Mandela

As I write this, Nelson Mandela lies in a South African hospital on life support.  Ninety-four with consciousness fading, his last days on earth may be approaching.  While his family battles over his body and his possessions, his country holds its collective breath.  What will happen to South Africa, they wonder, after he’s gone?

“I’m no saint.”  Mandela once remarked to a celebrity journalist fawning over him.  He understood his path.  So often we seek to idolize our heroes.  We make them perfect.  Mandela knew better.  He was a lawyer by training.  Faced with the oppressive Apartheid system, he sought revolution. An active leader in the ANC (African National Congress), he saw military action, bombings, and the like against the minority white government as not just legitimate but necessary.  Simply put, he was no Gandhi.

And, he had blood on his hands.  As corrupt and ruthless as the white Afrikaner government was, the ANC matched them.  Mandela was arrested, convicted and sent to prison.  The government believed by removing him they would silence him.  They were wrong.

A few years ago I read a book built around Mandela’s prison diary.  I was intrigued.  I had started a daily journal three days after my arrest.  I assumed Mandela’s would be different.  I assumed his would be political rhetoric of the first order.  I was wrong.  He diaried the things he saw, and felt, and experienced.  As I read his diary I saw the growth, the transformation of the man in the ordinary (if life in prison can ever be considered ordinary). 

I was no political prisoner, but I wanted to face my incarceration the way he did, with dignity, and courage, and honor, all those concepts that are in such short supply in places such as this.

I remember the day years ago when he walked out of prison.  I watched on TV and was sure South Africa would explode in violence and bloodletting.  There would be vengeance, I believed, retribution for his imprisonment.

I was wrong.  Contrary to what those in power thought, prison hadn’t broken Mandela.  It made him stronger.  And wiser.  I still see him walking out the front gate of the prison, a solitary man, but a man with a calmness because he knew what had to be done.  There was no bloodletting.  There was no call for revenge.  There was Mandela with a message of peaceful transition of power and reconciliation.  And South Africa moved forward, just as Mandela did when he walked out of the prison.

His nation is not perfect. There are problems; the social divide still lingers; corruption in government; crime; and yet, it has moved forward.  It is a nation with a future.

“I’m no saint.”  Perhaps, we are too quick to declare actions and people heroic only to topple them later.  Perhaps, we can learn from Mandela’s experience and the power of human will for transformation, for vision, for mercy.