On Thursday night, I was awake. I am a night owl of sorts and usually stay awake well till dawn. On this particular night, I was watching the rib-tickling Bollywood cult classic Andaz Apna Apna. As the movie ended at about 3.30 am, I casually started changing channels. When I came to CNN, I saw Christianne Amanpour on screen with Wolf Blitzer and Fareed Zakaria. A thick, fat super on the bottom half of the screen in all caps read: ‘Nelson Mandela has died’.
A moment of shock followed. But then I consoled myself saying, ‘It was a life well spent’.
My earliest memories of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela hark back to the nineties. In those days, Doordarshan was the only window for Indians to national and international events. Much later, towards the later half of the decade, when cable television came, I recall watching the BBC often showing footage of Mandela’s historic journey to Cape Town in 1990 after having spent 27 years at Robben Island, Pollsmoor and Victor Verster. The footage showed a tall man, with greying hair dressed in a grey suit, his then wife Winnie at his side, walking slowly as television cameras captured his every movement. And of course, there was his famous clenched fist gesture as he shouted ‘Amandla’ (Strength) to ANC supporters.
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My earliest reading on Mandela was through a slim volume that my parents bought for me, one of a part of series titled ‘People Who Have Helped The World’. Among others, it included the stories of the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Abe Lincoln, Albert Schweitzer and yes, Mandela.
Reading that book first introduced me to Mandela’s life story. Later, I also brought his ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ although I must admit that I never completed it from cover to cover. When the internet came, I spent hours reading not just about Mandela, but about the South African nation itself - its military, economic, social and cultural history.
All that reading showed me the magnitude of Mandela’s achievement in the years following his release from prison and convinced me that my generation and those to come after us would be ever-grateful to this man for what he had done.
For Zuid Afrika’s story is one written in blood and sorrow. It is one of interneciene battles and bloodshed between its white and non-white people, between black tribes themselves and between the Boer-Afrikaners and the British. The Cape Frontier Wars against the Xhosa, Dingane’s massacre of Piet Rietief’s Voortrekkers, Weenen, Blood River, Shaka and the Mfecane, the Anglo-Zulu War and the two Anglo-Boer Wars. There is hardly any spot on South Africa’s veldt or mountain ranges that have not seen blood being shed.
And the icing on its ‘cake of blood’ is apartheid itself. A system worse than the slave plantations of the southern United States and the Caribbean, a hierarchy more entrenched than Latin America’s casta system and brutal, naked terror akin to Nazi oppression of ‘Non-Aryan’ peoples. Some of its most visible characteristics still rankle us all - the pass laws, the formation of ‘bantustans’ and homelands, the forced removal of people from their homes, the separation of mixed-race families based on assumptions made after passing a pencil through one’s hair to decide how ‘crinkly’ it was, signboards on beaches, tram stops, park benches saying ‘Slegs Blankes’ (Whites Only) - the list is long.
A country with such a painful and bloody legacy and history could have imploded after the termination of apartheid. One remembers how the subcontinent, especially Punjab went up in flames as the British left it. One also remembers the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya as well as the massive relocation of Pied Noirs from Algeria to France after the colonial French left.
But nothing of this sort happened in South Africa. And all due to one man - Mandela. His non-violent influences, especially those of Gandhi and King, meant that not only were white South Africans spared, but were welcome to continue as full-fledged citizens of the new South Africa. Mandela’s guiding hand and moral force also brought peace between the black African groups in the country - notably between the Zulu and the rest. In the new South Africa of Mandela, you were not White, Black, Coloured or Asian, but simply South African.
Mandela also laid the foundation of democratic institutions in South Africa. In an instance unique to the African continent, he stepped down after five years at the helm - in sharp contrast to other post-colonial leaders on the continent who have been notorious for seizing power for life. One might even imagine, if he would have stayed on, perhaps the country might not have been in the mess that it is currently. Anti-immigrant xenophobia, white flight, rising poverty, rise in violence against women and the recent incident at Marikana, all show that South Africa is currently suffering from a crisis of leadership.
For me, Mandela’s death also closes the chapter of colonialism and imperialism in the book of world history. That chapter started when Christopher Columbus landed on San Salvador in 1492. In the centuries that followed, the white peoples of Europe colonised and enslaved non-white peoples across the gobe. That adventure’s enduring legacy - racism - has lasted to this day.
For black African peoples, European colonialism was particularly painful. But Mandela’s death marks a closure. Today’s world is vastly different for black African people. The trans-Atlantic slave trade is a centuries-old memory. Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan are long-forgotten. Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ warning never came true in Britain. Even the mightiest white nation on earth today is headed by a man of African descent. And now, with Mandela’s death, the page has closed on South Africa’s bloody racial past. Hopefully.
In his life, Mandela was different things to different people. For his native Thembu and Xhosa people, he was Madiba, a clan elder. For the Afrikaner apartheid government, he was the ‘black pimpernel’, the man who could not be caught. For Africans and people of African descent around the world, he was the crusader in the last great fight of their people against the white man.
But to me and millions around the globe, Mandela symbolised that greatest of human emotions - hope. His life, like many other greats of human history, shows that even in our darkest hours, hope springs eternal. And if we have the courage, that hope will lead us to reclaim our lives and allow us to live in peace, freedom and dignity.
His death therefore should not be mourned. Instead, his life should be celebrated. I can only think of that last scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which I read as a child. It depicts Hamlet’s friend, Horatio bidding him adieu with these words: “Good night, sweet prince. And may the angels sing thee to thy rest.”
Hamba Kahle Madiba