AMANDLA!!!
I have been asked to spend a few minutes talking about the international impact of Nelson Mandela's heroic life. I use the word "heroic" advisedly. As his widow, Graca Machel, once observed early on in their relationship, "Nelson Mandela is no saint!" By this she certainly meant that he had his faultsand he did.
As the leader of a guerilla band in the early sixties he was no Che Guevara. Carelessness and lack of planning resulted in the entire internal leadership of the ANC getting scooped up by the apartheid authorities in July 1963 at their farmhouse hideout near the small town of Rivonia.
Three decades later his presidency was marked by his unwillingness to address the looming devastation of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It was only after he left the South African presidency and his oldest son died of AIDS-related illnesses that he became known as an international activist against the disease. Furthermore, if truth be told, his government did little to address the immediate needs of the poorest and most oppressed of the African population that had given him and his organization its unswerving support.
Finally, his virtually absolute loyalty to the ANC and his anti-apartheid comrades allowed him to look away as significant cronyism and corruption took hold in the leadership of the now governing party.
So, how can we call him a "hero"? Nelson Mandela was a hero because of his extraordinary capacity to inspire the rest of us to transcend our lesser selves, to be better, more moral human beings than we might have been had he not been such an inspiration. For twenty-seven long years of imprisonment he not only inspired his fellow South Africans, but he also served as a symbol to the entire world of mankind's unquenchable desire to be free.
As best I can recall, I first personally became aware of Nelson Mandela a half century ago, about the time of his arrest and trial in 1963; the famous Rivonia Trial at which he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for what today would be referred to as "terrorism".
I could have some sympathy for his plight because in those days I was myself a political prisoner in the United States. I spent part of the spring of 1963 in the Alabama State Prison at Kilby. The comparison has to end there as, while arrested more than a few times, the longest period of time I ever spent in prison was something less than three months. Three months cannot seriously be compared with Mandela's almost three decades in prison; a substantial portion of his adult life. However, I have greeted the morning sunrise and the evening sunset looking through barred windows and can testify that, even for one day, it is distinctly unpleasant.
He was a hero because he faced his enemy with courage and dignity and refused to give in. Over the years several of his Rivonia comrades were released from prison on the condition that they cease any anti-apartheid activities. There is some evidence that two white South African presidents, B.J. Vorster and P.W. Botha, in the seventies and again in eighties, offered Mandela his freedom on the condition that he reject any active politics and retire to his secluded village in the Transkei, then an official apartheid Bantustan.
He rejected this offer even though, after two decades in prison it must have been tempting. This is not to demean those of his comrades who did accept an amnesty offer. After all, they had also spent decades in prison because of their principles. However, it does speak to the transcendent character of Mandela's heroic, moral courage. The apartheid authorities were well aware they had imprisoned a moral force and wanted nothing more than for him to leave their prison. They wanted him out of their prison because they were aware that as long as he was at Robben Island they were, in a sense, his prisoners.
One is reminded of Henry David Thoreau, an early 19th century American anti- slavery activist and writer, who once said: "In a slave state, the only place where a free man can abide with honor is in prison."
Heroically, Mandela refused all offers of amnesty until the authorities gave in to his demands; freedom for all South Africans. In his speech from the dock at Rivonia after his conviction Mandela stated: "During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination. I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
He was a hero because, after his release from prison, he was able to face the reality of the post-apartheid world and understand it. How can he not have resented the lost years of his adulthood? How can he not have resented the smug, imperious racism of his captors and tormenters?
By all accounts he was never close to nor ever fully trusted his fellow Nobel laureate, F.W. De Klerk, the last white president of South Africa and the man with whom he negotiated the transition. It wasn't so much that Mandela "loved and forgave his enemy", but that he understood that a politics of vengeance and retribution, while, perhaps, emotionally gratifying at one level, was not the solution to the multiple problems facing the South African nation and, especially, the poorest and most oppressed among them.
He understood that, as hideous and evil as it had been, the past could not and should not be forgotten. But even more importantly, he understood that the past cannot rule the present and the future; that the past had to be TRANSCENDED. His moral example and his leadership made that possible. It would be unfair, as well, not to acknowledge the fact that he presided over the adoption and implementation of what is probably the world's most liberal constitution; a constitution in which the equality of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation is guaranteed.
That, to my way of thinking, more than anything else, made Nelson Mandela the hero that we honor today.
Thank you.
(Bill Hansen, 10 December, 2013, The American University of Nigeria, Yola.)
Copyright © Bill Hansen, 2013
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