Nelson Mandela, the great freedom fighter and first black president of South Africa, was buried last Sunday at Qunu, his remote birth place, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. His death on December 5, after a long illness, evoked an almost unprecedented global outpouring of grief and sadness. Virtually all the world’s leaders, including leaders of countries that had once denounced him as a dangerous Communist and terrorist, mourned him as a global icon, and paid him homage as one of the most outstanding political figures of the 20th century. Through his exemplary life and epic struggle for freedom he touched so many lives, cutting across race, colour, creed, and nationality. Millions of people, rich and poor, all over the world mourned him and felt a profound sense of personal loss at his demise. Not since the assassination of US President John Kennedy in November, 1963, in Dallas, USA, has there been such an outpouring of grief and sadness at the death of a political leader.
Nelson Mandela was a man whose entire life was shaped by destiny. In so many ways, he was a man of destiny. Born in a remote part of South Africa, his father was a minor tribal chief. If he had not ventured out of Qunu he would have ended his life unknown as a minor tribal chief. No one could have predicted that he would in future emerge as the leader of the epic and bloody struggle of the South African blacks against apartheid South Africa and eventually emerge as South Africa’s first black president. But throughout out his difficult life and harrowing personal experiences under apartheid South Africa, destiny beckoned him towards greatness. As he wrote in his memoirs, ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, not satisfied with the prospect of being a minor court official in Qunu, he fled with his cousin to Johannesburg, the prosperous South African gold city, and the country’s commercial capital, and worked in the mines there. It was a back breaking, poorly paid, and humiliating job, with black workers huddled together in shacks and horrifying conditions. The white mining officials exercised their authority over black workers with unspeakable brutality.
When it was discovered that he had fled from home to seek employment in the city and was wanted back at home, he was fired. But instead of returning home, he chose to remain in Johannesburg where he suffered terribly. It was in that city that he encountered the horrors and personal racial humiliation suffered by all non-whites in apartheid South Africa. To borrow the famous words of William Gladstone, a 19th century liberal British prime minister, the apartheid racial system was a ‘negation of God erected into a system of government’. Next to Nazi Germany, it was the most vicious and evil system of government ever devised by humanity. The blacks were treated by the Boers in their own country worse than dogs. They had absolutely no political or economic rights. They were segregated and made to carry passes in their own country. Blacks who had university education were denied jobs in the government.
In Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela went back to school and eventually studied law part time, after which he worked for a while as a clerk in a white law firm. He lived in a one room apartment in Soweto, the fabled shanty town for the blacks. His wages were so low he could barely support himself financially. Even though he was qualified to be an attorney, he and other black lawyers were denied that opportunity by the apartheid system. In the law firm, he continued to encounter the brutal nature of apartheid. The white office assistant employed in the law firm would not serve him tea at lunch break because he was black. Only his white colleagues could be served.
It was the personal humiliation he suffered in Johannesburg that led him to join the African National Congress (ANC), then agitating for an end to racism in South Africa. He started a law firm with Oliver Tambo, his lifelong comrade in the long struggle against the apartheid system. He married early in 1946, but his first wife, Evelyn, who was the cousin of Walter Sisulu, a veteran of the struggle, left him because she could not share his unyielding commitment to the struggle. She was an adherent of the Jehovah Witness, a religious movement that forbade the participation of its members in politics. She could no longer stand his complete dedication to the struggle which left her lonely with four young children to bring up on her own. She did not understand the import of the great struggle and the long time spent away from home by her husband in pursuit of his political objective.
The breakup of the marriage had a devastating effect on Nelson Mandela. By his own account, he returned home one day to an empty house, and found that his wife had packed out, taking the four children of the marriage with her. Even the curtains in the house had been removed by his wife. She had asked him to choose between his family and the anti-apartheid struggle. Though painful, as he admitted in his memoires, he chose the latter and continued with the struggle. Most men would have chosen their family. A few years later, he met and married, Winnie, who, unlike Evelyn, shared his commitment to the struggle. But after five years of marriage he was sent to life imprisonment for treason after the famous Rivonia trial in which he said he was prepared to die for his freedom. He could have been given the death sentence, but was spared by the strong international reaction to the 1963 Sharpeville massacre of unarmed and fleeing 67 blacks, shot in the back by the South African police for carrying out a peaceful demonstration. It was while he was in prison that he became the acknowledged leader of the black struggle in racist South Africa. He refused to compromise the struggle despite blandishments of possible reprieve by the racist regime if he abandoned the struggle. When his first son by Evelyn died, he was in prison and was not allowed to bury him.
After 27 years in prison he was finally released by the apartheid regime. So much had changed in South Africa during his incarceration. The struggle for freedom had become bloodier and international support for the black struggle for freedom had increased. Economic sanctions against the regime had begun to bite. Fearing a total collapse of the South African economy, the white business community in South Africa, led by Oppenheimer, openly called for negotiations with the ANC. This paved the way for Mandela’s subsequent release and a review of the racist South African Constitution. In the ensuing elections, the ANC won and Nelson Mandela emerged as the first black president of South Africa. He served only one term as president. His job was done and he retired into private life, pleading that his successors should not call him. Jointly with F.W. de Klerk, his white predecessor in office, he received the Nobel Peace award. As president, he reconciled all the races of South Africa and laid the foundation for a rainbow country. He unified a once bitterly divided nation. He was the only leader who could have kept the country together and end racial bitterness and violence in the country. He made enormous personal sacrifice for the nation. He gave everything up for his country’s freedom, including his marriage to his second wife, Winnie, and his children and grandchildren. He never had a normal family life. Soon after his release from prison, he separated from Winnie. The long period of his incarceration had, regrettably, destroyed the marriage irreparably. As he said when announcing his separation from Winnie, it was the destiny and lot of freedom fighters not to enjoy a normal family life.
Africa has produced other outstanding political leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Abdul Nasser of Egypt, and Nwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. But they all pale in political and global significance to Nelson Mandela, a truly global phenomenon, who, defying all odds fought courageously for his country’s freedom. As President Obama observed rightly, we may never see the likes of him again. The values for which he fought so bravely in South Africa are eternal and enduring. The anomalous situation in South Africa produced this great man of destiny, a truly global icon, now laid to rest in his home town, Qunu.
