DID MANDELA SELL OUT?

South Africans are heading to the polls to elect a new government, the sixth time they’ve done so since the end of apartheid in 1994. But one issue during those thirty years has never gone away, South Africa’s massive wealth gap.

The majority-Black population has remained poor three decades after Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) took over the reigns of power. Many factors are blamed, including the claim Mandela and other ANC leaders sold out to White elites.

The accusation isn’t disputed by Julius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party. During this appearance at the UK’s Oxford Union, in 2016, he said Mandela was close to the White elite that ran the country and was a different man to the one everyone knew, when he left prison. However, we shouldn’t dwell on the past, says Malema. Instead, the new generation’s task is to accomplish what Mandela failed to do.