Mandela passes

There are points in my life that are fixed in the memory with enduring clarity. As a schoolboy waiting for the bus in the morning and wondering if nuclear war would break out before tea time. It was the Cuban missile crisis and a time of real fear. The assassination of President Kennedy. The first moon landing. The safe return of the Apollo 13 astronauts. All now in the back pages of life but remembered for not just the event, but where I was and what I was doing when the news broke.

The release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 is among those memories and there is a more personal connection than any of the others. Personal, because along with many others, I had joined protests against apartheid in South Africa, carrying a banner outside the South African embassy in London on a couple of occasions. After a sculpted head of Mandela was sighted on the South Bank in London, I made a special trip from my home in Northampton 80 miles away to go and see it and touch it. More than many of his time and ilk, he endured for me as an icon, and I have few of them.

Iconic maybe and a man who achieved above and beyond what ordinary mortals do, but he was no saint as he observed himself on a number of occasions. Neither was he universally popular, being seen by some as a Marxist terrorist who abandoned the principles of non-violence to conduct a campaign of sabotage against the South African government. It was for this that he was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, sentenced to a life behind bars.

For most of his time in prison, he was unseen and unheard of beyond the relatively small circle of protesters and supporters, but his time on Robben Island was transformative, both of himself in political and ideological terms and the state that had incarcerated him.

An international campaign for his release, along with increasing social unrest in South Africa, eventually brought Mandela and the government of FW de Klerk to the negotiating table and the rest, goes the saying, is history.

Watching his commemorative service on Tuesday, December 10, brought home starkly both how Mandela had succeeded and the extent of his failure in terms of a dream unfulfilled. That he was cathartic, there can be no doubt, and there can be no other global figure that could attract 91 national leaders to listen to some indifferent speeches (President Obama speech excepted) on a cold and rainy day in a half-full sports stadium. All spoke of his greatness and humility, his forgiveness, his patience and generosity of spirit — and they were right to do so.

Right, but missing a festering reality. South Africa remains a profoundly divided society. Black people have achieved great things there and will continue to do so, but the black population, in large part, remains poor, and the empowered elite are distant from the townships that are still wells of resentment and bitterness, the haves and the have-nots almost as clearly delineated as they were on the day that Mandela walked to freedom.

Landmarks like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that laid bare generations of injustice, violence and suppression only achieved half the job — we got much of the truth but the reconciliation remains distant for many.

Every time the face of Jacob Zuma, the current president of South Africa appeared, there were boos and catcalls from the assembled crowd. The messily corrupt internal politics of the country seemed to be in cahoots with the weather, the event dragged on for four hours and when in the end, Desmond Tutu made the final address, it was to a stadium half empty and with most of the dignitaries having left to get the next plane home, ticking ‘attend Mandela commemorative’ off their ‘to do’ list.

In truth, I doubt that this event is going to stick long in my memory, because there was so little that was truly memorable about it. But Mandela, a man with a host of frailties and imperfections, will stick there till my dying day. Why? Because he was truly great, that’s why.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2013.

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