorer are getting poorer.

When considering South Africa’s national poverty line of forty-three dollars per month, we note that 47 percent of South Africans are impoverished today after twenty years of freedom and economic growth of the country. Those earning a dollar a day have doubled from two million in 1994 to four million in 2006. In 2005, 63 percent of black children lived in households earning less than eight hundred rand (eighty dollars), as compared to only 4 percent of white children.

To curb this increasing problem of inequities among the races, South Africa must initiate two major endeavors. The government must set education as its number one priority in the country, hire world-class educational administrators, starting with the Minister of Education, triple its educational budget, and completely modernize and update its total pre-college educational system. If you don’t correct this education problem at an early age, fewer children will ever reach college level.

A second thing that is needed in South Africa is that the economy needs to initiate a core structural shift in order to grow the economy and create new jobs. To undergo such a structural shift means increasing manufacturing firms to produce value-added products and services, and to do so at a level that is higher than the country’s current exportation of mining commodities. So industrialization is critical for changing the economic face of South Africa. Clearly, this is a long-term endeavor.

The current level of economic growth cannot be sustained unless the country moves up the value chain and starts producing value-added product in significant quantities. The significance of these new value-added jobs is they not only create jobs at the manufacturing level, they also create job in upstream and downstream businesses.

Fortunately, the country has initiated a South African Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP) that is grounded with an imperative of smart reindustrialization, thus having a focus on growing the manufacturing sector according to the Trade and Industrial Minister. For example, the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) has provided equity finance for creating job opportunities in manufacturing, the green economy, infrastructure development, and also in the service sector.

A concurrent government-sponsored Manufacturing Investment Program (MIP) has approved eight hundred fifty-six projects which will create 43,570 new jobs in agro processing, metals and chemicals area. In the creative service industry, sixty-six film and TV productions were funded in 2013 along with one hundred four new long-term jobs in crafts and design in the Western Cape Area.

These industrial expansion initiatives are timely and needed, but a bit late. South Africa has taken one giant step forward toward freedom and democracy for all, and at the same time, it is taking several steps backward in job creation and quality of life. Two final recent metrics tell a grim story about the black governmental leadership in South Africa over the past twenty years. In 1994, unemployment in South Africa was 20 percent, and in 2013, it was 25 percent. Also, as of 2013, there was 1.4 times the number of people living in townships or informal settlements than there were in 1996. Most of these settlements lack the basic utilities required for decent living.

One can conclude that the people of South Africa now have voice. However, the above metrics tell us the quality of their lives overall has not materially improved under black government rule. This is true with the exception of the 5 to 10 percent of the top income earners in the country. One wonders what is the situation going to be in the next twenty years?

Perceptive leadership in government and business should have a clear understanding that topline GDP growth does not reflect overall enhancement of lives of the masses. A real question is whether both black and whites in top positions are working in concert for addressing these short-term and long-term problems facing the country? Perhaps it is going to take the emergence of another person with a Mandela’s leadership mentality to initiate a positive quality of life growth plan for all South Africans.

With all the above today’s problems in mind, now let’s take a journey in this book and trace the footsteps of Nelson Mandela during his lifetime. We will explore how the leadership efforts of one man, along with many of his associates, helped create a new democratic nation for all people and a nation where each person can have the opportunity and freedom of economic pursuit.

There were other footprints in South Africa long before Nelson Mandela, and some may have been our ancestors according to historians. The Cradle of Humankind offers a compelling story of the development of man throughout the world.

CRADLE OF HUMANKIND

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Chapter 2

J ust where did you originate from? Geneticists and paleontologists claim it to be South Africa. Although this may be difficult for some to accept, there is strong evidence that all humans descended from a single population that lived in Africa some one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand years ago. The story of our lineage and pedigree as a scientific study is perhaps the most misunderstood fractious and controversial science of all.

The history of mankind is a particularly sensitive subject in Africa and other parts of the world due to racial, ethnic, and cultural differences. These differences have all too often been used for social discrimination in South Africa. Fortunately, the indigenous black population has received a newfound freedom with the democratic election of 1994.

The study of genetics has certainly introduced a new factor into the study of human ancestry. Scientists have been able to use the DNA chain and measure the rate of mutation of humans over literally millions of years. They have been