South Africa: When a fly-past of South African Air Force jet fighters roared over the crowds in Pretoria on May 10th, 1994, the signal was sent out that the new South Africa had arrived, writes Seamus Martin.
The pilots who gave this display of loyalty at the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela had been brought up as the heirs to the old, despicable, apartheid regime but now were paying homage to the arrival of democracy.
Hope was the keyword on that remarkable day in the southern-hemisphere's autumn. The hope was that of South Africa as a beacon to a continent plagued by despotism and corruption. As the South Africa correspondent of this newspaper at the time, I was one of the hopeful ones. I still am.
Allister Sparks's latest work concentrates on the developments in his country since that important day. His analysis serves to confirm the hope that, despite a number of severe setbacks, South Africa's progress on the road to prosperity and continental leadership will continue.
As we watched those planes fly by and saw political leaders from throughout the world celebrate South Africa's great day, a hidden menace lurked. In those days, AIDS was a disease that plagued other countries in Africa. Here at the southern tip it had yet to make its presence felt. But the disease takes years to manifest itself and amongst those who cheered democracy's arrival were men and women whose death warrants, unknown to themselves, had already been signed.
Now AIDS is the country's foremost problem, and one which has tarnished the image of Mandela's successor, the incumbent President Thabo Mbeki. Reports in the western media that Mbeki had stated that HIV did not lead to AIDS have been shown to be false but his attitude to the disease has been harmful to say the least.
Sparks, whose career as editor of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail brought him into close relationship with the African National Congress (ANC) and the international anti-apartheid movement, is naturally sympathetic to Mbeki. But unlike many of his colleagues he takes the bull by the horns and states that the President's "culpability looms large". Sparks describes how Mbeki fell under the influence of a group of dissident American scientists known simply as "The Group". These included Peter Duesberg, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California (Berkeley); David Rasnick, a Californian biochemist; and Kary Mullis, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1993. Mullis's prize-winning procedure Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) had helped identify HIV, but he stated that he did not believe it caused AIDS.
This dalliance with the scientific dissidents is over, thanks to the militant stance of grassroots ANC members and the immense authority of Nelson Mandela, whose views on AIDS were opposite to those of his successor. Anti-retroviral drugs are now becoming available. The future now looks less bleak than heretofore.
Sparks highlights two further important problems confronting South Africa on its way to becoming the shining example for the rest of the continent. One, crime, can and is being dealt with internally. The other stems from South Africa being subjected to a western view that has painted African countries as unreliable, dictatorial and unable to run their economies.
Such a picture would have been perfectly justified if applied to the old white-ruled South Africa. The new dispensation, however, as Sparks shows, is less dictatorial, more reliable and has been able to stabilise its economy. The Communist Party element in Government, recognising the facts of life in the global economy, has been to the forefront in privatising industries. Whether or not this will ensure increased inward investment remains to be seen.
Sparks regrets, however, that South Africa "has no Robert McNamaras, or Dick Cheneys or Michael Bloombergs" who can shuttle between business and politics. His choice of US Vice President Cheney as an example is unfortunate. Cheney voted in the US Senate in the 1980s to keep Nelson Mandela in prison and has since defended this stance.
Irish readers will be interested that Sparks points out Education Minister Kader Asmal, the former Dean of Humanities at Trinity College, Dublin, as "the star of the Mandela cabinet". He also gives an insight into President Mbeki's intense interest in the poetry of W. B. Yeats and Ireland's struggle for independence.
He does, however, render Micheál Mac Liammoir as "Michael MacLeammour". The Gate Theatre's great performer, to add insult to injury, is described as "the lead actor from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin".
It goes to show that even famous editors such as Sparks occasionally do not check their facts.
Seamus Martin is a former South Africa correspondent and International Editor of The Irish Times
Beyond the Miracle: Inside the New South Africa. By Allister Sparks, Profile Books, 370pp. £14.99