Obadiah Mailafia
21 July 2008
opinion
On Friday, the 18th of July Nelson Mandela celebrated his ninetieth birthday. A few weeks earlier, a musical concert was held in his honour at Hyde Park in London, bringing together such artists as Quincy Jones, Will Smith, Eddy Grant, Johnny Clegg and Papa Wemba.
His is no doubt one of the epic stories of our century. We all remember that momentous occasion in 1990 when the world's most famous political prisoner was finally released by his incarcerators. Hand-in-hand with Winnie Mandela, he took those famous giant steps that were to mark the culmination of his long walk to freedom. When he addressed the world in the evening of that memorable day, it seemed the earth itself had made an axial shift in its solar trajectory.
Many of us were pained by the terrible violence that engulfed the country during those troubled transition years, most of it sponsored by the far right using fifth columnists like Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi. And then Chris Hani, the legendary commander of Umkhonto, was brutally assassinated. Hani, a certified Marxist, was also the urbane intellectual with training in classics and philosophy - the sort of chap who could rap with you on Lucretius and on Roman jurisprudence over endless cups of coffee; the anointed Prince. Apparently, he was executed with the deliberate aim of plunging the nation into chaos to create an atmosphere for a right-wing takeover.
Throughout those extreme provocations, Mandela showed the kind of statesmanship that has made him such a legend. Where a lesser man would have lost it, he refused to play into the hands of those who wanted to plunge the country into bloodshed and chaos. Part of his greatness rests in this uncanny ability to show uncommon judgement at those crucial tipping points of history when one wrong move could have set off a chain of irreversible disasters.
His instincts can smell political mischief from afar and he is able to deftly pre-empt it by strokes of inspired genius that leave friends and foes alike reeling with wonder. Never one in a hurry, he shows the kind of patience that Ho Chi Minh was reputed to have possessed - a patience that is deep like the ocean and boundless like the sea. Among the greatest of practical philosophers, he takes the world as it is, with all its evils and uncertainties, and he patiently moulds it with the dexterity of a renaissance master.
Having lost his parents as a child, Mandela grew up with his royal uncle in the ancient palace of Thembu Chiefdom. Trained in the wisdom of the great Xhosa kings, he also tended cattle as a child, breathing in the ancient winds of the Eastern Cape and the eternal beauty of those breathtaking landscapes which Alan Paton celebrated so memorably in his novels. As a young man, he seemed to have been more into fashion, sports and girls than anything else until he met Walter Sisulu, who saw the beautiful diamond lurking behind the rough exterior.
Sisulu it was who introduced him to the ANC and encouraged him to take up the study of law. Probably no one has had a greater influence on him than the gentle and self-effacing Sisulu. One of the few occasions in which Mandela is known to have lost his self-control was at Sisulu's funeral in May 2003. "Xhamela (Walter Sisulu) is no more", he wept. "May he live forever; a part of me is gone....By ancestry, I was born to rule. Xhamela helped me understand that my real vocation was to be a servant of the people."
It says much about the ANC as a political machine that it nurtured such a remarkable crop of human beings from whom Mandela emerged. It was a university in itself, offering the youth civic education on the ideals of struggle, self-discipline and revolutionary politics. There was also the influence of Mahatma Gandhi. Unlike the latter, Mandela never renounced the use of violence. But he was influential in ensuring that its application was measured and limited, avoiding the use of terror against defenceless civilians that would have amounted to contempt for humanity. It has been a moral approach which has endeared the ANC to all lovers of freedom the world over.
Mandela is obviously not your cerebral intellectual. That prize belongs to the likes of Robert Sobukwe and Govan Mbeki. But he has a unique combination of virtues that set him apart. He is modest without betraying a false humility; he could be as mischievous as he is charming, with self-deprecating humour that puts people at ease. He can be as worldly-wise as the militarily-trained commissar that he was; but he can also demonstrate the old-world manners and noblesse oblige of the born prince.
He combines the negotiating toughness of the lawyer with the flexibility of the party dialectician. He understands the idiom of power as well as its symbols. He is a deep thinker who appreciates ideas and can hold his own in any intellectual circle. When it comes to the crunch, he knows when to settle for compromise, knowing that politics is, after all, the art of the possible.
If by the statesman we mean a person who subsumes personal interest for the well-being of the common good, then Madiba is the epitome of the greatest of statesmen. It was widely known that the apartheid chieftains were prepared to put billions into numbered Swiss accounts if only he would compromise. For a time, he played along with them, like a chess grand master who already knew that his opponent would be checkmated. Just as his comrades were beginning to despair that perhaps he had been compromised, quietly but firmly came the message from Robben Island through his daughter Zenani: "The struggle is my life".
It was Martin Luther King, Jr. who said that no one could ever be considered great until they have an ideal for which they are prepared to die. For Mandela, politics was not a career but a lifelong commitment to great ideals; a call to justice and human dignity. Even his political enemies recognised those extraordinary attributes. Former apartheid Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee had this to say when he first met the prisoner Mandela: "I had studied Latin, Roman culture and now for the first time I've met a man whose qualities have explained to me what the Romans meant by onestas, gravitas and dignitas."
Part of the secrets of his leadership success is the fact that he is always consulted widely before taking major decisions, even as a prisoner in Robben Island. And behind that ascetic refinement lies a heart of iron determination. A boxing enthusiast in his youth, it was not by accident that he became the founder and commander-in-chief of Umkhonto. Mandela, the man of war, was the sort of prince that would leave nothing to chance.
Like all great men, he has his fair share of shortcomings. He had had two failed marriages before meeting Graca Machel. His estrangement and eventual divorce from Winnie was painful to many who saw them together as Africa's first couple. Those close to him have complained that he can sometimes appear distant and aloof. Some of his political critics would also insist that his approach to post-apartheid reconstruction only served to preserve most of the socio-economic inequities of the Old Order, contributing to the simmering frustration that led to the recent outbreak of violence against African immigrants.
South Africa has been in many ways luckier than Nigeria in producing such extraordinary men who see politics as service, not a means to personal enrichment. Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Ahmed Kathrada, Joe Slovo, Govan Mbeki - all of them men of the same generation - worked together without a trace of jealousy. When Mandela was swept from prison to the pinnacle of power, Tambo accepted the situation with a characteristic chuckle.
To his dying day, Sisulu watched him receive all the laurels with the detached bemusement of an elder brother whose younger one had been showered with new toys. We in Nigeria have been so unlucky not to have evolved a similar kind of consensus that would have helped cement our nationhood and propel our country into the front ranks of advanced nations.
As we approach the close of the first decade of our new century, South Africa, like much of the rest of the continent, faces an uncertain future. Poverty continues to afflict a large section of the black majority, while much of the wealth remains in the hands of a privileged minority. Whilst Mandela himself has condemned the gross 'failure of leadership' in Zimbabwe, many South Africans may be wondering whether the absence of land equity in their own country may not eventually lead to the kind of crisis their northern neighbour is currently facing.
Mandela's ultimate greatness has been in knowing when to quit the stage. In retirement, he has been careful not to upstage President Mbeki, concentrating on his charitable works and playing the role of world elder statesman. More than anyone in our century, he has brought glory to South Africa and honour to our continent.
Tata Khulu Dalibhunga Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, may you live to be a hundred, and may the Good Lord continue to guide and keep you by the power of His might and the warmth of His grace.
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