JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Discussing what will happen to the country once its iconic leader Nelson Mandela dies has long been a culturally and politically taboo subject in South Africa. Out of respect for the 94-year-old former president, government officials never publicly refer to plans for what happens after his death, and in private, they often use cryptic synonyms to discuss the inevitable.

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But Mandela’s frequent trips to the hospital – most recently to be treated for pneumonia – have forced the question of “what happens next?” further into the public domain.

Of course, no one knows what democratic South Africa will look like without Mandela.

Some believe the frail freedom fighter is somehow holding the disparate parts of the “Rainbow Nation” together from his sick bed, and fear an outbreak of racial violence once he dies. Others disagree and think the young nation is still struggling – but that it has moved beyond the apartheid-era issues.  

‘It genuinely frightens me’
“I am not a racist, but…” -- It sounds like an ominous opener.

Elaine was about to outline her prediction – an unpopular one – of what will happen when South Africa loses Mandela. She feels the need to declare her belief in racial equality before setting out her fear that South Africa’s delicate social harmony might be torn apart when the “Father of the Nation” is gone.

“I am really scared that the country will explode. There are a lot of people out there who are just holding themselves back until he dies. It genuinely frightens me,” said Elaine, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic.  

“I will be mourning like everyone else, but I will be mourning at home. I won’t be leaving my house that day because I’m concerned about what will happen,” she said. “I don’t know what they will do. But I feel that they have a right to be angry.”

“They” are South Africa’s 40 million black people who, a generation after the end of apartheid, are disproportionately enduring its economic legacy. Largely, they remain the “have-nots” of what the World Bank has called the world’s most unequal society.

Rohit Kachroo/ NBC News

Georgina Sefara is a 20-year-old student in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Elaine, a 26-year-old white woman, is certainly one of the “haves.” Born into a rich family, she now works as a well-paid financial advisor in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. “I may be paranoid,” Elaine admitted, “but there are lots of people who think like me.”

A ‘patronizing’ view
Georgina Sefara is a 20-year-old student. A black woman, born after Mandela’s 1990 release from prison, she has never truly known racial segregation and resents the view that violence will erupt after Mandela’s death.

“Many white South Africans think that there will be apartheid in reverse. That’s what they’re afraid of. You hear many whites saying they will move to Australia when that happens.

“But [the violence] will never happen… It’s patronizing and outdated to think that it will.”

“Most of my parents’ generation are still angry,” said Georgina's classmate Carol Phago, an English student from Johannesburg. “Many still hold a grudge,” she said, referring to the former apartheid era.

“But maybe there are different enemies now. People are angry with the government, not with their fellow South Africans.”

Dissatisfaction with government
Rage is certainly building over the government’s inability to improve the lives of the millions of black South Africans who live in impoverished townships.

In addition, there is anger over the country’s inability to shake off the title as “the rape capital of the world.” 

According to a 2012 World Health Organization report, more than one in five men reported raping a woman who was not a partner and 14.3 percent of men reported having raped their current or former wife or girlfriend.

The issue of rampant domestic violence in South Africa gained international attention recently with the fatal shooting of Reeva Steenkamp by Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius.

Rohit Kachroo / NBC News

Geoffrey Manulake, is a 32-year-old security guard in Johannesburg, South Africa.

There is frustration with a police force that is faced with constant accusations of corruption and incompetence. The shooting death of 34 striking miners by police officers last August has amplified the recurring claim that the behavior of the state under democracy has become too similar to that of the apartheid government.

It is one reason why security guard Geoffrey Manulake, 32, has rejected a career in the police force. He feels disillusioned with the public institutions of his country and worries about how they will develop in the post-Mandela period.

“Politicians feel the need to satisfy themselves. They just want to line their own pockets,” said Manulake. “I look around at our leaders and feel that we cannot lose this icon. Nelson Mandela is the one who united our country and united the world.”

“But we have come a long way since ’94,” he said, referring to the year Mandela was elected president in South Africa’s first multi-racial elections. "People who talk about violence are wrong.”

