"All hell will break loose," said the voice on the radio.
It was a call-in show - on a topic that is on many
minds in South Africa these days: the fate of a 94-year-old man then
lying in a hospital bed in Pretoria, and the fate of South Africa once
he is gone.
For years people here have been understandably
reluctant to discuss the death of Nelson Mandela - out of a profound
respect for the man who, more than any other, steered this country from
apartheid to democracy.
But the passage of time, and the health scares of recent months - have nudged the issue away from the shadows.
The man on the radio was a black South African
from a poor township, and he was articulating a belief that has gained a
small level of currency here: that Mr Mandela's passing will unleash
not just grief and nostalgia, but a violent rage against the poverty and
inequality that still exists here, two decades after the end of white
minority rule.
There is, certainly, anger in the country.
Recent headlines have highlighted violent
industrial action, the massacre at the Marikana mine, the death of a man
dragged behind a police van and the enduringly high crime statistics.
The theory goes that - even from his hospital bed -
Mr Mandela exerts some sort of restraint on a turbulent nation, almost a
decade after he retired from public life.
It is a theory most South Africans find - quite rightly - both offensive and absurd.
The next two callers on the radio show said as much.
Imagine Britain in the mid-1960s still anxious about the broader implications of Winston Churchill's failing health.
No, in almost every way South Africa is already well into the post-Mandela era.
Other presidents have come and gone.
Miraculous nation
And yet the jitters here speak to a broader theme -
of a grand, miraculous nation aware it is poised to close a defining
chapter in its history.
There are not many heroes left these days, so people cling to Mr Mandela like a precious relic.
And they cling too to the sense of drama, of high
stakes, that characterised those years, in the late 1980s and early
1990s, when South Africa really did stand on the precipice - the dangers
of a racial civil war, of total collapse - were raw and real.
Today's headlines can still leave you speechless -
the corruption allegations that cling to President Jacob Zuma, the
extraordinary levels of sexual violence.
Stop looking back
There is a new crisis here every week.
The South African writer, Rian Malan, put it well a
few years ago, when he tried to explain to a foreign audience why he
could not imagine living anywhere else.
"You don't understand. It's boring where you are," he wrote.
Yet, when you peer behind some of the headlines, things can seem less dramatic.
Take Oscar Pistorius.
Yes, he shot his girlfriend dead. Perhaps he was afraid of burglars.
Scary place
You could see it all as another sign that a
violent country is going to the dogs or you could marvel at the huge new
Pretoria estate the athlete lived in, surrounded by other huge new
middle class suburbs, where race is no longer such a big deal, and
younger South Africans worry more about their mobile phones than about
what life will be like after Mr Mandela.
The drive from Mr Pistorius' home to Johannesburg
is an eye-opener. In the space of a few years the two cities have
essentially merged. For the whole 40-minute drive new business parks and
suburbs line the motorway.
It was perhaps fitting that a senior government
minister chose this week - with Mr Mandela still in hospital - to
declare a decisive break with the past.
We must stop "looking over our shoulder, we are responsible ourselves", said the Planning Minister Trevor Manuel.
He urged a gathering of civil servants to stop blaming apartheid for everything that was still going wrong in South Africa.
It was time to deliver.
The scars of apartheid are still real here. They will not be easily shrugged off.
Inequality endures and the economy is not growing
anywhere near as fast as it needs to, unlike so many other corners of
this continent.
But as South Africa waits to hear news, good or
bad, about Nelson Mandela it is slowly coming to terms with the fact
that its heroic years are over.
It may still be a dramatic, exciting, scary place.
But it is becoming ordinary too.
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