Goodbye to a Hero of Humanity

What a momentous time to be staying in Johannesburg! And it feels an enormous extra privilege that we're staying with Janet in Killarney district, less than 2 miles from Nelson Mandela's Houghton home where he spent the past several months, and in which he finally passed away on Thursday, 5 December 2013.

During Thursday, the three of us had:

- visited the house where Ghandi had lived out his 'Satyagraha' philosophical principles, which had had such an influence on the young Mandela;

- lunched in Nelson Mandela Square, and had our photographs taken standing on the feet and hugging the legs of the huge bronze Mandela statue (we didn't even reach his knees!);



- booked a tour of Soweto township for Saturday, 7 December;

- resolved to go and see the 'Long Walk to Freedom' at the cinema on Sunday;

- and then spent some time over a glass of wine in the evening comparing and contrasting Mandela's principled leadership philosophy with those of various other South African and international political leaders. We could think of hardly any with such quiet humility, forgiveness, dignity, intellect, humanity, determination, integrity and inclusiveness of spirit.

So, Mandela was very much on our minds as we went to bed that night - completely unaware of the momentous news which had just broken.

We awoke on Friday morning to both the news of Mandela's passing, and a beautifully-worded e-mail tribute from our friend Clive - both of which moved us to tears, for the first time of many over this highly emotionally-charged weekend.

Andy and I spent Friday at the Cradle of Humankind paleontological site, just north of the City , and we understand from Janet - who had had time to visit the house in Houghton to pay her respects just as Jacob Zuma was arriving - that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) had, hardly surprisingly, completely abandoned its normal schedules and given over the whole day's programmes to newsreels from throughout Mandela's life, to tributes from world leaders, celebrities, and 'real people', as well as to a few analytical discussions about the political, social, economic and humanitarian impact of Mandela on every one of our lives. One of the most impressive of these discussions, which we did see on TV in the evening, was from Professor Adam Habib from Wit University - watch out for him; we shall certainly be following him up on the internet, so impressed were we with his analysis/tribute.

Our trip to Soweto on Saturday was - again, hardly surprisingly - so much more poignant and moving than it would otherwise have been. For those of you too young to remember the significance of the role of the 1976 Soweto student uprising in 'The Struggle' against the evils of Apartheid, it is really worth looking it up. (We say this only because we had been, perhaps unfairly, shocked that a number of our Nomad trip companions - and not only the younger ones - had never even heard of Soweto and its place in history). There, we had the privilege of, amongst other places, visiting the Vilakazi Street, where both Nelson Mandela (with his former wife and activist, Winnie) and Desmond Tutu - two of South Africa's Nobel Peace Prize laureates - had both lived during the years of The Struggle. There, as well as a probably a far greater tourist presence than usual, we witnessed a crowd of local Black Sowetans and ANC activists singing 'freedom' songs and dancing outside Madiba's former home (now a museum, which we were able to visit briefly).

 

 

This singing and dancing is a typical African approach to celebrating / mourning the passing of a loved one: by contrast, in Nelson Mandela Square, the well-heeled, overwhelmingly White neighbourhood of Sandton, we saw hundreds of the kinds and hundreds of floral tributes and lit candles reminiscent of a more 'Western' approach to death, such as accompanied the mourning of Princess Diana in the UK. But this was also the preferred method of paying tribute outside Mandela's Houghton home (again, in a more up-market, racially mixed area than Soweto), where we all three congregated - along with hundreds and hundreds of others - for an hour or so on Sunday afternoon. For a couple of White Britons to be able to share in paying our respects to the so obviously beloved Mandela, alongside so many South Africans of so many tribes, ethnicities and races, was a privilege we shall never forget.

Editor's note: at a time like this, I often find it difficult to summarise my own feelings. And in Nelson Mandela's case, the huge wealth of eulogies available makes it even more so, but some words that I discovered during our day-long tour of Soweto and the Apartheid Muesum helped to do it for me:

"Now that Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela's long walk is finally over it is time for him to rest. I find it hard to appreciate fully what Mandela has meant to the people of South Africa, and to the world at large. He has clearly been so deeply loved, he has been so universally admired, he has been so profoundly respected, he has been so devoutly revered. He has been so many different things in his epic life - a simple, rural boy; a curious teenager; an idealistic student; a generous and loyal friend; a militant and disciplined comrade; a husband and father and grandfather; a fearless freedom fighter; a brilliant and charismatic leader; a prisoner for 27 long years who never lost hope; a man who did not allow bitterness to poison his soul, who had the courage to find forgiveness in his heart; a skillful and inspired negotiator; a nation-builder and the greatest of reconcilers; the first President of a democratic South Africa, for whom one term was enough; an international and elder stateman. In fact, a man like no other. And yet, so fundamentally, a humble man, a man with simple tastes, who apparently insisted, even when vistiting Kings and Queens, on making his own bed; a man who could admit to making mistakes, and remind us all that he was but human; a man who, with a twinkle in his eye, liked to laugh and make jokes, nearly always at his own expense. Now he is gone. What do we do now? How do we honour him? How do we give thanks to him? How do we go on without him? These are questions that each of us will decide for ourselves, but the future is in our own hands."

Thank you for listening!