[Oe List ...] Free Mandela for Friday

[wangzhimu2031 at aol.com]

Am in a scrambling mode so I am posting this a day ahead of schedule.  As to the newness of my situation, more on that Monday.


Jaime



-----Original Message-----
From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031 at aol.com>
To: editor <editor at saipantribune.com>
Sent: Wed, Dec 11, 2013 1:19 pm
Subject: Free Mandela for Friday


JayVee,  I just came from the University lawyer's office and while I am airing radical change in my pentateuchal reflection on Madiba, it appears that a newness of my situation has come knocking at my door.  More on this later.  Here is the fifth and last installment on the Madiba saga.


Jaime



Free Mandela
 
We beginchronologically.  Madiba comes from theXhoza clan and becomes a lawyer.  Hemorphs into a firebrand of the African National Congress and gets sentenced tolife in prison for crimes committed by the ANC of which Nelson Mandela was thehead.  In his trial in 1964, hesaid:  “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought againstblack domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free societyin which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. Itis an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is anideal for which I am prepared to die.”
 
Theinternational community, in response to the apartheid policies of South Africa,and in light of legal civil rights advances in the United States, pressured SA todivest itself from its white supremacist bias. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Mon, speaking at Mandela's funeral, talkedof the sanctions imposed on South Africa. The handwriting was on the wall when the enigmatic F. W. de Klerkaffected the recognition of the ANC, and released Nelson Mandela from 27 yearsin jail.  
 
Warmly called F.W.,de Klerk traced early India ancestry and a descent from a Khoikhoi interpreter(Hottentots to Europeans), most recently of Austrian lineage.  He presided over the dissolution of theapartheid policy, and served as Deputy President to Nelson Mandela when thelatter was elected president.  Both menwere awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. They were adversarial partners full of caustic remarks about and againsteach other.  Still, they moved a nation intonew times.
 
On BBC early2010, F.W. said: "When Mandela goes it will be a moment when all SouthAfricans put away their political differences, will take hands, and will togetherhonor maybe the biggest known South African that has ever lived."  The day after the Madiba's death, he intoned:"He was a great unifier and a very, very special man in this regard beyondeverything else he did.  This emphasis onreconciliation was his biggest legacy."
 
The freeing ofMandela was also the freeing of de Klerk, perhaps, one freer than the other,but nonetheless, both freed.  This isinstructive to all the proud and fledgling democracies, Councils, Legislatures,Plenums, Diets, Presidiums, Parliaments and Congresses of the realm.  The program of freedom is not an ideologicalbattle but a pragmatic one, the incarnation of visualized possibility made fleshin actual time and space on persons and peoples. 
 
The dramaticchanges of imaginal metaphors required were unmistakable to Mandela.  When de Klerk decided to release him fromprison, F.W. wanted it done immediately where Nelson would be flown toJohannesburg and set free.  Madiba refused.  He needed 10 days for the ANC to prepare forhis changed status.  This was anaudacious refusal of a jailbird being released on pressure from thejailer.  They settled for a week, withtime for Nelson to walk out of prison on his own magnanimous style andforgiving humility, paving the road towards unimaginable reconciliation in aculture mired in the scars of divisiveness and discord.  Mandela did not walk out to freedom; Mandelawas already free when he walked out of his prison door!
Barack HusseinObama, half Kenyan, the first Afro-American President of a country that alsohad its history of racial segregation, sat in the stands at the Soweto memorialservice, a living example of one influenced by Mandela's political expressionof his freedom.
 
Gandhi used"salt" to rally South Asia against the British Empire; MLK Jr. got mileageout of having a dream, a concrete one for himself, his children, and America,to be free, at last!  Mandela took sportsto mellow the Afrikaners' resistance to change and calm the reflexive lust forretribution from oppressed parties.  
 
In the 2009movie Invictus, Matt Damon plays theSpringboks rugby team captain Francois Pienaar, and Morgan Freeman, Mandela,the beleaguered first black President of a nation only a year old in office challengedby rampant poverty and crime.  He noticedhis black constituency cheered for the opposing team when South Africa playedEngland. Mandela refused to be defeated. On the way to hosting the 1995 World Cup, Mandela and Pienaar got thehome crowd on its side, and triumphed over their traditional rivals, the AllBlacks of New Zealand, in the cup's final. The movie is a great Francois-in-Wonderland story.  It also happens to be true.
 
Freeman commentson Mandela's death: "as we remember his triumphs, let us, in his memory,not just reflect on how far we've come, but on how far we have to go. Madibamay no longer be with us, but his journey continues on with me and with all ofus." 
 
Free Mandelahappened even before our picayune efforts to get him out of prison wassuccessful.  F.W. get the Statesman awardshe deserves, but Mandela has the open field of the fresh air of freedom all tohis own.  He walks and flies with angels,to use an earlier metaphor.  
 
Morgan Freemanis quite to the point.  As we bid theXhoza bushman adieu, it is not hisfreedom that is at stake.  Ours is.  
 
Madiba is dead!  Long live the human instinct to be free!


Jaime Vergara
pinoypanda2031 at aol.com

yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!


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