Free Mandela
We begin
chronologically. Madiba comes from the
Xhoza clan and becomes a lawyer. He
morphs into a firebrand of the African National Congress and gets sentenced to
life in prison for crimes committed by the ANC of which Nelson Mandela was the
head. In his trial in 1964, he
said: “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against
black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society
in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It
is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an
ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
The
international community, in response to the apartheid policies of South Africa,
and in light of legal civil rights advances in the United States, pressured SA to
divest itself from its white supremacist bias.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Mon, speaking at Mandela's funeral, talked
of the sanctions imposed on South Africa.
The handwriting was on the wall when the enigmatic F. W. de Klerk
affected the recognition of the ANC, and released Nelson Mandela from 27 years
in 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 the
apartheid policy, and served as Deputy President to Nelson Mandela when the
latter was elected president. Both men
were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
They were adversarial partners full of caustic remarks about and against
each other. Still, they moved a nation into
new times.
On BBC early
2010, F.W. said: "When Mandela goes it will be a moment when all South
Africans put away their political differences, will take hands, and will together
honor 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 beyond
everything else he did. This emphasis on
reconciliation was his biggest legacy."
The freeing of
Mandela was also the freeing of de Klerk, perhaps, one freer than the other,
but nonetheless, both freed. This is
instructive 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 ideological
battle but a pragmatic one, the incarnation of visualized possibility made flesh
in actual time and space on persons and peoples.
The dramatic
changes of imaginal metaphors required were unmistakable to Mandela. When de Klerk decided to release him from
prison, F.W. wanted it done immediately where Nelson would be flown to
Johannesburg and set free. Madiba refused. He needed 10 days for the ANC to prepare for
his changed status. This was an
audacious refusal of a jailbird being released on pressure from the
jailer. They settled for a week, with
time for Nelson to walk out of prison on his own magnanimous style and
forgiving humility, paving the road towards unimaginable reconciliation in a
culture mired in the scars of divisiveness and discord. Mandela did not walk out to freedom; Mandela
was already free when he walked out of his prison door!
Barack Hussein
Obama, half Kenyan, the first Afro-American President of a country that also
had its history of racial segregation, sat in the stands at the Soweto memorial
service, a living example of one influenced by Mandela's political expression
of his freedom.
Gandhi used
"salt" to rally South Asia against the British Empire; MLK Jr. got mileage
out of having a dream, a concrete one for himself, his children, and America,
to be free, at last! Mandela took sports
to mellow the Afrikaners' resistance to change and calm the reflexive lust for
retribution from oppressed parties.
In the 2009
movie Invictus, Matt Damon plays the
Springboks rugby team captain Francois Pienaar, and Morgan Freeman, Mandela,
the beleaguered first black President of a nation only a year old in office challenged
by rampant poverty and crime. He noticed
his black constituency cheered for the opposing team when South Africa played
England. Mandela refused to be defeated.
On the way to hosting the 1995 World Cup, Mandela and Pienaar got the
home crowd on its side, and triumphed over their traditional rivals, the All
Blacks of New Zealand, in the cup's final.
The movie is a great Francois-in-Wonderland story. It also happens to be true.
Freeman comments
on 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. Madiba
may no longer be with us, but his journey continues on with me and with all of
us."
Free Mandela
happened even before our picayune efforts to get him out of prison was
successful. F.W. get the Statesman awards
he deserves, but Mandela has the open field of the fresh air of freedom all to
his own. He walks and flies with angels,
to use an earlier metaphor.
Morgan Freeman
is quite to the point. As we bid the
Xhoza bushman adieu, it is not his
freedom that is at stake. Ours is.
Madiba is dead! Long live the human instinct to be free!
Jaime Vergara
pinoypanda2031@aol.com
yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!