We moved back to SA a week after Mandela was released. My thoughts on SA as someone who saw this goal of transformation fail. Mandela was an incredible humanis

We moved back to SA a week after Mandela was released. My thoughts on SA as someone who saw this goal of transformation fail. Mandela was an incredible humanist, more so than people realise. his government was run on charm, persuasion and super bright people completely unqualified for their roles. The outcome of that was that technocrats (given the failings) and the movement of technocrats took over post (Mbeki). The vacuum (of burocratic skill and knowledge [i go uggh]) which was running a system that big could not (and never can) be built in a resistance movement. So arise the technocrats. Technocrats cannot understand/appease the person living in a shack not having any money or future 20 years post apartheid. So now the deal they negotiated in 90+ 96 + 99 (and yes it was a good deal in many ways (Chicago school) bad in so many as well) has only created a greater imbalance. Now we have entered the era of populists. figure that one out yourself. Mandela's death will do more for SA and a fair bit of southern africa than most occurrences will, and era of memberance, reading reflection, humanism will come about. for a while. My greatest grievence with Mandela simply lies in that he did not break up the tri party alliance early (trade unions, communist party and the anc which is extremely right wing in contrast) allowing them to get 60%+ votes which effectively means it is a new dictatorship. (i am sorry if 80% of the votes are prone to gerrymandering + an extremely uneducated populace i won't call it a true democracy - then again first past the post - hah!). a great human. the meaning and writing and so indefinitely misused from now.