Nearly two decades ago, I stood a few feet away from Nelson Mandela in a small village outside Durban, South Africa, when at the age of 75 he voted for the first time in his life, signaling the end of more than 300 years of racist rule at the southern end of the African continent. It was a transcendent moment in the history of South Africa, and in my life. I had grown up in Cape Town, within sight of Robben Island, where Mandela had been incarcerated. I never dared to hope that I would even see one of the great figures of world history alive - let alone casting a vote that would lead to his inauguration as president 10 days later.

In the preceding months, as I covered the election campaign, Mandela's smiling face beamed down from giant posters with the slogan of the African National Congress, the liberation movement turned political party: "A Better Life for All."

That is why it is so painful today to see Mandela's vision so incompletely realized.

No one expected that repairing the profound damage inflicted by centuries of racist rule would be done easily or quickly. Just undoing the architecture of apartheid - the vast segregated townships outside of white cities and the isolation of millions of others in fictional tribal "homelands" - would have challenged any government, however efficient. But what has been a profound disappointment is the slide of the African National Congress.

When Mandela left Robben Island on Feb. 11, 1990, in his first speech to the nation after 27 years behind bars, he declared that the ANC "has fulfilled our every expectation in its role as leader of the great march to freedom."

That may have been true at the time. It is no longer true today.

The ANC these days is characterized by an inept and embarrassing leadership, torn by internal divisions. For many, the party has turned into a vehicle for enriching its leaders, along with a small black elite. The Freedom Charter, the manifesto of the resistance movement drawn up in 1955, which inspired the antiapartheid movement for decades, now reads like a utopian document that could not possibly be enacted.

No one personifies the unraveling of the ANC more than its leader, President Jacob Zuma. The list of wrongdoing and embarrassments surrounding Zuma are too long to catalog, beginning with his being charged with the rape of the daughter of an antiapartheid activist - an incident during which he declared that he thought having a shower after having had sex with her would help prevent him from contracting AIDS.

For years, Zuma fought charges of racketeering as a result of his dealings with Schabir Shaik, a businessman and close friend. Shaik was sentenced to 15 years in prison for bribing Zuma in return for Zuma's helping to funnel defense contracts to companies Shaik was representing at the time. The judge at the time also said Zuma had a "corrupt relationship" with Shaik.

Zuma was dismissed as deputy president by then-President Thabo Mbeki - who himself had become an isolated, top-down leader who will mainly be remembered for his disastrous AIDS policies, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of South Africans. After a vicious internal battle, Zuma was able to engineer the ouster of Mbeki, and to become president himself. At the time, Zuma was facing fraud, corruption and racketeering charges. All those charges were dropped just before he became president.

But allegations of financial improprieties have persisted throughout the time Zuma has been in office. The most recent have to do with the more than $20 million spent on an elaborate compound being built at government expense in Nkandla, Zuma's remote village, for him and his four wives.

But Zuma's enrichment is not atypical. The ANC's policy of Black Economic Empowerment has produced an enormously wealthy black elite - the so called Black Diamonds - including many of the ANC's most prominent leaders. That includes Cyril Ramaphosa, the former trade union leader who once was viewed as a worthy successor to Mandela. Ramaphosa is now one of the wealthiest South Africans, who has, among numerous other investments, several game farms where he breeds "exotic" animals such as black and white impala, golden buffalo and sable antelope.

There would be nothing wrong with trying to spread around some of the wealth that once was almost exclusively concentrated in white hands, were it not for the fact that most blacks still live in poverty - at the same time that the country has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world, far higher than in the United States.

Most disturbingly, South Africa still has an extraordinarily high rate of unemployment. The official unemployment rate is 25 percent, but that does not capture anywhere near the level of poverty in the country. Most heavily hit are South Africa's youth - the "Born Free" generation that has grown up since the end of apartheid. By the government's own figures, only 1 in 8 workers under the age of 25 are employed. Vast numbers of young South Africans have never worked.

That seems to characterize much of what passes for government these days. Even longtime loyalists have lost faith in the ANC. "The ANC's soul needs to be restored," wrote Ronnie Kasrils, who served as a minister in both Mandela's and Mbeki's cabinets, and was squeezed out during the shakeout that brought Zuma to power. "Veterans of the antiapartheid struggle like myself are frequently asked whether, in the light of such disappointment, the sacrifice was worth it," he wrote, referring to his decades in exile as an underground member of the armed wing of the ANC. "While the answer is yes, I must confess to grave misgivings. I believe we should be doing far better."

Mandela, who died Thursday at 95, found a way to negotiate an end to apartheid rule, but his political heirs have much work yet to do.

Louis Freedberg, executive director of EdSource in Oakland, covered the end of apartheid and the transition to democracy in South Africa for The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. To comment, go to