On 12 June 1964, Nelson Mandela, age 46, was
sentenced to life for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow South Africa’s
apartheid government. On February 11, 1990, prisoner number 46664, who would
not let despair dictate his soul, walked out from the Victor Verster Prison into
the bright sunshine of freedom.
Mandela was first imprisoned in Pretoria and
later taken to Robben Island, an infamous penitentiary near Cape Town that had
previously been a leper colony.
He stayed there for a few weeks, then taken back to Pretoria
where he was charged in the Rivonia trial, from which he was sent to Robben
Island for life. He spent a total of 27 years behind bars.
The world has paused to remember this iconic figure
who breathed his last at age 95 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Mandela’s
timeline is etched in the memory of multitudes but even those not aware of the
milestones of his life saw in him a revolutionary and a visionary the likes of
whom we are unlikely to see again.
His ‘I am Prepared to Die’ speech, delivered
from the dock during the Rivonia Trial, Pretoria Supreme Court, on 20 April,
1964, will always serve as an inspiration to freedom fighters everywhere.
Of all the traits that defined Mandela, perhaps
the two most remarkable were his humility and his willingness to forgive.
“I am
not a saint,” Mandela often told his admirers, “unless you think of a saint as
a sinner who keeps on trying.”
Here was a man who had attained the moral
high ground through superhuman courage and patience in the face of evil, yet
who could resist the seductive pull of arrogance. He was aware of his
flaws and frailties, some of which his countrymen were to witness during the five
years (1994-1999) he was the President of South Africa, such as charges of
cronyism and selling out the liberation struggle to white interests.
But Mandela’s rare gift was that he never
lost sight of his goal: democracy, equality and the rule of law for blacks,
whites, Afrikaners and every other race in his tormented country. He could do
it because he had the humility to know that it was not about him but about
South Africa and its people. The source of his humility sprang from a
combination of high purpose, generosity of spirit, strength of character,
grace and daring, a combination tragically absent in any of today’s
leaders anywhere.
Mandela’s inclination for reconciliation over
revenge marked him even more as the definitive moral leader of our time. Half-a-century
of inhuman apartheid had stoked the flames of revenge among his dispossessed,
nameless, faceless, vote-less people. A blood-bath between blacks and whites in
South Africa seemed inevitable. But Mandela would have none of it. "Great
anger and violence can never build a nation,” he declared. “We are
striving to proceed in a manner and towards a result, which will ensure that
all our people, both black and white, emerge as victors.” And, "Reconciliation means working
together to correct the legacy of past injustice.” And again, (from his
autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, 1995), "If you want to make
peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your
partner."
This, from a man who was forced to toil day
after day in a limestone quarry without sunglasses under a merciless sun that destroyed
his tear ducts and, for years, robbed him even of his ability to cry!
Freed after 27
years, only a Mandela could say with conviction that he bore no
ill will toward his white Afrikaner jailers.
Ever the humble man, Mandela pointed out during
an interview that “I am not the only one who did not want revenge. Almost all
my colleagues in prison did not want revenge, because there is no time to do
anything else except to try and save your people.”
For many, Nelson Mandela became a revered and
iconic figure only after his story of sacrifice and magnanimity became widely
known. For decades during the cold war, however, American presidents backed
apartheid as a vital front in the war against communism. In 1981, President Reagan
went so far as to call South Africa’s diabolical regime “essential to the free
world.” Both Reagan and Margaret Thatcher labeled Mandela’s African National
Congress Party a terrorist group. In 1985, then-Congressman Dick Cheney voted against a resolution urging that Mandela
be released from jail. When, in 2004, Mandela criticized George Bush for
launching the Iraq War, (just as Martin Luther King had criticized Lyndon
Johnson for the Vietnam War in 1965), he was denounced by some in the mainstream
media for his “vicious anti-Americanism” and for his “longstanding support for
terrorists.”
But when President Clinton visited South
Africa in March of 1998, he told Mandela in a joint session of parliament in
Cape Town that "For millions of Americans, South Africa's story is
embodied by your heroic sacrifice and breathtaking walk out of the darkness and
into the glorious light."
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Madiba) went for
the stars. Not for him petty fights and small dreams. “There is no passion to
be found playing small,” he said, “in settling for a life that is less than the
one you are capable of living.” His definition of a life of purpose: “What
counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference
we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the
life we lead.” As viewers saw in the 2009 movie “Invictus,” he had the courage
to surprise his adversaries with restraint and generosity.
This fierce yet gentle freedom fighter has now made his final walk to eternal freedom. And we are the poorer for it.
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