On Twenty-First Century Postcolonialism

In December 2013 former South African president Nelson Mandela passed away. The mourning from around the world sounded like an echo of a vanished refrain from the remote twentieth century, a finale after the end. With the termination of white supremacist rule in South Africa in 1994, it appeared as if a heavy curtain on five hundred years of brutal imperialism and racist colonialism had finally come down. Mandela's death further sealed the end of imperialism, even though South Africa was still in turmoil, still torn by conflicts after the disintegration of extreme racism and colonial rule. In 2013 another biographical movie came out, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. (dir. Justin Chadwick). Once again, it narrated the glorious life of this great warrior of peace. In similar historiographies Mandela is portrayed as having fought peacefully, using his forty years of imprisonment to finally turn the scales of power upside down.