Thank You Nelson
I must admit, like a lot of South Africans I always wondered what a post-Mandela South Africa would look like. Would the centre hold? Or would the country go down ‘like the rest of Africa’ as those who live here reluctantly are very quick to point out. Tata, I’m very glad to report that everything is as you left it. Not necessarily good or bad, but there was no major catastrophe that followed your passing. Whatever good you left here is still intact and whatever mess you couldn’t fix is still a mess.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been one whole year since you passed on. But the flurry of activities to commemorate your passing has reminded us of your painful absence. One immediate benefit of the anniversary of your passing will always be the welcome break from the incessant Christmas advertising that we are bombarded with from as early as October. Phew, I look forward to the 5th of December now. Not to say we don’t miss you, Tata. We do. I do. Look, I know there are some fellows who would have us believe you failed us.
They claim Nelson Mandela and his comrades sold out the black people of South Africa during the negotiations for a new government in the 1990s. I hope this doesn’t disturb you at all because I look at those fellows the same way I look at a bunch of Khakhi-clad Afrikaaner rightwingers who still think FW de Klerk sold them out to the black majority in this country. My heart is filled with pity when I look at them and listen to their rants. They are rather detached from reality. The less said about the right wing lunatics the better.
The bunch that alleges you sold them out are a curious lot though. I mean, just a casual look at the political landscape of our country will tell you that they were born yesterday. Literally. I’m not an ageist but I believe those people who claim you sold us out were actually born in the eighties and nineties. They did not live through the turbulent seventies and eighties, they were also far too young to remember the deftness with which you and your team of negotiators sought to restore value to black life in South Africa.
These people have no recollection of a South Africa in which people simply disappeared and were never found again. No recollection of a South Africa in which a yellow police van could arbitrarily stop anywhere, grab whoever they came for, beat them up and take them away for six months or more during the state of emergency. They have no recollection whatsoever of a police force and an army that spread fear into the heart of every black South African. That your mandate was to end that madness is immaterial to them.
I was fortunate to have lived through an era in which when the news spread through the township that Inkatha is coming you genuinely feared for your life. Fortunate because it has made me appreciate what you and your comrades did. A period when a simple T-shirt could result in your death if you happened to go through the ‘wrong’ side of Thokoza township. This was no different from the no-go areas that existed in KwaZulu Natal. Villages were torn apart by violence so barbaric you would sometimes just throw your hands up in the air and stop caring. You Nelson, never did that.
When it looked like the violence would never end, when political assassinations through letter bombs and drive-by shootings were still rampant, you kept your eye on the ball. There were massacres right until the 27th of April 1994 was declared the day on which we would hold our first democratic election. On the eve of the election, bombs planted by the right wing hell-bent on derailing the election went off and yet more people died. KZN was on knife-edge, the whole country was on tenterhooks. You, Nelson, never despaired.
You could have. There were times when I feared you would. The Boipatong massacre in 1992 is a case in point. Women and babies were hacked to death in the most barbaric ways. In the middle of the night. 45 people lost their lives to a rampaging group of hostel dwellers and apartheid security policemen that day. When the ANC pulled its team from the negotiations I feared for the worst. That we were destined to live in that fear, violence and blatant racist discrimination.
But like the talented, gifted and crafty negotiator that you were you retreated and came up with a set of conditions necessary for continued negotiations. You, never despaired. And we drew strength from you.
Those who are so determined to convince everyone else that you were a sell-out would never understand why I put up simple quote from Thabo Mbeki on my dorm wall in 1992: “It would be nice to wake and read in the newspapers that nobody was killed in political violence yesterday”. Such a simple wish, I don’t remember it happening until you took over government in 1994. You brought about the “New South Africa”.
Your detractors argue you left economic power in the hands of the white minority in this country. I cannot argue with that. But to brand you a failure because of that is very short-sighted. How do you fight for economic freedom when chances are that you might lose your life every single time you leave your home? First things first. You chose to focus on keeping us alive, alive to fight for that economic freedom.
