By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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Former US president Barack Obama made his first major speech since leaving office in South Africa on July 17, at one of a series of big events to mark Nelson Mandela’s 100th birthday.

Born July 18, 1918, Mandela died on December 5, 2013. Having spent nearly 30 years in jail under the apartheid regime, Mandela was released in 1990 and became South Africa’s first president elected democratically in a universal suffrage vote in 1994.

In 1999, after just one term in the chair, he pulled a very unAfrican move and left. There a number of African leaders, like Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Cameroon’s Paul Biya, and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, whom Mandela found in power, and they still soldier on.

And there you have one of the many reasons why there was a global commemoration of Mandela’s 100th. As far as one can tell, Mandela is the first African leader, or public figure, for whom there was such a centennial commemoration.

You’d think that in 2009 we would have had one for pan-African and Ghana president Kwame Nkrumah, but we didn’t. In four years, it will be Julius Nyerere’s centennial, but it is unlikely to be a big deal, if the dismal way the Nyerere Foundation works in his memory is anything to go by.

Perhaps the only African for whom one sees some emotional commemorations is rebel Nigerian musician and genius Fela Kuti, who was born October 5, 1938 and died on August 2, 1997.

Yet, there was no shortage of knockdowns of Mandela’s legacy, including from Zimbabwe’s now deposed wrecking ball Robert Mugabe.

The main criticism against Mandela is that he did not do enough for black South Africans, and his “rainbow nation” construction preserved white privilege. Thus, a lot of land remained in white hands, and most of the economy.

It’s a good thing that these debates should take place, for ultimately that is what legacy is about. Your time on earth and work is a continuing source of interpretation, re-evaluation and research if it’s worth something.

In the case of Mugabe, or someone like Uganda’s military dictator Idi Amin, the verdict on their political tenure is pretty much settled as having been disastrous, and there isn’t much value in appealing it.

Mandela’s story remains alive partly because there is an intellectual and cultural industry that has grown up around it, a testament in itself that he was a solid brand.

At a philosophical level his rainbow nation represents the most novel, and partly for that reason most divisive vision of political settlement in “settler society.” I am currently involved in a project that, in the initial stages, faced a lot of pushback against the idea that a white person could be a “great African.”

Is one right to argue that people like Ruth First, who were killed for their anti-apartheid activism, are not great Africans because they were white, and people like Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who was a Bantustan leader and collaborated with apartheid, are authentic Africans, because they are black?

Long after Mugabe and other African leaders are forgotten, I think there will still be Mandela celebrations and debates. The enduring interest in men and women like him, comes from a simple fact – they didn’t take the obvious path.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3