Owei Lakemfa
18 July 2008
column
Lagos — Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is ninety years today. He is one of the very few people in human history to pass into legend and fable while still being quite active.
He is not even clothed in any religious garb. He is simply human and his life, like his first wife Evelyn Mase and second wife Winnie Madikizela attested, is like that of any other mortal with all its fallibles.
Mandela's towering figure, his transformations through life and embodiment of the struggles of the weak and colonized and their eventual triumph, makes him a very difficult personality to capture in a single write-up.
I have therefore limited myself to a tiny aspect of his life; the moral authority he wields. Never in history has anybody of African descent wielded so much moral authority in the world as Nelson Mandela.
He refused to be dehumanized, and refused to allow his fellow human beings to be dehumanized. He was born into a very difficult society where a small minority of whites had seized the most fertile lands and relegated the vast majority of Africans including African-Indians to a life of want, deprivation and near hopelessness.
Mandela was a non-violent man, he believed in dialogue. Yet when it was inevitable, he was one of the first Africans to pick-up the gun and begin an armed struggle. For this he had no apologies. As he explained "I was made, by the law, a criminal, not because of what I had done, but because of what I stood for, because of what I thought, because of my conscience."
To him, to pick up the gun, plant bombs and seek the violent overthrow of the Apartheid regime was both an historical and moral duty. Africans, he had said, do not want a civil war, but they needed to prepare for it.
When he and other comrades went on trial for treason in the famous Rivonia Trial, they sought to put the government on trial not themselves. Mandela particularly moved to shift to moral burden on the evil apartheid regime not the victims that sought its end by any means necessary.
Aware that if found guilty, he would be hanged, Mandela rather than deny the charges or try to cut a deal with the regime, decided to fully own up, explaining for the benefit of the people and history why armed struggle had become inevitable.
Surprisingly, the judge gave life sentences to all defendants; they spent an average quarter of a century behind bars.
By the twenty-fifth year, the apartheid regime offered Mandela conditional freedom which he rejected. He told the regime "only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts".
The Apartheid system crumbled due to peoples power, the struggles of people like Mandela and the fact that it had no moral authority whatsoever.
Except for the governments of Margaret Thatcher of Britain and Ronald Reagan of United States, no government worth its name was willing to openly back the apartheid system.
In fact, until last week, Mandela and other leaders of the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa were classified as "Terrorists" who cannot get an American visa or enter the United States without special waivers directly from the government.
Mandela from prison read the South African and international politics correctly. When it was clear to him that Apartheid could no longer survive, he used the enormous moral authority he had acquired to find a solution to what was a local and international dilemma.
True, Apartheid had been defeated, but it remained standing propped up by military might including nuclear weapons and the indecent support of a few of the world's strongest countries. On the other hand, the African nationalists had not gained enough strength to militarily defeat apartheid and replace the evil structures with democratic ones.
Mandela with support of many was able to bring both sides together in difficult talks that led to the liberation of the country. Guarantees were given to the white Africans that they would not be pushed into the sea or be shot, while Africans including African-Indians had a guarantee in practice that democratic majority rule and basic human rights are irreversible.
Although Mandela was already a legend, he accepted the leadership of Oliver Thambo and willingly served as his Deputy. When he went abroad after release, his moral authority was visible everywhere.
When he went to Britain in 1996, he held the hand of Speaker Betty Boothroyd like an elder brother leading a younger sister. He put the Queen at ease and got Prince Charles to take to the dance floor.
Mandela had the Constitutional opportunity to serve two terms as South African President.
The re-election would clearly be a walk over. But he chose to serve for only one term and allow younger men to lead the country. This is in the same continent where life Presidency had been common.
Another moral strength he displayed was in the choice of a candidate for the Presidency.
Although, Thambo Mbeki was his Deputy President, Mandela preferred the trade unionist, Cyril Ramaphosa.
But when it was clear that more party faithful were for Mbeki, Mandela rather than use his enormous political weight to endorse his preferred candidate like many African Presidents are wont to do, accepted the verdict and campaigned for Mbeki's election.
When the US and its allies declared Libya a "rogue state" and banned any flight into that country, Mandela broke that sanction by flying directly in and out of Libya daring the powerful countries to bring down his plane or force it to land.
With that the sanction was effectively broken. A fortnight ago when he described Zimbabwe as suffering from a failure of leadership, his words carried more weight than the combined declarations of US, Britain and their fellow travelers.
Mandela was not born a legend, he acquired it. He used to say that "Nurture, rather than nature, is the primary moulder of personality". To be able to celebrate Nelson Mandela's ninetieth birthday, no matter how tangentially, is an historic honour.
Happy Birthday!
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