You chose to give us dignity. The dignity to make us want to live better lives, the dignity to fight for that which they are accusing you of not having achieved. They forget, Nelson, that you were offered early release from prison. A conditional release that would banish you to the homelands, far away from public life and centres of decision-making. In 1985, your daughter Zindzi famously read that letter at a rally in Orlando: ‘…your freedom and mine cannot be separated’. I still get a lump in my throat when I watch the video of her reading that letter. And No, it isn’t because she took after her mom in the looks department. Yes Nelson, some of us young men appreciated the fine eye you had for beauty, but I digress.
Today, those short-sighted kids for whom you chose to sacrifice rearing your own kids and looking after your own family because you loved and chose to serve your people, those kids whose fathers and mothers could stay at home whilst you languished in prison, those kids, have the audacity to scream Nelson Mandela sold us out. The cheek!
Let me whisper something in your ear my leader, a month ago a self-confessed racist Afrikaaner musician has-been chose to tell the world that ‘Black people were the architects of apartheid’. He put this on Twitter. Your detractors could only come up with Facebook and Twitter anger. Not even a hint of let’s do something. A puppet took up the fight on their behalf, calling the racist out on his bluff. Where was the Twitter and Facebook brigade that says you failed them: why couldn’t they take up their own fight and show that racist that we refuse to be cowed. We will not be insulted and our dignity impaired. No. They were nowhere to be seen.
They were still pointing out the faultlines of the negotiated settlement you brought about. The irony of it all is that the racist Afrikaaner is using the freedom of speech that you brought about Nelson, saying what he wants knowing fully well that he enjoys the protection of the constitution that you brought about, how twisted is that?
Nelly, I can call you that can’t I? After all I’m here defending your legacy, and although I know this nick-name was used by only a few of your comrades, please indulge me. Nelly, your brand of magic is still at work in this country. It still is, believe me. I see it when I put on my springbok Rugby T-shirt and watch those who used to think they owned rugby in this country squirm. Not all of them do, some manage a tense smile, but I have no doubt that without your magic I would have had a few expletives thrown in my direction each time I walked in it in public.
There are some prophets of doom amongst our melanin-deprived section of our population, granted. But the majority of us want to see the Rainbow Nation work. We are a bit short on detail and visionary leadership but that appears to be a worldwide problem. A Nelson Mandela comes once in a generation, if at all.
The other day ‘the honourable’ members of parliament insulted each in parliament and very nearly came to blows. They didn’t, but it could have been worse. Know what the fight was about? The opposition were fighting for the right to bring the president to parliament to account for building an outrageously expensive homestead on taxpayers money. Stolen money. Transparency, Nelson. That’s what you promised us. However twisted the motives of the opposition, in my book, your legacy lives on each day an opposition leader knuckles down to fight corruption.
Nelly, Madiba, Rolihlahla, you might have left us with a president who got booed at your memorial service but all those that booed him got home safely that evening, no witch hunt followed although some non-entities like the Minister of Higher education screamed in a high-pitched voice that the booing brigade must be hunted down, it made me laugh. But that’s your legacy right there. Free political expression.
I would like to tell you that the majority of the citizens of this country are grateful for all the sacrifices you made. You didn’t have to. And that matters.
And those claiming we are turning you into a can-do-no-wrong-saint, well I’ve got news for them. You were always at pains to ensure we did not give you undue credit. You had your love problems, you got a divorce, you remarried. Your children and grandchildren fought and still do. What more evidence do people need that you were far from being a saint, far, and you pointed this out through numerous stories in your public life. You never sought personal glory.
I cherish the brilliant moments when you called George W. Bush a warmonger. I’m certain you would have told Obama off on his continued use of drones to eliminate people America don’t like in Afghanistan and Pakistan. You would have given him advice on how to tackle the institutionalised racism that still haunts the United States decades after desegregation.
Know something? There is no Nelson Mandela Theory of This or Theory of That, no, you kept it simple. People were at the centre of all you did, always.