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Nelson Mandela is discharged from South Africa hospital

Mandela hospitalized again, South Africa leader asks world to pray for him

'Who is my Mandela?' South Africans consider icon's place in a changing world

JOHANNESBURG -- Former South African President Nelson Mandela is comfortable and able to breathe without problems as he continues to respond to treatment in hospital for a recurrence of pneumonia, President Jacob Zuma's office said on Saturday.

After the 94-year-old anti-apartheid legend spent a third night in hospital, the presidency cited doctors as saying they had drained excess fluid from his lungs to tackle the infection.

"This has resulted in him now being able to breathe without difficulty. He continues to respond to treatment and is comfortable," the statement added.

In the first detailed mention of his medical condition since his hospitalization, the statement said he had "developed a pleural effusion which was tapped".

Previous medical reports since he was taken to hospital late on Wednesday have said he was responding well and that he was in "good spirits".

The successive bulletins have appeared to indicate that the recurrence of the lung infection afflicting the revered statesman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate is being successfully treated.

Global figures such as U.S. President Barack Obama have sent get well messages and South Africans have included Mandela in their prayers on the Easter weekend, one of the most important dates of the Christian calendar.

Mandela became South Africa's first black president after winning the country's first all-race election in 1994.

A former lawyer, he is revered at home and abroad for leading the struggle against white minority rule -- including spending 27 years on Robben Island and other prisons -- and then promoting the cause of racial reconciliation.

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Nelson Mandela in 'good spirits' in South Africa hospital

Mandela hospitalized again, South Africa leader asks world to pray for him

Former South African President Nelson Mandela is "responding positively" to treatment for a recurring lung infection after he was taken to a hospital late Wednesday, the presidency said on Thursday.

"The doctors advise that former President Nelson Mandela is responding positively to the treatment he is undergoing for a recurring lung infection," the presidency said in a statement. "He remains under treatment and observation in hospital."

In a statement, the current South African President Jacob Zuma said, “We appeal to the people of South Africa and the world to pray for our beloved Madiba [a nickname for Mandela] and his family and to keep them in their thoughts.”

“We have full confidence in the medical team and know that they will do everything possible to ensure recovery,” he added. “The Presidency appeals once again for understanding and privacy in order to allow space to the doctors to do their work.”

Mandela, 94, was taken to a hospital just before midnight local time (6 p.m. ET).

The statement said that Mandela had the “best possible expert in medical treatment and comfort.”

Mandela has a history of lung problems dating back to when he contracted tuberculosis as a political prisoner in the notorious Robben Island jail under the apartheid regime. 

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'Be strong'
Jackson Mthembu, a spokesman for the African National Congress, said in a statement that the party once led by Mandela “calls on all South Africans and the world to keep Nelson Mandela in their prayers.”

“We are confident that the treatment will be successful as he is in professional and competent hands,” he said.

“During these trying times we wish President Mandela well and for his family to be strong," he added.

Mandela spent nearly three weeks in a hospital in December for treatment of a lung infection and gallstone surgery.

This was the longest time he had been hospitalized since being released from captivity as a political prisoner in 1990.

He was also hospitalized earlier this month for what was described as a "scheduled medical checkup."

Mandela was president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, the first president of the country to be elected following the fall of the apartheid system.

President Barack Obama sent his best wishes to the former leader on Thursday.

"He is as strong physically as he's been in character and in leadership over so many decades, and hopefully he will ... come out of this latest challenge," Obama told reporters at the White House.

"When you think of a single individual that embodies the kind of leadership qualities that I think we all aspire to, the first name that comes up is Nelson Mandela. And so we wish him all the very best," Obama said.

NBC News' Matthew DeLuca and Rohit Kachroo, and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Secrecy over Mandela's health fuels concern for South Africa icon

'Who is my Mandela?' South Africans consider icon's place in a changing world

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 28, 2013 3:26 AM EDT

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Delegates from the African National Congress attend the nomination session of their party meeting in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on Dec. 17.

BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa -- South African police said Monday they had foiled a plot by suspected right-wing Afrikaner extremists targeting an African National Congress (ANC) conference attended by President Jacob Zuma and dozens of top government officials.

Four men aged between 40 and 50 were arrested Sunday. A police spokesman told Reuters there was evidence they were planning acts around the country and not just at the ANC meeting in the central city of Bloemfontein.

The vast majority of South Africa's whites accepted the ANC's victory in the 1994 election that brought Nelson Mandela to power and ended decades of white-minority rule. However, a tiny handful continues to oppose the historic settlement.

"Their acts are widespread. We arrested them in different provinces," spokesman Billy Jones said.

ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said preliminary information suggested the men were planning to bomb the marquee where Zuma and 4,500 delegates are holding a five-day meeting to chose the ANC's leadership for the next five years.

"This would have been an act of terrorism that South Africa can ill afford," Khoza said.

'Who is my Mandela?' South Africans consider icon's place in a changing world

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South African President Jacob Zuma attends the second day of the annual meeting of the African National Congress in Bloemfontein on Dec. 17.

Party denies link
The Federal Freedom Party, a fringe group that campaigns for self-determination for the white Afrikaner minority, confirmed two of those arrested were party members, but denied any role in the suspected plot.

"We were not involved and do not associate ourselves with their actions," national secretary Francois Cloete said.

In July, a former university lecturer was found guilty of orchestrating a 2002 plot to overthrow the ANC and assassinate Mandela -- now 94 and receiving treatment in a Pretoria hospital for a lung infection.

There was a heavy security presence at the Bloemfontein meeting and the few vehicles allowed onto the university campus hosting the event were being searched by police and sniffer dogs.

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The conference is set to give Zuma a second mandate to lead the party and -- given the ANC's dominance at the ballot box -- another five-year term in 2014 as president of Africa's biggest economy.

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Rogan Ward / Reuters

African National Congress supporters leave the Durban Magistrates Court, where a man accused of murdering ANC councilor Mthembeni Shezi appeared Thursday for his trial.

WELBEDACHT, South Africa -- Mthembeni Shezi, a local African National Congress councilor in the run-down suburb of Welbedacht on South Africa's east coast, was wrapping up a routine meeting last month when two men barged in, sprayed the room with gunfire and shot him five times in the chest.

"It was like a movie. The men just shot indiscriminately. It was scary. Everyone panicked. We hit the floor. I didn't think I would come out of there alive," said one woman present, who remains too frightened to reveal her name.

"The gunmen seemed to know who they wanted," she said said.

Far from being a movie, the hit represents the bloody reality of local politics for some in the African National Congress (ANC), and shows how far Nelson Mandela's 100-year-old liberation movement has strayed from the moral high ground it occupied when it came to power 18 years ago.

Rare since the advent of democracy in 1994, political murders within the ruling party have soared in the last 18 months, with local officials turning on each other in a dog-eat-dog scramble for the spoils of power.

President Jacob Zuma, who came to office in 2009, has pledged to crack down on corruption, but watchdog Transparency International suggests South Africa is sliding down the ranks, from 38th in the world in 2001 to 64th in 2011.

Bloodshed
As the level of corruption has risen, so has the carnage at the party's grass roots.

In Zuma's home province of KwaZulu Natal, 38 ANC members have been killed since February 2011, according to an internal party investigation. By comparison, the previous three years saw only just over 10 politically-linked murders in the region.

At the funeral of a prominent ANC official killed in a drive-by shooting in July, Zuma blamed the killings on "some forces of darkness ... bent on dividing our movement."

Even though Africa's biggest economy has been struggling since a 2008-09 recession and the Treasury is trying to keep a lid on spending, local councils remain awash with cash ear-marked for roads, houses, water and electricity to redress the inequalities of decades of underspending under apartheid.

Platinum mining firm fires 12,000 strikers in South Africa

Exact reasons for the sharp rise in levels of corruption and the attendant killings are hard to pin down. But the sluggish recovery from the recession means there are fewer money-making options elsewhere and it also seems that the word has got out that local officialdom is the way to riches.

