Mandela goes from hero to scapegoat as South Africa struggles

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela is everywhere. The country’s currency bears his smiling face, at least 32 streets are named for him and nearly two dozen statues in his image watch over a country in flux.

Every year on July 18, his birthday, South Africans celebrate Mandela Day by volunteering for 67 minutes—painting schools, knitting blankets or cleaning up city parks—in honour of the 67 years that Mandela spent serving the country as an anti-apartheid leader, much of it behind bars.

But 10 years after his death, attitudes have changed. The party Mandela led after his release from prison, the African National Congress, is in serious danger of losing its outright majority for the first time since he became president in 1994 in the first free election after the fall of apartheid. Corruption, ineptitude and elitism have tarnished the ANC.

Mandela’s image—which the ANC has plastered across the country—has for some shifted from that of hero to scapegoat.

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