In your typical direct style, you would “urge Bill Cosby to come clean”. Ok, so you wouldn’t have, fine, I’m allowed to dream a little. I’m grateful, truly grateful for everything. So long Nelly.
Close Encounters With Nelson Mandela
At age 15, in the eighties, I was sent on an errand to the centre of Johannesburg. The city centre was more manageable in those days, with lots of open spaces for one to do window shopping, even those averse to the idea like myself. As I edged back towards Park Station for my train ride back home, I noticed a vendor who sold books, and I decided to end my window-shopping at his stall, if I can call it that. He had a few adventure novels spread out on the pavement.
As I looked closer, he whipped out two little booklets, looked at me and said, “a clever young man like you would surely be interested in these?”. I looked at the titles, ” The Communist Manifesto” and “Nelson Mandela’s Speech from the Treason Trial”. I couldn’t afford both so I settled for the Nelson Mandela Speech, and I immediately felt adventurous and part of some clandestine activity. Such works were banned at the time, and the gentleman selling them just said “be careful with that one”.
I dared not take it out of my shopping plastic bag on the train ride back home for fear of being spotted with a banned booklet. That evening I laid my eyes on Nelson Mandela’s words for the first time. “I am the First Accused. I hold a Bachelor Of Arts Degree….” I was to use the second line in all my cover letters when I applied for jobs. “I hold a Bachelor of Science Degree….” My first close encounter with Nelson Mandela.
On the 2nd of February 1990, I gathered along with the rest of my school mates in our TV room at our boarding school. When FW de Klerk made the announcement unbanning the ANC we all went mad, we were screaming so loud that I missed his next few words, only to catch “…will be released”. It could only have been in reference to Nelson Mandela because his comrades, Walter Sisulu, Wilton Mkwayi, Andrew Mlangeni, Ahmed Kathrada and others had been released in 1989.
When his release came on 11 February 1990, we were packed into the same TV room. Not to start with anyway, we had a soccer game between ourselves the students, and the cooking staff at our school. We won the game 1- 0 but my mind could not understand how we could have chosen such a day to engage in a soccer match. In retrospect, it was a wise decision because although a time was not given for his actual release, people endured a long wait in front of the television. The soccer game had cut short our waiting time.
And then he came out. The hours of waiting were worth my second encounter with the man. Goosebumps, hairs on the back of my neck standing up, a hint of tears. The First Accused was out.
A couple of days after his release in 1990, our boarding school organized buses that were to ferry us to Orlando Stadium for his first rally in Soweto, Johannesburg. It was quite a hot day but singing struggle songs in the bus on the way to Orlando made the journey somewhat tolerable . We all knew we were part of history in the making. We got to the stadium and found thousands of other equally eager people and we joined together in the anxious wait for Tata. When the word finally filtered through that this was not to be the day we all went back to our buses deflated but still hopeful.
I was to miss the actual homecoming rally at Soccer City a few days later, but I kept a picture of the welcoming rally at the stadium on my wall. I had never seen the iconic stadium so full in my life.
In the early nineties protest marches were so common I cannot recall the exact march where I was in his presence for the first time. But I know that each time he took to the podium, it was the stuff of goosebumps, organized chaos and almost religious fervor. You always felt he was not an ordinary leader.
In 1991 the African National Congress(ANC) hosted a political meeting at the City Hall in Johannesburg. When I saw the posters with Nelson Mandela’s name alongside Thabo Mbeki and Bridget Mabandla I just knew I could not miss this one. The city hall, although rather large, provided a more intimate atmosphere than a soccer stadium. Bridget Mabandla spoke first, followed by Thabo Mbeki who quipped that he “didn’t understand how he allowed himself to be sandwiched between two lawyers”
When Nelson Mandela’s turn to speak came, the crowd literally brought the roof down with chants of “ANC,ANC,ANC!… for what seemed like an eternity. I hung onto every word he said. He had a very easy-going but deliberate manner in which he made his points. He ended this talk with a joke that he was to adapt and repeat to various audiences later. “Joe Slovo, Oliver Tambo and I were walking on a beach in Durban. We encountered a group of young ladies who listened as we explained things to them and seemed suitably charmed. They seemed very happy to have met us. As we turned to leave, one young lady asked me, Oliver Tambo and Joe Slovo we know, but who are you?” I went home in awe of the self-effacing manner of a colossus who remained humble to the end.
