Mandela’s commitment to democracy was tested soon after he assumed
the presidency. Both the interim and the permanent constitutions
endowed the president with strong powers. Some worried that Mandela
might become an autocratic leader. But as his biographer Anthony
Sampson recounts, that did not prove to be the case: “His old friends
from the fifties looked for signs of autocracy. Walter Sisulu watched him
like a trainer watching his champ, but was soon reassured. ‘I have no fears
that you’re going to have a dictator arising from him.’”