There are also plenty of examples at the top of the ANC. Zuma was accused and never fully exonerated of receiving backhanders from a 1997 arms deal. Former ANC youth leader Julius Malema has been charged with money laundering.

According to his friends, the 38-year-old Shezi, who died of his wounds a day later in hospital, became a target because he was one of the few straight ones.

"People hated him because he was fighting corruption," his fiancée, Buyi Tshabalala, told Reuters. "He was in constant fear that he would be killed."

Factbox: South Africa since apartheid

Others contend that Shezi's lifestyle was too flashy for someone on a local councilor's salary. Those who attended the meeting at which he was shot believe his killing resulted from a dispute related to his job.

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'Better life for some'
Reuters has spoken to eight ANC officials in KwaZulu Natal, who said politicians and officials were dying in battles for council positions that give access to lucrative government contracts.

Such killings have been recorded in all of South Africa's nine provinces -- in July, for instance, the mayor of the northwest city of Rustenburg was convicted for ordering the murder of a rival councilor.

But Zuma's back yard, historically the wild and untamed home of the Zulus, has been hit hardest.

In an episode typical of the violence in the province, an ANC branch chairman, Dumisani Malunga, was killed in August in a hit organized by a rival, Sifiso Khumalo.

"There was absolutely no justification for you to eliminate him by the barrel of a gun to prevent him from vying for the position as ward councilor," the judge said in sentencing Khumalo to 22 years in jail for masterminding the killing.

'Murder on a massive scale': Angry fallout from S. Africa mine shootings

With an ANC leadership race coming up in December, few expect Zuma to crack down for fear of alienating supporters and damaging his chances of re-election as head of the party and, by extension, securing a second term as national president in 2014.

"Having ANC membership is the best CV in town. The higher you go in the party, the more you can dish out patronage. It's about taking care of yourself and those close to you," said a member of the ANC's National Executive Committee, its highest decision-making body.

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"It's no longer about the ANC slogan 'A better life for all'. It's now about a better life for some," said the official, who asked not to be named. "People are reducing the ANC to their personal kitty and are prepared to kill to get their slice of the wealth."

From poverty to 'a fancy 4x4 and several houses'?
Much of the problem lies with local government, with a staggering 95 percent of municipal administrations being unable to account for their receipts and spending, according to the Auditor General.

Many councilors -- Shezi included -- come from impoverished backgrounds and some are barely educated. For some, having control of hundreds of millions of rand a year with little oversight is too great a temptation.

"There are as many bad things to say about Shezi as there are good. People look at his lifestyle and ask: 'How does a herd boy from Nkandla go from having absolutely nothing to a fancy 4X4 and several houses?'" an ANC official in nearby Durban said.

The ANC has spent billions of dollars fighting poverty since the birth of the "Rainbow Nation" in 1994, and has made enormous strides in providing electricity, running water and housing to the poor.

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It has also seen enormous sums lost at the local level where checks are fewer and prosecutions rare for officials suspected of lining their pockets.

"People start to see that being a local councilor can be a means to acquire wealth," the Durban official said.

As the corruption has soared, so too have the protests by blacks living in shanty towns around major cities with no power, running water or job prospects. From just a few dozen a year under former President Thabo Mbeki, they are now a daily occurrence.

The anger is unlikely to translate into a loss of power any time soon for the ANC, which continues to win support on the back of its role in ending apartheid. It was more than 40 percentage points ahead of its nearest rival in 2011 elections.

However, there is a risk of the greed and cynicism tearing the party apart and, at least in KwaZulu Natal, rendering the province ungovernable.

"If the situation is not controlled now, we run the risk of reverting to the early 1990s, when the province was wracked by political violence," said Kwanele Ncale, a spokesman for the team investigating Shezi's killing.

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T J Lemon / EPA

Mine workers continuing their strike at the Lonmin mine in Marikana, South Africa, on Monday.