During 1992, after negotiations between the ANC and the then apartheid government were suspended following the gruesome Boipatong Massacre, the ANC launched what was referred to as “rolling mass action”, a series of protest marches aimed at the government’s reluctance to deal with the obviously high levels of political violence in the country. Nelson Mandela maintained that there was a “Third Force” that the government was using to unsettle the party to ensure that the ANC always negotiated from a position of weakness.
Nelson Mandela addressed a dozen of the marches that followed.
In April 1993, following the assassination of ANC and South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani, Mandela was beamed live into our living rooms from the South African Broadcasting Corporation studios to calm the country. The country was on the verge of a racial civil war, which was the motive of the right-wingers who planned Hani’s murder. Black people, for a few hours, were placed in a position where attacking everything white seemed justified.
That was until Nelson Mandela reminded us that “yes, it was white right wingers who assassinated Chris Hani, but it was also the eyes of a white woman who ensured that the assassins were apprehended”. That day, in 1993, Nelson Mandela became the de facto president of the country.
The rather sad event of Chris Hani’s demise was to provide me with my closest encounter with Nelson Mandela. The Young Christian Students(YCS), of which I was a member, were signatories of The Peace Accord, which was an attempt at stemming the tide of political violence across the country. As part of our activities, we became peace Marshalls at political events and you could identify us with our brightly coloured peace stickers with their dove-and-olive branch symbol.
As a clearly marked peace Marshall I formed part of the cordon that kept the general masses away from the dignitaries around Chris Hani’s grave. At one point the only thing that separated me from Nelson Mandela was Chris Hani’s grave. He had spectacles on, the kind that darkened in the sun, and I remember wondering if he could see me through those, amongst thousands of other mourners of course.
An unforgettable encounter I had with Nelson Mandela came in 1994, the year he officially became president. See, Mandela’s inauguration itself had been declared a national holiday, meaning we could all partake in the activities of the day. Sadly though, we had a very bitter Electrochemistry lecturer, a man from Eastern Europe who was always very quick to remind us that politics did not do him and his country any good, so he didn’t see the point of postponing an important test scheduled for the day after the inauguration.
The saddest part for me was that we had classmates, sadly white, who voted to not postpone the test. I was bitter and mad. But I was not going to be denied. I made the conscious choice to not study and be part of the inauguration. I went to a soccer match at Ellis Park, we played Zambia on what was to be an annual Nelson Mandela Challenge. He was inaugurated at the Union buildings in the morning and came to Ellis Park at half-time. It became the longest half-time break of any soccer match I’ve attended. He inspired South Africa to a 2-1 victory, at a time when we were the whipping boys of Africa. That game I believe, turned our team into continental champions two years later. People talk about Madiba Magic, that inexplicable bout of inspiration that he always seemed to impart onto sport stars whenever he came into contact with them, I believe that magic was born that day.
My Electrochemistry lecturer had wanted me to miss the birth of Madiba Magic. He was mad. I promptly failed his test but earned a memory I would not exchange for the world. I believe I’m not bitter at that Electrochemistry lecturer and my classmates because my politics were shaped by that man Mandela. He taught me to hate the system, never the people. That’s why I’ll always be grateful, and it’s a gift I’m passing onto my kids. No one is born evil.
You must be waiting for my encounter with him where he shakes my hand and says to me: ” Pleased to meet you young man”. I hoped for it, wished for it, alas, it never came.
I was to encounter him a few more times after his inauguration. Memorably at the 1996 Africa Cup Of Nations finals at the Soccer City stadium. By then, Madiba Magic was in full swing, with him having inspired our rugby team to World Cup victory the year before. Watch the Morgan Freeman/Matt Damon movie, Invictus, for the details.
