SOWETO, South Africa

The music soared — as Mahler often does — and then the lights went out.

The Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra played on, the Gauteng Choristers sang on, and audience members lit up the darkness with their cellphones in the historic Regina Mundi Catholic Church.

It was the perfect metaphor for all that is right with this country and all that is wrong — all that is hopeful and joyful and all that is dysfunctional.

And as the emergency generator lights kicked in, the choir sang the closing bars of the Symphony No. 2 (in German, of course): “Rise again, yes, you will rise again, My heart, in the twinkling of an eye.’’

This nation, these people who suffered through decades of apartheid, are now suffering through its wretched aftermath — racial divisions, rampant corruption, record unemployment in the range of 33 percent, and the now routine blackouts known as “load shedding.’’ There are allegations that the pain of those blackouts has fallen harder on poorer cities like Soweto and the poorer neighborhoods of Johannesburg — government insistence to the contrary.

June 16 was the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto riots, touched off by the killing of 13-year-old Hector Pieterson at the hands of police, who killed hundreds on that day and in the days that followed. June 16 is now marked as Youth Day and Hector’s grave is visited by thousands — flowers crowd the monument that now marks the site.

But the pain of that time is real and it’s still raw.

So is the resentment of many of the nation’s white citizens, who grumble openly about being denied jobs because they believe a majority Black government has tilted the scales against them. Their grievances are real, too. The jobs they trained for have gone to others. Their world has shifted under their feet.

Nelson Mandela, who led this nation out of apartheid and into a new era, is gone and with him much of the support he fostered in the international community. His successor, Jacob Zuma, is accused of corruption; the secretary-general of Mandela’s once-proud African National Congress party has been recently ousted; and the current president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has sullied his own reputation and that of his nation by playing nice with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Even Ramaphosa’s recent visit to Kyiv — followed, of course, by a visit to Moscow — was marred by a kerfuffle en route through Poland when local officials there objected to the number and the weaponry of his security detail. The joint African peace effort in Ukraine was a diplomatic fizzle.

The general election is next year, and while the ANC remains dominant in this multiparty system, everyday indignities like load shedding and, more importantly, the slipping value of the rand, the local currency, have made what was always a tough life for many even tougher. Migrants from even poorer African nations have made the problems of homelessness and unemployment worse.

The new South Africa isn’t even three decades old. But the giants who were there at its birth — Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu — are not around to preside over its next era, and so far those who have picked up the mantel are Lilliputians by comparison.

Only the people here seem to remain unbowed, unbroken, and filled with a faith that comes from somewhere deep within.

And on a cool winter night in Soweto, a choir that can do justice to Mahler turns up the heat with gospel music that lights the way home for a crowd that has come to the church which was central to the struggle to end apartheid.

They deserve better than they have gotten from their government.

Their struggle is far from over.

Rachelle G. Cohen is a Globe opinion writer. She can be reached at rachelle.cohen@globe.com.