The withdrawal of controversial murder charges against 270 South African miners for the killings of 34 striking co-workers by police followed intense public pressure -- including a report that the victims were shot execution-style or crushed by police vehicles.

Public anger had been mounting at the charges, made under an apartheid-era law under which the miners were deemed to have had a "common purpose" in the murder of their co-workers by creating violent disorder.

The police killing of the strikers last month at the Marikana mine, run by platinum producer Lonmin, was the worst such security incident since the end of white rule in 1994, and recalled scenes of state brutality from that era.

Since then, South Africa has become the richest country on the continent, but the wealth has remained in the hands of minority whites joined by a small black elite.

At Marikana, the strike and violence stem from a turf struggle for members between the dominant National Union of Mineworkers and the small but militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, which has flared across the platinum belt.

Reporter finds 'murder on a massive scale'
A widely-read article last week by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Greg Marinovich in the Daily Maverick newspaper, based on a two-week investigation, challenged the official account.

Mine 'bloodbath' shocks post-apartheid South Africa

Marinovich, citing eyewitness testimony and forensic research, reported that some of the miners were shot execution-style or crushed by police vehicles.

"It is becoming clear to this reporter that heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood. A minority were killed in the filmed event where police claim they acted in self-defense. The rest was murder on a massive scale," he wrote.

PhotoBlog: Miners gather to pray for South African shooting victim at site of violence

Most of the 270 miners were arrested Aug. 16 after police opened fire on striking miners, killing 34 and wounding 78. The shootings shocked the nation.

Police said they acted in self-defense after the miners shot at them. Most miners were armed with homemade clubs and machetes but police said they recovered several handguns from the scene.

Ten people had been killed in a week of violence over union rivalries that preceded the shootings. Some of those killed were officials of the National Union of Mineworkers, while two police officers were hacked to death and two mine security guards were burned alive in their vehicle.

S. Africa uses apartheid-era law to accuse 270 miners of murder

"In a country that does not sanction judicial killings, even pedophiles and rapists get hauled before a judge. These miners were not even given that," Marinovich told NBC News.

South Africa officially abolished capital punishment in 1995.

"But it’s not for me to decide. It's for the judge to decide. I’m just a reporter," he said by telephone in South Africa.

Marininovich conceded that the miners in question were not entirely innocent -- some of them may have even committed murder --but "there should have been a judge. That’s what the law is for. That’s what the law is meant to decide."

Marinovich’s account backed research conducted by Peter Alexander of the University of Johannesburg.

South Africa to withdraw murder charges against miners

Charges withdrawn
Even South Africa’s justice minister had challenged the prosecutor's decision to charge the arrested miners.

Nomqcobo Jiba, the acting director of public prosecutions, did not say why she had reversed her decision to shift the blame from the police to the miners.

"The murder charge against the current 270 suspects ... will be formally withdrawn," she told a news conference on Sunday.

She said the miners would be released from jail with a warning, providing police could verify their home addresses.

She said other charges, ranging from public violence and illegal gathering to illegal possession of firearms, would remain, but the cases were being postponed pending final investigations and the findings of a judicial commission of inquiry, which is to report to President Jacob Zuma's government by January.

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Irvin Jim, secretary general of the National Union of Metal Workers, said Sunday that the police shootings confirm that South Africa has not transformed "the apartheid state and its violent machinery."

Zuma comes under criticism
The killings, and the plight of miners who were demanding higher wages, has highlighted the failures of Zuma's government just as he prepares to run for re-election in December as president of the governing African National Congress, a position that would virtually guarantee him another term as president.

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Zuma's government is criticized for failing to address the concerns of South Africans suffering high unemployment, housing shortages and growing inequality between rich and poor.

Lonmin's mines have been idle for three weeks, and labor strife has spread from the platinum sector to gold, where a quarter of the 46,000-strong workforce at Gold Fields have staged a wildcat strike, further unsettling investors.

The stakes are high. South Africa sits on about 80 percent of the world's known reserves of the precious metal, used to make catalytic converters for automobiles.

NBC News' staff, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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