WHEN Nelson Mandela stood in front of the Union Buildings in Pretoria in May 1994 as South Africa’s first democratically elected president, my country was brimming with optimism for its post-apartheid future. I was there and relieved at the prospect of an end to bloodshed. I had seen far too much violence and death in my five-year career as a journalist, covering the deadly political violence that characterised the dying moments of apartheid. But was the negotiated settlement real freedom? The sceptic in me wondered. How could it be when we did not really defeat the white settler colonialists who’d…