President Nelson Mandela marks first year in office

President Nelson Mandela marks first year in office

By Brendan Boyle

CAPE TOWN (Reuter): As President Nelson Mandela marked a year
as South Africa's first black head of state on Wednesday,
political analysts were already pondering whether it was time he
moved on.

Addressing a band, a few dozen soldiers and curious onlookers
outside his Cape Town office, Mandela, 76, recalled the parade
and air force fly-past that marked his inauguration in Pretoria
on May 10 last year after South Africa's all-race elections that
formally ended apartheid.

"We were then at a critical point in our history. We were
poised between two orders, between oppression and freedom," he
said.

In interviews linked to anniversary celebrations, Mandela,
winner with former white leader F.W. de Klerk of a Nobel Peace
Prize, has called peace the main prize of freedom.

"I think we have done very well...we have achieved a near
miracle," he told state television on the eve of the April 27
Freedom Day holiday marking the anniversary of the first
democratic elections.

Politicians and political analysts do not dispute that
Mandela, jailed for 27 years until 1990 for fighting apartheid,
has done well, but some are asking whether it is time for him to
step back from the front line of government.

University of Cape Town political scientist Robert Shrire said
economic progress was being undermined by uncertainty about the
succession after Mandela's promised retirement when South
Africans take part in their next general elections in 1999.

"I think he is nearing the end of his productive period as a
leader and it would be useful if he would begin phasing himself
out over the next 12 to 18 months," he said.

"President Mandela has played an enormously important symbolic
role, but he is not up to the tough issues that need to be dealt
with now," he added.

Shrire and some senior ANC members believe Mandela has
demonstrated his frailty recently with damaging errors.

He was obliged to rehire his estranged wife, Winnie, for a day
after a bungled dismissal triggered by her open defiance of his
authority.

He went out on a limb for ANC veteran and former activist
Allan Boesak, offering him "a very high diplomatic post" while
the former preacher is still under police investigation for fraud
involving aid funds from abroad.

And he rocked international confidence with an irritable
threat to gerrymander the constitution to allow him to crack down
on rival black leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi's rebellious KwaZulu-
Natal province.

Mandela insists he is only an instrument of the ANC, which
scored a runaway 62 percent victory last April and looks
unbeatable in local elections in November.

"It may well be that people are concentrating too much on an
old man who was in prison for so long...I don't think that we
should separate an individual from the team of which he is part,"
he told state television.

"President Mandela is a human being. He has to let off steam
sometimes," said a senior government source.

But another person in frequent contact with Mandela told
Reuters the president was becoming increasingly irritable and
difficult to advise.

"Sometimes the president only listens to those who tell him
what he wants to hear," he said.