S. Africa’s Part-Time President

The crowd already had trampled the fence and climbed every tree in sight when President Nelson Mandela’s helicopter landed in this remote northern village of thatch-topped huts.

Children literally sang his praises as he opened their new school. Grinning broadly, the 78-year-old leader began to dance. “This event is the biggest event in the history of big events!” a local official gushed to the crowd.

A day on the road with Mandela showed that his magic clearly has not waned. Indeed, the world’s most popular politician was met with similar awe and adulation on recent state visits to London and Paris.

But the euphoria is fading for the government Mandela has headed since South Africa’s first all-race elections ended apartheid in April 1994.

Allegations of mismanagement and arrogance increasingly plague his administration. Delivery of desperately needed services, from housing to health care, lags hopelessly behind schedule. The country’s currency, the rand, has plummeted in value. And violent crime has become endemic.

Mandela, meanwhile, has in effect become a part-time president. He typically spends only three days a week running the government and another three days running the ruling party, the African National Congress.

In a rare interview, Mandela was defensive and at times visibly angry when asked about the problems of South Africa halfway through his five-year term. He blamed rival political parties, the news media and unnamed “white interests” for exaggerating or exacerbating crises, including crime.

“It is my view that there are evil forces, reactionary forces, who still don’t want a black man to succeed,” Mandela said last week while flying back to Pretoria, the nation’s administrative capital, aboard the presidential jet.

He conceded that crime has reached “unacceptable levels” and vowed that police efforts will soon produce measurable results. “We are absolutely confident that we are on top of the situation,” he said.

But he added that criminals alone aren’t at fault. “It appears there are certain political parties that do not want investors to come,” he said. “Because if crime is out of control, then they think people will vote them back into power. . . . And many of you [reporters] are lapping it up.”

To be sure, the media highlight high-profile crimes. In recent weeks, the nation’s top judge and his wife were robbed at gunpoint in their home, the justice minister was forced to flee his house in fear of vigilante attackers, and police reported that thieves had stolen everything from computers to curtains inside Parliament.

Mandela also complained that “the press doesn’t cover our successes.” He cited the government’s little-noticed progress, for example, in reducing political violence in KwaZulu-Natal province.

Until recently, massacres and other internecine battles between members of the ANC and the rival Inkatha Freedom Party left about 100 people dead in the province each month. But a major police investigative effort since January has produced dramatic results: Fewer than 50 people have died in the last two months. Despite fears of widespread bloodshed, provincial elections in June were free of violence.

“They [the media] are not talking about that,” Mandela said bitterly.

He confirmed what every South African is talking about: his love life. Mandela plans to share his home two weeks each month with Graca Machel, the dynamic 50-year-old widow of Mozambique’s first post-colonial president, Samora Machel.

The couple have had a secret romance since early last year, complete with reports that Mandela sneaked off several times to Maputo, the Mozambican capital, and that she quietly joined him in Paris. They appeared in public for the first time last week, his arm over her shoulders, her arm around his waist, as they strolled through the president’s suburban neighborhood.

Asked if they will marry, he paused. “She has made a clear statement that she will not marry the president of South Africa,” said Mandela, who divorced his second wife, Winnie, earlier this year. “I cannot overrule her.”

But Mandela said Machel will begin traveling and attending events with him. “Anything is possible, save marriage,” he said with what may have been a blush. He then pleaded for no further questions about his personal life.

Despite his criticism of the media, much of Mandela’s private life is kept out of the public eye.

One reason is that most weeks he spends only three days--Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday--running the government, according to his spokesman, Parks Mankahlana. He said Mandela spends most Mondays at Shell House, the ANC headquarters, and tries to devote weekends to party affairs and meetings. Friday is his day off.

Tom Lodge, a political analyst at the University of the Witwatersrand, said the president’s schedule is less alarming than it sounds given a political tradition in which the ruling party becomes synonymous with government.

“Most people don’t make the distinction between ANC business and government business,” he said. “Certainly I don’t think the distinction is very clear in Mandela’s mind. In any case, the three days he works, he gives good value.”

Mankahlana said Mandela plans to spend even less time as the nation’s chief executive after he steps down as president of the ANC in December 1997, well before the next national election in April 1999. The goal is to let the deputy president, Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s heir apparent as leader of both the ANC and the country, gain more hands-on experience and to prepare the public for the eventual change.

“The head of the party normally is the man who runs the country,” Mankahlana explained. He said Mandela will “effectively step down from politics” at the end of next year and “will concentrate less on running the government.”

