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Mandela and Trump: There’s more than a contrast in style and substance

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 Nelson Mandela. Picture: Theana Calitz/Nelson Mandela Foundation
Nelson Mandela. Picture: Theana Calitz/Nelson Mandela Foundation

The recent centenary celebrations honouring Nelson Mandela have been as much a cause for celebration for me, as an American, as for the millions in South Africa and others around the world. As an American, it is impossible for me to celebrate the life of one of this century’s most revered leaders without thinking about one of this century’s most reviled leaders, that being Donald J Trump, the current president of the United States.

Beyond the obvious comparisons, in one we have a leader of unquestioned integrity, in the other the lack of integrity is always a question. One is the personification of self-sacrifice, the other the dictionary description of self-serving and double dealing. One is a legendary model of leadership, the other loathed, except by some of the world’s most corrupt and oppressive regimes. The contrast is so obvious there is no need to identify who fits which profile.

Despite former US president Obama’s attempt to “go high” in his Johannesburg lecture and avoid mentioning, by name, his successor that has taken the US to a new low, the inevitable comparison between Mandela and Trump was a lingering subtext to the centenary celebrations here and around the world. Clearly there are lessons to be learned from such comparisons, but there are some other lessons that loom as large that are worth reflecting upon as well

The first is axiomatic relative to the nature of democracy. Democracy does not guarantee that countries will get a continuing line of great leaders. It doesn’t even guarantee a succession of good leaders. An informed and engaged citizenry is the only protection and corrective against errant leaders and subversive leadership agendas. If democracy is going to deliver dividends in terms of governance and opportunity citizens have “stay woke” and stay involved. Every vote matters. For those that have become cynical because democracy doesn’t deliver perfect outcomes at every turn and have concluded it doesn’t matter who’s in office, Donald Trump is exhibit number one that every election and every vote matters.

US President Donald J. Trump. Picture: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

A more specific lesson for the world’s young democracies is that if a demigod like Donald Trump can get elected in the world’s oldest and longest standing constitutional democracy, it can happen anywhere. For democracy to work in South Africa, and other countries on the continent, citizens are going to have to work it. The ultimate difference between Mandela and Trump is that millions of citizens stood in line to vote for Mandela and, in Trump’s case, millions stayed home. Truth and justice triumph when people participate in the process, reactionary and regressive politicians and policies win when people don’t.

The last lesson worth noting is a little less obvious, but no less poignant. Trump’s troubling behaviour toward America’s longstanding allies has made an already unsettled world more nervous. There is a lesson in this lunacy as well.

American allies like the UK, France, and Germany, and even Canada, have inexplicably been on the wrong end of Trump’s wrath since he took office. At a recent G7 meeting this year, it was reported that Trump, literally, threw a piece of candy at German Chancellor Angela Merkel and said, “don’t ever say I never gave you anything.” There is a message in this madness worth hearing and heeding. The humiliations and embarrassment that our European brothers and sisters have suffered at the hands of Trump are a story with a moral, and it’s this: the shoe pinches when it’s on the other foot. How you felt when Trump disrespected you and dismissed your interests, is exactly how Africans felt when you’ve done it to them.

These lessons that are better learned only once, but however and whenever they come, they should not be missed. As a leader like Mandela reminds us, when we get it right the result brings hope and promise. When we get it wrong, as is the case in Donald Trump, the result is pain and peril.

Charles R. Stith is the non-executive chairperson of the African Presidential Leadership Centre, South Africa, and former US Ambassador to Tanzania during the Clinton Administration

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