I basked in Madiba’s magic at the soccer final. Kept the ticket stub and the memories.
I look back and think of instances where it could have gone horribly wrong, and I’m grateful. Grateful that he came out of twenty-seven years of incarceration without even the slightest hint of bitterness. He came out an even better leader than he went in. And I thank God for him. Because I’m a believer, I’m led to believe that the twenty-seven years were part of God’s bigger plan.
A plan to preserve Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela for South Africa and the World. A plan to preserve the man who dined with Kings and yet retained his common touch, as Rudyard Kipling says in his poem If.
When Nelson Mandela passed on last Thursday, I was in a cinema watching The Long Walk to Freedom. A fitting final encounter with a man I had idolized from my teenage years. And you thought you had to meet the man in person to have a close personal encounter with him? Think again!
Hamba Kahle , Madiba. You inspired me and millions of other people.
The Truth Hurts
“The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away”, these words are attributed to Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. It’s said that as part of Reaganomics, economic policies attributed to him, he ensured that he surrounded himself with the best minds available to ensure the success of his policies. The man was brilliant enough to realize that his career in the movie industry had not done enough to prepare him for the highest office in American public life.
He realized that you need to surround yourself with men and women who have the courage to tell you things you don’t want to hear but must hear. I believe we all need to surround ourselves with such people if we are to fulfill our purpose in life. A person, or people who will tell you the truth when you need to hear it, period.
Who tells you what you don’t want to hear but should hear? There are things that we encounter in life that put us in positions that we either have to share uncomfortable truths or even painful news with a friend, colleague or family but we know the recipient of the news will be shocked by the truth . This applies to all spheres of life, not just in leadership interactions only.
A few years ago when I used to watch Idols, I was fascinated not by the people who could actually sing, but by those who couldn’t. There were obviously those who went on the show for their 30 seconds of fame, most of those cannot sing. But the type of people that fascinated me are the ones who would get on stage, shaking like a reed, nervous as hell and then proceed to give a performance so cringe-worthy you were so embarrassed for them you could feel it in your guts. And then they would look to the judges expecting some praise, which obviously wouldn’t come and the contestant would break down in a flood of tears. It hit me that those people genuinely believed they could sing but did not have a single person in their lives brave and kind enough to tell them the truth. I don’t really know why I stopped watching Idols, maybe I couldn’t stand the sight of people’s dreams being crushed for my entertainment. So who tells you the truth that you should hear but don’t want to hear?
Men can attest to the fact that if you walked into a room full of your people the last person you want to let you know that your fly’s open is a lady. Nothing may be showing but you want that to come from another man, unless that lady’s your wife, not sister-in-law or worse, mom-in-law. Similarly, for those of you young enough to remember your first dinner date, imagine going to the rest rooms during the date to discover you had a sizable piece of spinach wedged between your front teeth. Death. You wish you had known about that offending piece of vegetable before but also acknowledge that on a first date, the person sitting opposite you may have felt it’s not their place to tell you. But these are just examples of simple personal interactions.
I got to thinking about this in one of those moments when I let my mind wander about just why it is that in almost all of the eleven South African languages we have the expression ‘truth hurts’. I’m not fluent in all eleven but I can hold a conversation in most of the languages and have come to learn that expression exist in just about all of them (iqiniso libuhlungu, Zulu for truth hurts, ntiyiso wa vava in Tsonga). The name of my blog, THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE, came from one of those philosophical thinking sessions that I hold with myself. The title itself is obviously Biblical but the reason I settled on it is secular, if I can put it that way. Why is it that we know and agree that ‘…we shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free’, yet we also accept that ‘the truth hurts’. Given that most of us try to avoid pain in life, we basically don’t want to know the truth, we don’t want to be set free. Should the truth, in giving you your liberation, hurt you?
