To buy or subscribe, please email: sales@adonis-abbey.com
Sub-Saharan Africa has been on world headlines in recent months, more for devastating and heart-wrenching news than for any other. The news is sour from the South to North, West to East – and especially so in the largest economies such as South Africa and Nigeria, and other rising power houses such as Kenya.
In the particular case of South Africa, December 6, 2013 marks a great loss as the world witnessed the departure of a global statesman who delivered his country from the dark days of apartheid, Nelson Rolihlahla (troublemaker) Mandela, South African anti-apartheid revolutionary who was imprisoned and then became a politician, philanthropist, and President of his country between 1994 to 1999, who died at the age of 95. As the current President Jacob Zuma put it (Laing, 2013) "Our nation has lost its greatest son." The implications of Mandela's death are far-reaching for a country that has been bedevilled with political uncertainty with its wider business consequences.
It is worth recalling that Nelson Mandela has been at the forefront of putting South Africa on the global stage for all the right reasons. His inauguration in 1994 as South Africa’s first black president was attended by an estimated 100,000 people of all races - from foreign dignitaries from 140 countries including from the US First Lady Hillary Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore; late Cuban leader Fidel Castro; the Duke of Edinburgh Prince Charles; and late Palestinian Liberation Organisation head Yasser Arafat. In death, among those who will be invited to attend his funeral are The Queen of England, US President Barack Obama, the Pope, U2 front man Bono, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and FW de Klerk, the former South African president with whom he shared the Nobel Peace Prize for dismantling apartheid.
In a column during Mr. Mandela's hospital stay in January 2011, Nic Dawes, editor of the South African weekly Mail and Guardian, sought to explain why the great statesman would be so missed when he finally slipped away (Laing, 2013): "His presence is part of the structure of our national being. We worry that we may not be quite ourselves without him." President Jacob Zuma in a press conference, referred to it as “...the moment of our deepest sorrow. Our nation has lost his greatest son. Yet what made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human - we saw in him what we seek in ourselves and in him we saw so much of ourselves." British Prime Minister, David Cameron, in a statement released on Twitter, put it this way: "Nelson Mandela was a hero of our time. I've asked for the flag at No. 10 to be flown at half-mast."
In all these, however, there remains an air of uncertainty as to the future of South Africa where …”the political and socioeconomic landscape…”