In South Africa, Nelson Mandela is all over the place. The nation’s forex bears his smiling face, a minimum of 32 streets are named for him and practically two dozen statues in his picture watch over a rustic in flux.

Every 12 months on July 18, his birthday, South Africans have fun Mandela Day by volunteering for 67 minutes — portray colleges, knitting blankets or cleansing up metropolis parks — in honor of the 67 years that Mr. Mandela spent serving the nation as an anti-apartheid chief, a lot of it behind bars.

But 10 years after his death, attitudes have modified. The get together Mr. Mandela led after his launch from jail, the African National Congress, is in severe hazard of dropping its outright majority for the primary time since he grew to become president in 1994 within the first free election after the autumn of apartheid. Corruption, ineptitude and elitism have tarnished the A.N.C.

Mr. Mandela’s picture — which the A.N.C. has plastered throughout the nation — has for some shifted from that of hero to scapegoat.

To enter the courthouse in Johannesburg the place he works, Ofentse Thebe passes a 20-foot sculpture of a younger Mr. Mandela as a boxer. He stated that he intentionally avoids it, for worry of turning into “a walking ball of rage.”

“I’m not the biggest fan of Mandela,” stated Mr. Thebe, 22. “There’s a lot of things that could have been negotiated for better when it came to providing freedom for all South Africans in ’94.”

One of his essential gripes concerning the economic system is the shortage of jobs. The unemployment fee is 46 p.c amongst South Africans aged 15 to 34. Millions extra are underemployed, like Mr. Thebe. He studied laptop science on the college stage, by no means receiving a level. The finest job he stated he might discover was promoting funeral insurance policies to the employees of the courtroom.

The maze of courtrooms, with marbled pillars and fading indicators, was closed on a latest day due to a citywide water scarcity. Days earlier than, the courthouse was shut as a result of the ability was out. Blackouts across the country are routine.

Faith sooner or later is collapsing. Seventy p.c of South Africans stated in 2021 that the nation goes within the incorrect course, up from 49 p.c in 2010, in keeping with the latest survey revealed by the nation’s Human Sciences Research Council. Only 26 p.c stated they trusted the federal government, an enormous decline from 2005, when it was 64 p.c.

In most locations, Mr. Mandela’s identify is related not with these failures, however with conquer injustice. There are Mandela statues, streets or squares from Washington to Havana to Beijing to Nanterre, France. This week, the South African authorities plans to unveil one more monument, in his ancestral dwelling, Qunu in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province.

But when news of the brand new Mandela monument got here throughout her social media feed, Onesimo Cengimbo, a 22-year-old researcher and aspiring filmmaker, simply rolled her eyes.

“Maybe the old people are still buying it, but we’re not,” Ms. Cengimbo stated. “It’s actually becoming a little bit annoying that when it comes to elections, they’re not really doing anything different, they’re just showing up Mandela’s face again.”

During the tumultuous transition from apartheid, youngsters of coloration had been informed by their households that Mr. Mandela was simply one of many many leaders combating for his or her freedom. But after he triumphantly emerged from jail in 1990, toured the world and led the nation to democracy, he grew to become a singular hero.

On the playground, youngsters jumped rope and sang, “There’s a man with gray hair from far away, his name is Nelson Mandela.”

For those that bought the prospect to be in his presence, it left an indelible mark.

In the employees space within the basement of the Sheraton Pretoria Hotel, Selinah Papo scanned a wall of pictures of V.I.P. company till she discovered a black-and-white picture of Mr. Mandela in 2004.

“It was like he was golden,” stated Ms. Papo, grinning. Nearly 20 years in the past, she stated, she was amongst a bunch of housekeepers who welcomed Mr. Mandela with a reward track within the foyer. The reminiscence was nonetheless so vivid that she burst into track and did a little bit two-step dance.

Ms. Papo, 45, lived by means of Mr. Mandela’s heyday. She labored her approach up within the hospitality business as worldwide resort chains returned to South Africa. She studied by way of correspondence, supported her siblings by means of faculty and finally purchased a home in what was as soon as a whites-only suburb.

Today, the strangling price of residing and rolling blackouts have dimmed her optimism about South Africa, however she does not blame her hero.

“Those who came after should have fixed it,” she stated.

Even a number of the memorials to Mr. Mandela have fallen on onerous instances. A Johannesburg bridge named for him that crosses over dozens of stalled trains on rusting tracks is a sizzling spot for muggers. A crack has begun to separate on the base of the nation’s largest monument to Mr. Mandela: a 30-foot bronze statue in Pretoria, South Africa’s government capital.

On a bleak winter morning, Desire Vawda watched a bunch of South Korean vacationers take footage beside the monument. He stated he was killing time after protests over unpaid scholarships and tuition charges shut down his faculty campus.

Mr. Vawda, 17, belongs to a era that is aware of Mr. Mandela solely as a historic determine in textbooks and movies.

To him, Mr. Mandela’s battle to finish apartheid was admirable. But the enormous financial hole between Black and white South Africans can be on his thoughts when he votes for the primary time subsequent 12 months, he stated.

“He didn’t revolt against white people,” Mr. Vawda stated. “I would have taken revenge.”

Outside the library of Nelson Mandela University within the coastal metropolis of Gqeberha, Asemahle Gwala stated that when he was a scholar, he spent hours sitting on a bench subsequent to a life-size statue of Mr. Mandela. Students would sit within the statue’s lap, or gown up the statue with garments and lipstick.

Mr. Gwala, now 26, stated he took it as a reminder that Mr. Mandela was human — not the industrial model he has been was.

South Africans, he stated, would determine extra now with Mr. Mandela if they may see him not as a statue and monument however “as a human being that wanted to just change his world.”