It’s not clear how that will affect the nation. Earlier this year, rumors that Mandela was sick triggered a sharp drop in the rand. Robert Schrire, an analyst at the University of Cape Town, said Mandela already is “a semi-retired president who focuses on the symbolic elements of the job and leaves the details to others,” especially Mbeki.

Mandela remains respected, even beloved, and few question his work habits. But many complain that his government has largely failed to meet many extravagant preelection pledges. The most glaring gap: Only about 20,000 homes have been built of 1 million promised by 1999.

Mandela denied that he has squandered at least part of the last two years or that his plans have gone awry.

“The wheels of government grind very slowly, and we haven’t got the resources we need,” he said. But he added, “We have done in two years what the apartheid government has not done for 50 years.”

He ticked off major achievements since he took office in May 1994, citing especially the impact of an economic liberalization program.

Inflation has dropped from 13% then to about 6% this year. The economy, which shrank before the election, is projected to grow 3.5% this year. And capital flight is no longer a problem. More than $8 billion has been returned from abroad for investment.

“There is a mood of confidence,” Mandela insisted. “There is a trade surplus. Trade is growing.”

So, however, are questions about Mandela’s role in two scandals that have dominated front pages for weeks. For the first time since he took office, his credibility has come under direct attack.

The first scandal concerns the expulsion from the ANC last month of one of its most popular young leaders, Bantu Holomisa, after he publicly criticized the party and accused Mbeki of accepting favors from Sol Kerzner, a casino owner facing a criminal probe for bribery. The case has never gone to trial.

At one point, Mandela tried to deflect criticism of the ANC by saying he had accepted a $400,000 campaign donation from Kerzner without telling anyone else in the party. That prompted an opposition member of Parliament to question whether he had personally carted the loot to the bank in a wheelbarrow.

The second flap involves the refusal since June by Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma to identify a “mystery donor” who, she said, offered about $2.5 million to help pay debts incurred by a controversial musical about AIDS.

The show, called “Sarafina II,” was sponsored by the Health Department but closed after investigators determined that aid money from the European Union was improperly used to pay for it. On Wednesday, Mandela told reporters that the secret donor had withdrawn as well because “the thing has created such an uproar.”

In the interview, Mandela’s voice rose in exasperation as he denied any wrongdoing by himself, members of his party or his government, or even the appearance of an irregularity. He called the criticism “an expression of racism” and “malicious charges.”

Still, Mandela remains a figure of grave dignity and courtly charm. On his trip to the school opening here last week, he wore one of his trademark shirts, of shimmering silver and purple batik, open at the neck and loose over the belt--far from the rags he wore during most of the 27 years he spent in prison for fighting apartheid.

He had flown about 320 miles northeast of Pretoria to inaugurate six schools and three health clinics built or renovated by Gencor, a giant mining consortium. Until now, local students were taught under trees, and the nearest doctors were hours away. The government has declared the entire Northern Province, the country’s poorest, a disaster in human development.

So Mandela went by helicopter from village to village, flying over a vast, dry expanse of acacia scrub dotted with lonely clusters of whitewashed huts topped with thatch. His first stop was the Mutshetshe School, and it offered a vintage view of Mandela unplugged.

Landing in a choking cloud of dust, he climbed down slowly from his Oryx helicopter and walked stiffly across the field. Pandemonium erupted as hundreds of people rushed forward. A few police officers vainly whacked with sticks at barefoot children, while soldiers nervously fingered their rifles.

Mandela seemed immune as bodyguards led him through the crowd. He was imposing, fully a head taller than almost anyone else. He stopped to greet and thank each teacher and policeman.

“Very nice to see you,” he said with a dazzling smile. “Very good. Oh yes, very good. So nice to see you. Oh yes, very nice.”

Inside the school, he inspected empty rooms, approved of new furniture and chatted with several of the 800 new students. Every window was full of wide-eyed faces. Outside, the noise was deafening from traditional drums and dancers, a blaring brass band and scores of satin-clad majorettes performing to a loud cassette player. Mandela stopped to bang a log drum when he emerged.

A brief ceremony was held under an awning. A children’s choir sang, “Mr. Mandela, you are great, you are wonderful, you are the mother and father of the new South Africa.” He then rose and spoke without introduction.

He said South Africa turned from “polecat of the world” to a “miracle nation” in 1994 thanks to their support. “Whatever you do, you must walk tall,” he admonished the cheering crowd.

Then he excused himself, saying he already had talked too much. His smile stretched wide as he added a parting joke. “I don’t want to lose my job,” he explained.