The old man endorses the darkness to come

As the beaming and waving old man watched while his favoured political sun wowed the crowd with his favourite party piece, a spirited rendition of "Bring me my Machine Gun", I briefly wondered if even some of the most besotted anti-Apartheid zealots felt a sense of unease and foreboding as to where all this is going. However, I soon dismissed such naivety, for, if they did, they will not admit it until the blood stains stretch from Kimberly to the Cape, as the surely will, and even then they will seek to blame someone else.

The less blinkered amongst us, who long ago gave up trying to believe in what had self evidently become a fairy tale within months of Mandela's release from Robben Island, will have found this development as expected as it is disturbing.

Anyone who still believes in the fabled goodness of this most flawed of living saints must be either deliberately self deluded or what the politically correct amongst us might call "ceribally impaired".

The 90 year old ex-president's visible and sadly still powerful endorsement of the vile, corrupt and dangerous Joseph Zuma set in motion the final stages of bringing Mandela's true legacy to pass, as he intended it to, and that legacy will be a bloody, violent and terrible one.

The ascendancy of Zuma, who appeared on stage in the company of the poisonous Winnie, the aging legend's first wife, and the murderous ANC was, of course, inevitable. However, Mandela was perhaps the one person on Earth, who could have acted to, at least to reduce the size of Zuma's victory, and, as such, his ability to re-write the constitution, and bring about the nightmare he intends. Even by failing to attend today's rally Mandela could have made a statement. That he chose not to was as unsurprising as it is depressing.

Zuma's position as Mandela's true political son, will only be undermined by the worse monsters who will inevitably follow him. However, for the time being, he is the man best suited to carry forward the Church Street murderer's gory standard.

The BBC's Africa correspondent Karen Allen did her best to talk up the rally as an optimistic celebration of Rainbow diversity, however, she sounded less convincing than the bizarre lady on the North Korean TV news, even for her it is hard to hide how grim the reality is becoming.

Anyone, black or white, who can do so would be well advised to get out of South Africa, and those who can't should keep their loved one's close because a terrible darkness is about to descend on the last, albeit sporadically, illuminated tip of a benighted continent.

The darkness to come has been unavoidable ever since the world decided to cast a bloody handed old terrorist and his racist, gun toting acolytes as the saviours of South Africa. The lights may never go back on again, and while the darkness lasts, even those who have seen it coming can not be prepared for what we will see. Yet we will know who to blame, and I don't just mean the bloodstained Madiba, but also a world who pretended he was anything other than what he is.