Many years ago, I had a cousin respond to an observation I had made about her in what I regarded as the most painful way. I said what I said to her and she turned around, looked me in the eye and said “you should be the last person to say that to me given that if I said the same thing to you, you would sulk for days”. At the time, that felt like a sucker-punch straight into my unprotected belly. Me, sulk for days, never! I sulked for days afterwards. I look back and realize what she said to me was true, yet I felt ‘It’s not her place’ to tell me.
So, who tells you what you need to hear but don’t want to hear? Whose place is that?
In the larger scheme of things, if you are living a balanced life, I believe the responsibility should fall on several people around you to tell you those things. If you’ve read my earlier blogs you’ve probably come to appreciate that I admire the leadership of Nelson Mandela. On the occasion of his handing over the leadership of the African National Congress to a much younger Thabo Mbeki in 1997, the world-revered statesmen said the following words to his successor: “Do not surround yourself with yes-men, for they will do you and the nation incalculable harm. Listen to your critics, for only by doing so will you become aware of the disaffection that ails your people and be able to address them”. The jury’s still out on whether the academically-inclined Mr Mbeki took Mandela’s advice to heart.
What Nelson Mandela said in that short sentence was, don’t surround yourself with people who’ll always suck up to you, rather listen to those who feel they have nothing to gain by sucking up to you. Then you will know the the truth.
I believe in our personal lives too, we need to surround ourselves with people who will not suck up to us all the time. People who will look us in the eye and gently tell us that we are going off the beaten track, however painful it might be to hear those words.
Sadly, most people’s reaction to the truth is to go on the defensive. We let our egos take over and let the person know, ‘it’s not your place to tell me that’. Because of these walls that we build around ourselves to protect us from the truth, because it hurts, we never reach our full potential as people.
Just this past week, the head of our Electoral Commission, Pansy Tlakula, was fingered in a damning report by another formidable woman leader in the guise of Thuli Madonsela, the Public Protector, as having put herself in a position of conflict of interest. Her commission has done business with a company whose owner she knew and once did business with. The report does not say she benefitted inappropriately from the business deal, but that she should have disclosed the connection. How did Pansy Tlakula react to the report? Like most normal human beings, like you and I, she went on the defensive, “I won’t resign”, she defended herself at every available opportunity, because ‘the truth hurts’.
It’s not very easy to surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth without fear or favour, most of us shy away from doing that because we don’t enjoy rocking the boat. I mean, would you rather risk being friendless by telling your friend the truth and losing them or is it better to hope they’ll realize the folly of their ways in the long run? Sadly, in certain instances, the long run leads to irreversible consequences.
I would rather you told me the truth, have me sulking, but knowing I know the truth. I consider myself blessed in the sense that in my journey of redemption, back from the lows of taking offense at every little thing, I’m based in church that preaches the word in a very practical way. In the past, I found it quite difficult to sit through church because I either came out feeling condemned as the worst sinner in the world or that I could not see a way in which I could ever be on the God’s right side.
But I’ve now been Blessed with a church that has become one of those friends, friends who will tell you the truth no matter what, knowing that the truth might hurt just for a little while, but the benefits of knowing the it are immeasurable.
In the 1980s, during the struggle against apartheid, a gruesome way of dealing with suspected agents of the apartheid government emerged in which suspected police spies were burnt alive through ‘necklacing’, a car tyre burned around the victim’s neck. ‘With matches and tyres we will free our land’ declared the then mother of the nation, Winnie Mandela. Archbishop Desmond Tutu came out and publicly lamented the gruesome act. He became the person who was willing to tell the nation the truth no matter what, the conscience of our struggle.
In our daily struggles as people, who is our conscience? Who tells you that your zip is undone and you are glad they did, not embarrassed they noticed it? In addition to trusted friends, family and colleagues, we must seek out people who have no benefit to our feeling good about ourselves and listen to what they have to say about our walk here on earth. If we do, we might just discover that the truth doesn’t have to hurt, rather, as the Good Book says in the Gospel according to John(Ch 8:31-32), “…we will know the truth, and THE TRUTH SHALL SET US FREE.
THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE 
They Said…