Unconvincing ‘updates’ stoke Mandela guesswork
NELSON Mandela deserves so much better than the recently anarchic management of his dying days by his family and the government. The disgraceful squabbling in the extended Mandela clan and the Presidency’s parsimonious release of unconvincing snippets of information about his declining health are spoiling the dignified death that is his due.
If he had indeed intended that his grandson Mandla should head the family in his absence, he appears to have chosen poorly. Mandla has been neither regal nor wise in his squalid bid to dominate a family made rich in investments and influence by its revered patriarch.
The recently abandoned bid by other Mandela children to wrest control of his wealth from the trustees he appointed when he was in better mental and physical health was in similar contrast to the style of the man himself.
His example is being ignored also by the government in its management of information about his health. Whereas he was as transparent as he could be, even when it was obviously painful or even embarrassing, the Presidency has only grudgingly released the little information it has given about Mandela’s health, often contributing to confusion rather than clearing it.
The constant repetition of the phrase “critical but stable” tells an anxious global audience nothing useful. Instead, it fuels the search for detail elsewhere and makes misreporting more likely.
Last week, Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe, and 14 others told a Mthatha court in a so-called certificate of urgency that he was in a “permanent vegetative state” and that they had been advised to switch off equipment that was keeping him alive.
Three days later, his old colleague-in-arms, Denis Goldberg, told the BBC he had found Mandela responsive and awake, and Graça Machel was reported to have said her husband might yet recover.
Mandela set the precedent for information about his personal life while he was president, describing painful details of the breakdown of his marriage in open court when he could have demanded privacy.
In 1996, amid speculation about his health, he authorised the surgeongeneral to release a detailed statement about his medical history, his medical condition at the time and the medication he was taking.
The South African government has never been as transparent as it was during Mandela’s presidency, but it is not too late to learn from him. The Presidency should let Mandela’s doctors or the surgeongeneral hold regular and detailed briefings about the health of the world’s most famous citizen and the prognosis. That, rather than the current cacophony of rumours and lay interpretation, will give Mandela the dignity he deserves.