Whatever became of Nelson Mandela?

When history logs the death of Nelson Mandela for posterity, what date will be carved on his gravestone – and indeed on monuments across the free world? Whatever the numbers used, the truth will likely always be lost to official clumsiness, greed, self-interest, family petty politics, commercial interest, face-saving and obfuscation. Why? Because while even in death, Mandela remains good for business, savage Africa once again shows its true colours in bringing low even this contemporary colossus.

A seemingly credible piece of journalism claims Mandela was actually declared dead on 26th June 2013. However, as long as the ANC government refuses to make any kind of definitive announcement, this will continue to lurk under the radar. If anybody wonders why they missed this announcement, or even why any mention by way of news updates has been absent these recent months, this is why.

I won’t be alone in never having encountered the Las Vegas-based Guardian Express newspaper, until being made aware of an article it published on 4th July this year Nelson Mandela, Death, Dishonesty and Denial (http://bit.ly/17WFG9y)*. The article reveals the unedifying story that while likely clinically dead and in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) since 26th June 2013, the former president’s internal organs have been artificially kept working via life support apparatus for reasons of state convenience, while the government and Mandela clan play out a grotesque farce – each manoeuvring to secure his or her optimum benefit.

For 27 years of incarceration, he was treated as a piece of meat by successive apartheid administrations as an enemy of the state. After his sensational release, political re-invention, ascendancy to the premiership and popular transformation to global icon, who would have believed it conceivable his status would ever revert to being a piece of meat, wretchedly dependent on being portioned out for the grubby benefit of those closest to him: family, friends, comrades and colleagues?

The ANC’s rapacious gaucheness shows itself stronger than ever, while Madiba’s own grandson demonstrates a robotic commercial ruthlessness whereby he is clearly engineering his grandfather’s final resting place to be in the Eastern Cape village of Mvezo where he – Mandla Mandela – is chief, and not in Qunu where Mandela grew up, retired and where it was naturally assumed he would be laid to rest. The Guardian Express piece further reports that Mandla had already had the bodies of three of Mandela’s children exhumed from their graves in Qunu and reburied in Mvezo, presumably as a curtain-raiser to the main event.

Nelson Mandela – as soon as he became an icon – attained the superstar status of movie actors, athletes and musicians, and (as with them) we all assumed some proprietorial feelings born out of respect and affection for his achievements. This tacky start to his legacy should serve as a sharp reminder to all that we have no rights of ownership at all, because we can see in the carrion clamour for that legacy by those who surely need to have loved him more than anyone else how absurd any such idea is on our part. But do we at least have a right to expect better of them, the curators of his place in history?

And until such time as it suits the South African government finally to stop all the clocks and cut off the telephone, doesn’t one look on and think …Nothing now can ever come to any good?

Guardian Express timeline http://bit.ly/1aDOZvh

* By-line Graham Noble with input from Guardian Express South Africa correspondent Laura Oneale