Nelson Mandela was Positivity & Forgiveness personified. Mandela trained as a lawyer & while working in Johannesburg after qualifying, he became involved in African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943 and co-founding its Youth League in 1944. When apartheid was established in 1948 by the white-only government, the ANC committed themselves to overthrowing it. Mandela’s course was set.
During the 1950s, Mandela was arrested many times for seditious activities & was even unsuccessfully prosecuted for treason in 1956. He was initially committed to non violent protest, but he was influenced by Marxism &, in secret, joined the banned South African Communist Party. In 1961 he led a sabotage campaign against the government. “When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but become an outlaw,” Mandela said. In 1962 he was arrested & sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state.
There is no love without forgiveness and there is no forgiveness without love. Nelson Mandela raised his voice against colonialism & was jailed for 27 years for his leadership of the Anti Apartheid movement. After his release he led the African National Congress & became the first Black President of South Africa. The close caucus of Black leaders surrounding Mandela reminded the ANC leadership of all the atrocities the Blacks had suffered through decades of racism & apartheid policies. They swore revenge and giving back to the Whites in the same measure what they had suffered for generations. Nelson Mandela stood up against them and propagated the Rainbow Culture & Rainbow nation theory : promising equality to all South Africans regardless of color, caste or creed. This is classic tale of forgiving and inclusion.
As an Anti Apartheid activist, with leanings to Communism, Mandela was tried by the White government. In the 1964 trial that convicted Mandela & his co-accused, & sent them to prison for life. He made a statement to the packed courthouse, which he repeated on his release in 1990, after 27 years in detention. “ I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic & free society in which all persons live together in harmony & with equal opportunities,” he said. “It is an ideal for which I hope to live for & to see realized. But, my Lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” What a pronouncement! What a stand!!! No rancor against those who incarcerated him for 27 years. Without blemish or anger, total forgiveness!!
The truth of the ancient Bantu adage umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (we are people through other people) often came to his mind. And he saw, perhaps clearer than most of his contemporaries, the inevitability of “mutual interdependence” in the human condition, that “the common ground is greater & more enduring than the differences that divide.” He did not argue for a turning back to a glorious African society of bygone times but called for a completely new kind of state, a multiethnic democracy without match, constituted by a manifold of cultures, all having equal rights.
The ANC leadership, reorganized when Mandela was released in 1990 & could officially take on command, consisted of a cross section of races, including seven Indians, seven “Coloureds,” and seven whites. Likewise, & in harmony with this, a broad cultural & political basis marked the government of 1994. Ministers of state were blacks, whites, Indians, Coloureds, Muslims, Christians, communists, liberals, conservatives. Three Indian Muslims, & two Hindus were in Mandela’s government. Never had such a cabinet been seen in Africa or elsewhere. The Sotho maxim “many rills make a big river” often was in Mandela’s mind.
We see how one man’s remarkable life reached its fulfillment & blossomed into a national vision. Inspired by myriad influences, taking the best from both his native heritage, from the example of foreign freedom movements, & even from the history & literature of his oppressors, Nelson Mandela forged a vision of humanity that encompasses all peoples & that sets the hallmark for the rest of the world. Speaking on his release Mandela said, “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my hatred and bitterness behind, I’d still be in prison.”
When the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1993 to Nelson R. Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk, it was pointed out that their achievement was made by “looking ahead to South African reconciliation instead of looking back at the deep wounds of the past.” The committee also observed that South Africa has been the very symbol of racially conditioned suppression, & hence the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime “points the way to the peaceful resolution of similar deep-rooted conflicts elsewhere in the world.”. In his Nobel Lecture, Mandela referred to the organic world-view expressed already in the manifesto of 1944, calling himself a mere representative of the millions of people across the globe who “recognized that an injury to one is an injury to all;” which is the essence of ubuntu philosophy, universally applied.
Mandela’s intellectual mentors were diverse and wide ranging. From Mahatma Gandhi & Nehru to Bertrand Russell, he owed an intellectual debt to many. Shakespeare was closely followed & taught at the Robben Island “University.” Free to study classical drama, the prisoners at Robben Island staged a more than two-thousand-year-old Greek tragedy, Antigone by Sophocles, in which earthly power is challenged with reference to a higher law. In that production, which was presented under lock and key, Mandela played the part of Creon, the tyrant. From the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who had been jailed for his protests against nuclear weapons, Mandela had drawn the arguments of defiance, when conscience & civil laws do not agree. From the Russian novelist and idealist Lev Tolstoy, Mandela got similar support. At times, the prisoners also identified with the endless waiting of the protagonists in Samuel Beckett‘s play Waiting for Godot.
Another source of encouragement was the words of a Victorian English poet, William Ernest Henley (1849-1903).
Decade after decade, the unforgettable lines of the poem Invictus, “unconquerable,” were on Mandela’s lips:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
At Robben Island, Mandela recited this poem and taught other prisoners these defiant lines; reading such words “puts life in you”, Mandela said.
It is perhaps inevitable that the myth of Mandela obscured the man, & there’s not complete consensus on his achievements, but he remains one of the 21st centuries most enigmatic public figures. Let’s let him have the last word: “What counts 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.”.
In today’s times, we all can well learn from remembering Mandela and Practicing his forgiveness and positivity: vikas
Vikasblog 