Nelson Mandela did not sell out

17 JUL 2026, 00:30

7 min read

It was about two years ago that I discovered the name of one Gibson Makanda, apparently a historical figure of profound consequence the majority of South Africans do not know about.

He is, the stories go, the lookalike of Nelson Mandela who walked out of Victor Verster Prison hand in hand with Nomzamo Winnie, his wife and struggle hero in her own right.

According to the legend, Mandela was secretly released many years ago and moved overseas where he lived in comfort. His lookalike, Makanda, was installed in his place so that at the right time he would negotiate a compromise with the National Party, selling out black people in the process. Not too carefully cultivated, the fiction nonetheless has significant traction on that platform.

Like all conspiracy theories it needs a vast number of people with diverse interests to have collaborated on the lie, such as Winnie herself who, curiously, is not accused of having sold out despite having shared a home with Makanda in his cameo role as Nelson. But too many people believe it, relying on a profound ignorance of history.

This is just one of many versions of how Mandela “sold out”. The selling out has much to do with the high levels of unemployment and inequality that have largely escaped the white community. 

Understandably a lot of people feel that had Mandela, the supposed leader of the organisations and groups that negotiated an end to apartheid at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa), insisted on nationalising the economy, black and coloured people would not be living in so much poverty.

It's understandable, of course. And I am not speaking from a distance, for I have close relatives who have been unemployed for so long they have been unemployed for longer than they have been adults. They battle to keep hope alive every day. The same is true of many of my childhood friends.

Since the 1960s, its biggest backer had been the Soviet Union which started to come apart at the seams in the late 1980s. Its economic decline and internal turmoil led to it breaking apart and the financial backing to the ANC and other groups coming to an end. 

Only Sweden was left in a position to back the ANC, which had thousands of MK combatants and other exiled activists to look after. The Swedish money wasn’t enough.

Secondly, part of the settlement that delivered liberation to Namibia in 1990 required all foreign fighters to leave Angola within a set timeline. The MK camps were in Angola at the time, with the Nkomati Accord of 1985 having resulted in MK’s earlier expulsion from Mozambique. 

So, neither Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe, eSwatini nor Mozambique was available to host military facilities that, in any event, did not have the financial resources needed to conduct operations.

In other words, the ANC did not have a choice but to negotiate an end to apartheid for it simply had no means to carry out a sustained armed struggle. But even in its heyday, MK was often compromised by an effective apartheid intelligence infrastructure that to this day still haunts Thabo Mbeki’s mind. He still blames “military intelligence” for the ANC’s current failures; but I digress.

The ANC’s last-ditch attempt at a military/guerilla operation that had been initiated in 1986, Operation Vula, ended in failure when its commanders and operatives were arrested in a wide sweep in 1990. Although many weapons had been smuggled into the country already by the time of the arrests, there was simply no way to regain the initiative alongside negotiations.

Successful negotiations need both smarts and leverage and, although the ANC had an embarrassment of intellectually gifted leaders, there was basically zero military leverage. 

Meanwhile the country was going up in flames in an internal conflict that was killing and maiming everyone including children, such as the Shobashobane and Boipatong massacres, to name but two.

It is truly difficult to explain to someone who was too young or not yet born at the time how incredibly violent the country was. 

This writer lost an uncle, Sizwe Zibi, speared and thrown off a train on the East Rand. My childhood friend, Thando Mthembu and four others were brutally killed by the SADF special forces at Northcrest, Mthatha during April 1993, not long before Chris Hani was also murdered.

It was in this environment that Mandela and others still had to secure as best a deal as they could get. It was never going to be the same as achieving a military victory. Not helping is the bad history telling by the ANC once it came to power, too eager to give the impression that it alone “defeated” apartheid to entrench its hegemony. 

That has now come back to bite it as its own failures prompt the question at the heart of this essay, whether its most iconic leader, Mandela, “sold out”.

It's a question that would never arise had it done a proper job of managing and growing the economy and using state power to facilitate rapid structural changes to both the economy and South Africa’s general policy thinking. 

It also has no theory of what kind of society it wished to build, resulting in a persistent tendency to deploy some of its most incapable and corrupt in key positions.

For example, billions in Public Investment Corporation funds are being spent on “investments” that do not result in new economic productive capacity, while billions get lost to theft. 

The PIC is one of the largest funds of its type in the world but under-utilises its influence with a poorly conceived legislation on its board composition, structure and mandate. None of this is the fault of the apartheid regime or Mandela.

Another example is how millions of poor and working-class South Africans suffer under the yoke of apartheid spatial planning and that transport costs constitute the biggest component of household expenditure for the working poor. 

Yet, the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa is underfunded and has persistent governance problems. It would make a world of difference if South Africans could access its services at a fraction of what they pay the taxi industry.

These are but two examples amongst too many to mention. We do not have a crisis of Codesa dealmaking but a crisis of governance and political vision. It is profound failures of governing that cause so many young people to question whether anything could have been done to secure a better deal for their present and future.

That said, there is an enormous opportunity to redefine the present and the future in two ways. The first is to seize the initiative in the same way Mandela, Tambo, Sobukwe, Biko and others did, to chart a new democratic path that is not premised on a past that we wish we had but on a future we can build on our own. But it takes vision and courage to do so.

Having listened to many who blame Mandela for “selling out”, I always arrive at the same rejoinder: Mandela did his time on the streets, in armed struggle and in prison. He did the best he could. He did not sell out. If we want a different future we best follow his example and take ownership of our country, our society and our collective future. At least no one will send us to prison.

Songezo Zibi is leader of Rise Mzansi and chairman of Scopa.