Scavengers gather in the Mandela twilight

It is Nelson Mandela’s physical twilight. As the now painfully frail 92-year-old world icon edges towards darkness, assorted parasites and opportunists file their teeth, readying to feast on his reputational inheritance.

Some of the hyenas are within the Madiba clan, some outside. A number of them are already nibbling around the edges.

The most shameful exploitation to date was the insistence by Fifa, the international soccer body, that Mandela attend the closing ceremony of the Soccer World Cup. This was apparently the non-negotiable quid pro quo for bringing the event to South Africa, Fifa’s Sepp Blatter extracting his pound of failing flesh.

So despite family objections, on a bitter Highveld winter night the gaunt former president was bundled onto the back of a golf cart and trundled out as a flattering backdrop to the ambitions of others. Mandela seemed bewildered as, every so often, his wife Graça lifted his arm and waved it puppet like at the crowds.

But this is nothing compared to what awaits Mandela’s legacy at the hands of some of his family, friends and African National Congress comrades. Those who lack the character and drive to get anywhere will have no hesitation in in-spanning the Mandela name to any vehicle that might take them places.

One grandson has been already been accused of trying to evict a cousin from her home to turn it into a Mandela tourist attraction and there have been claims, which were denied, of another doing a multimillion-rand deal with the SA Broadcasting Corporation for rights to Mandela’s funeral.

There is, of course, already a Mandela industry, partly commercial and partly political, overseen by the foundation that bears his name. The Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) receives 10 requests a week to use Mandela’s image, while there are close on 500 unofficial websites registered with variations on his name and scores of different, unauthorised trinkets on sale bearing his image.

A recent book by Congo-Brazzaville President Denis Sassou-Nguesso falsely claims that Mandela wrote the foreword, which describes the human-rights abuser “as one of our great African leaders”. When the NMF revealed that it had in fact rejected the request for Mandela to pen a foreword, the Brazzaville government was furious, complaining bitterly that Mandela was being “treated like a brand”.

“Mandela’s name does not belong to the foundation but to the entire continent,” a presidential adviser told the BBC. Presumably to be used for leverage by any despot so inclined.

For while there is much money to be made from exploiting the great man’s name, it is in the political arena where the biggest opportunists are lurking. The Nelson Mandela mantle is priceless, bestowing electoral invulnerability on its owner, as President Jacob Zuma, the self-proclaimed and somewhat improbable “protector” of Mandela’s political inheritance, knows.

But it is the ANC itself, the organisation to which Mandela has unflinchingly devoted his life, which most needs to cloak itself in the Mandela heritage.

When it took power in 1994, the ANC was unique. Here was a political party with a virtually unsullied reputation and — aside from SA’s largely sceptical white populace — with enormous stores of international and local goodwill.

After just 16 years, the ANC’s standing is somewhat threadbare. Though the glow from the liberation struggle still insulates it at the polls, the moral authority it once had, has long since dissipated.

Which is where all the would-be heirs of Mandela flounder. They can parrot the words, but they can’t hold the tune. They lack the ethics, the vision, the humanity, and the humility of Madiba.

The Congolese are right. Mandela is more than a brand, slipped on like a pair of takkies.