By Dr Mustapha A. Gbassa
The whole world is mourning today, and no doubt will for the rest of mankind’s sojourn on this planet, the passing of a great leader, moral icon and one of the humblest among us.
Nelson Mandela, or Madiba his affectionate moniker, was above any clichés a true giant among men. In comparison to him a great many of us in the world today are mere Lilliputians by any measure while he is held aloft.
Although by African standards his birth in 1918 in the eastern Cape of South Africa was regal, the demise in early childhood of his father who was a tribal chieftain left a void in his life. This unfortunate circumstance started the moulding of his character and a steadfastness and fastidiousness that made him better able to face the Apartheid regime and the cabal of oppressors that saw their minority white race superior to majority blacks and coloured.
The project of Apartheid was an artificially systematised structure based solely on skin colour. The white Afrikaners were at the top of the totem pole, followed by those derogatorily termed coloureds, mixed-raced people, Asians, and lastly on the rung of colour and thus subjugation were African blacks.
The irony of this system and its injustice was predicated on the fact that the indigenes or autochthonous Bantus (Zulu’s, Xhosa etc) bore the brunt of the savagery that was meted out by those who were essentially strangers, sojourners in a foreign land. In 1652 Dutch adventurers sailing around the Cape on their way to the East Indies in search of spices came ashore for fresh water and supplies. At the foot of Table Mountain a lush inviting geography and the magnanimity of the African indigenes no doubt reinforced their welcome and changed their minds as to their pursuits. Why would they want to go back to bitter-cold Europe? The warmth of the African sun, and the freshness and lushness of everything else was a much inviting paradise. Yet these Dutch sojourners eventually known as Boers and well into the southern surge of the British from Rhodesia took to oppressing Africans for control of what had never been theirs.
The British who were the pre-eminent power in Africa, would govern South Africa but naturally would prefer the Boer stranger to the African indigenes, again based on skin-colour. Though the Boers fought ruthlessly against British domination, two Boer Wars explanatory of this fact, the British had always been their accomplices in the project of African subjugation pre- and post-independence for white minority rule in 1934.
The grounds had been ploughed and were fertile for a system of domination and oppression based solely on race as epitomized by the colour of the skin. But it was much later in 1954 that Boer prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd legalised the Grand Apartheid policy. Among other measures, this policy mandated African people and others not white, to live in separate places, usually slums, around the major cities or for Africans in “homelands” farthest from the cities.
Non-whites could not come into cities, in fact go anywhere outside their Apartheid-designated areas, without a pass. A nefarious rule enacted later called the Homeland or Bantustan rule ensured that. But the final indignity was the Apartheid regime forcing school children to be instructed in the oppressors' language - Afrikaans - a corrupted version of Dutch and local vernacular. From these injustices followed Sharpeville - the massacre of unarmed demonstrators and the Soweto (South West Township) uprisings - more killings of school children, and the cold-blooded murder in jail of the immortal Steve Biko. It was in this vortex not in exact chronological order, that Mandela was shaped and which system eventually made him a Colossus among men.
After a farcical trial and conviction for “sabotage” Mandela was sentenced to jail for life. But this trial in 1964 proved instructive as to the character of the man. Mandela in his speech before the prejudiced judges in Pretoria pronounced what he truly was about. He said, “During my lifetime, I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people" and continued: “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.” (Writer’s emphasis.)
Many have been led to believe that the Nelson Mandela who emerged after 27 years of imprisonment became the reconciler, because prison life had shaped him to be so! The quote above from that speech before Robben Island and the other dungeons of apartheid his indomitable spirit enveloped proves a contrari. Mandela evidence prima facie, had never wanted a society where only black or coloured people were the big shots. He envisaged one in which all its inhabitants participated as free people without advantages to any particular group - black or white. But his moral compass had always been right and he believed in a cause that was just by all measures of human determination. To crown it all, he was ready to die for it at a time when by only saying so could have motivated his oppressors to say “well let him have a taste of it then if he so desires.”
That is where the giant was made and lived to eclipse any figment of a legacy his detractors would ever know. Where is Pik Botha of “never, never allow…one man, one vote” ? Or Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi – the Zulu white puppet? Who remembers his name now? The odes and elegies to Nelson Mandela rising from all corners of the world today and since his passing should be a standard for African leaders to aspire to. A selfless service and sacrifice for one’s people and others always come back to reward great dividends to those served and self. Nelson Mandela was and would remain for the ages a bright beacon on a hill and an exemplary one to follow. A grateful humanity wishes you Madiba, the rest you truly deserve and may your light never fail to shine in us.
As a young university student in the Southwest of Sierra Leone identifying with Freedom Fighters of the stature of Mandela, Samora Machel, Agostino Neto and even the now quixotic Mugabe was a given. A few hundreds of Zimbabweans, a spattering of South Africans, and Angolan students were dormitory mates. Sometimes, socialising in the Students' Union canteen after a beer or two drowning our mutual travails with course work, they would open up and recount stories of their ordeal in their homelands. My antenna for the plight of downtrodden people and the struggle of stalwarts like Nelson Mandela was shaped in those years. Madiba, who gave us not only political freedom, but a sense of pride as black people. A notion that had been denied us no matter how loud our protestations, since the demise of the great empires of Egypt, Ghana, Mali and Songhai.
The author is a Sierra Leonean based in Franklinville, New Jersey, USA.
(C) Politico 12/12/13
