Mandela Debate: Slaying the wrong dragon: Why we must stop fighting our parents’ wars

Every generation is born into a story it did not write, but every generation is tasked with the same burden: to face its own dragons.

For our parents and grandparents, the dragon was visceral and loud. It wore a uniform, carried a flag, and spoke the language of the law. It looked like minority rule, pass laws, and racial segregation.

It was a system that drew lines in the dirt and said: this land is yours, that land is mine, and you must never cross.

For us, the dragon looks different. It wears a suit, lives in spreadsheets and algorithms, and hides behind holding companies and bank balances.

The tragedy of our time is that we often confuse the dragons. We blame yesterday’s fighters for not slaying today’s monsters. We keep shouting at the past while the present quietly tightens its grip.

This is an invitation to step back, honour the battles our elders fought, name the enemy standing in front of us, and accept that our children will eventually have dragons of their own.

The Liberation Generation and Their Dragon

Let’s start with something uncomfortable: in most liberation struggles, we were not trying to solve the deepest problems of humanity. We were fighting for political power.

The goal was to remove a minority regime and replace it with majority rule. The dragon was visible: a government, a police force, a “Whites Only” sign. The problems nationalists rallied around were concrete: dignity, land, and opportunity.

The people who rose to this challenge were unbelievably brave. They mobilized crowds, survived torture, and endured exile. But there is a twist we rarely discuss: It does not automatically follow that people who are good at toppling a system are good at governing one.

Being a freedom fighter requires resistance and sacrifice. Being a statesman requires building institutions, managing complex economies, and planning for decades. We romanticized the idea that the same people could do both flawlessly.

After the Flag Went Up: The Math of Inequality

When the liberation leaders took office, they discovered a brutal truth: Politicians had far less power than they imagined. They held the presidency, but power sat with the owners of the economy.

To understand why the “fruits of independence” feel scarce, we have to look at the numbers. The transfer of political power did not equate to a transfer of economic assets.

In South Africa, a primary example of this struggle, the statistics paint a stark picture of the dragon that survived the transition:

• Land Ownership: Decades after political liberation, the Land Audit Report indicated that white landowners (who make up less than 9% of the population) still owned approximately 72% of the total farms and agricultural holdings by individuals.
• Unemployment: The disparity in opportunity remains racialized. Official statistics frequently show Black African unemployment hovering between 30% to 40%, while unemployment for the White population often remains in the single digits (around 7-8%).
• Wealth Gap: The top 10% of the population owns more than 85% of the aggregate wealth, while the bottom 50% holds negative net wealth (more debt than assets).

The new leaders had taken the steering wheel of a bus, but the routes, the fuel, and the ownership of the bus company were controlled elsewhere. To change this would have required a new, unglamorous war to democratize the economy. instead, many chose a different path.

The Shortcut: Corruption as a Band-Aid

Rather than admitting how limited their power was, too many nationalists chose to partner with the economic elite instead of challenging them.

Politics became transactional. Boardrooms replaced community halls. When communities pointed out that water didn’t run and schools were crumbling, the state machinery—once a tool of liberation—was turned against dissenters.

By the time these leaders tried to pivot back to wealth redistribution, their “credibility account” was empty. Every policy was viewed through a lens of suspicion: “Whose pocket will this fill?” They had missed their moment of moral authority.

Our Generation’s Dragon: Powerless in a “Free” World

And now, here we are. We are the generation that possesses the vote but lacks the equity.

We are told we are free, yet we look around and realize we own almost nothing. We are invited to be workers in someone else’s company or politicians in someone else’s game. This is our dragon: Fragmentation in the face of borderless problems.

While we argue over old tribal lines—Shona or Ndebele, Xhosa or Zulu, black or white—our actual threats have gone global.

• Climate Change: It does not ask for your ID.
• Global Finance: Economic shocks in New York or Shanghai destroy livelihoods in rural villages.
• Technology: AI and automation will transform labor markets regardless of our local politics.

If we want to solve the challenges facing humanity now, we cannot keep organizing ourselves around which side of the river we were born on. 

Stop Asking Yesterday’s Heroes to Fight Today’s Battles

We often get stuck looking at figures like Nelson Mandela and asking, “Why didn’t they fix economic inequality or climate change while they were at it?”

This is unfair. Mandela was born in 1918. He was born into a world where colonial rule was the norm and horses were a primary mode of transport. He could not have predicted cryptocurrency, data privacy laws, or the gig economy of 2025.

They fought the dragon in front of them: racial domination and legal apartheid. That was their assignment. It is lazy to blame them for not fighting battles that belong to us.

We see today’s dragons clearly:

• A financial system that traps nations in debt.
• A warming planet where the poorest pay the highest price.
• A culture of algorithmic outrage.

These dragons wear our names on their calendars, not Mandela’s.

Conclusion: The Draft is Ours to Write

We honor our history not by living in it, but by learning from it. The earth belongs equally to those who came before, those here now, and those yet to be born.

We cannot blame our grandparents for not fighting the monster standing at our door today. Their story is written, printed, and bound. Ours is still in draft.

The question is no longer, “Why didn’t they fix everything?” The real question is, “What are we going to do with the freedom we have?”

We can continue shouting at the past, or we can start organizing for a future where ownership is shared, technology empowers rather than enslaves, and solidarity is bigger than tribe or race.

The dragons of yesterday are not coming back. The dragons of tomorrow are already warming up. It is time to pick up our own swords.

Mpumelelo Ndlovu is a Data Management Professional and Cloud Engineer. You can follow him on Twitter (X) : @hlosukwakha and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpums