The name his father gave him at birth, he said in his engaging and inspiring 1995 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, was Rolihlahla. In Xhosa, his native language, he said, the word literally meant “pulling the branch of a tree” but its colloquial meaning more accurately was “trouble maker”.
“I do not believe,” he said of this name in the opening paragraphs of his book, “that names are destiny or that my father somehow divined my future, but in later years friends and relatives would ascribe to my birth name storms I have both caused and weathered.”
Names may not be destiny and his father may not have divined his future by naming him Rolihlahla at birth, but the Nelson Mandela, aka Madiba, who died at 95 last Friday, December 6, could not have been given a more apt but, at the same time, a more self-contradictory nickname; in the eyes of those who invented and perpetrated apartheid as one of the world’s most obnoxious and heinous ideologies, the man was probably their worst nightmare but in the eyes of the rest of the world he was certainly one of its greatest TROUBLESHOOTERS of all time. For, all his adult life he fought more than most leaders in the world – and paid a higher price – for the dignity and humanity of all men regardless of colour, creed, nationality or gender.
Mandela, at any rate, seemed an unlikely trouble maker growing up in Mveso countryside in Qunu district of the Transkei where he was born on July 8, 1918. “All I wanted as a child of 9 (the year he lost his royal father and had to move out of the village),” he said in his book, “was to be a champion stick fighter.” However, the indignities he suffered and which he saw all around him growing up under the system of apartheid, simply because he was black, left him with no choice but to forget the “luxury” of his literal stick fighting and champion the much more difficult fight against not just racism but any form of discrimination.
As the world testified to yesterday when over a hundred dignitaries, celebrities and world leaders, including American president, Barack Obama, and our own, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, and thousands of ordinary folks gathered at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, in defiance of heavy rains, to pay him their last respect, the man proved himself the greatest champion of the fight against apartheid. And he did so not with modern day “fighting stick”, or the gun, if you will, but primarily through eschewing bigotry, hatred and reverse racism.
The walk to freedom for all races in South Africa was indeed a long one and, of course, it began long before Mandela was born. In its most popular modern day manifestation as the African National Congress, however, the walk to freedom for all in his country begun in 1912, six years before he was born. Its key objective when it was founded on January 12 that year was the creation of a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South African society.
Soon enough the younger elements in the organization led by Anton Lembede, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and himself, among others, felt the organisation was not militant and mass-oriented enough and consequently in 1944 they formed its Youth League.
Four years after that, apartheid, which until then was only de facto government policy became official, following the defeat of the ruling Unity Party of mostly British whites by the National Party of the Boer settlers widely known as Afrikaans.
Predictably, the NP proceeded post-haste to enact all manner of obnoxious and racist laws which restricted the movements of blacks who formed nearly 80% of the population, of Indians (3%) and of so-called Coloured, i.e. those of mixed races, (8%) and also restricted where they could live, work, play and worship and do whatever. These obnoxious laws climaxed in the Bantustan policy in1959, a policy which gave whites who constituted fewer than 10% of South Africa’s population nearly 90% of the land!
Predictably, the ANC rejected these laws and organised peaceful protests against them. The racist government responded with both force and the law. In 1956 it charged Mandela, along with 55 other members – 105 Africans, 21 Indians, 23 whites and seven Coloured – with treason. The trial proper began three years later and lasted for about two years. Meantime the government imposed a ban on the movement and public speaking of several of the organisation’s leaders, including, of course, Mandela.
On March 21 1961, two days before the court was to deliver its verdict on the treason trial, a massacre by the South African police took place in Sharpeville, a small township 56 kilometres south of Johannesburg, the country’s commercial capital, in which 69 unarmed Africans were killed, many of them shot in the back as they fled from the scene of the demonstration they had gathered for. Government then declared a state of emergency and subsequently banned the ANC.
The whole world was horrified by the massacre. On its part the ANC now felt obliged to drop its peaceful resistance. It formed an armed wing, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation), with Mandela as its first leader and Chris Hani as its commander, and took up arms in 1961. Not even the dismissal by the courts of the case against the defendants following a week’s delay occasioned by the Sharpeville massacre could persuade Mandela and his fellow comrades that the racists had become open to reason.
The ANC knew their acquittal was only a temporary relief. Soon enough it was proved right when 19 of its leaders, including Mandela, were detained and subsequently charged for sabotage and attempt to overthrow the government in what became known as the Rivonia Trial between 1963 and 1964.
The majority of them were convicted and sentenced to live at the end of the trial. Mandela served 27 years of his sentence, the first 18 of them in solitary confinement on the forbidding Roben Island, off the South African coast, before he was released on February 11, 1990.
That release was perhaps the most symbolic moment in the long fight against apartheid. It is hard, if not impossible, to articulate that moment more graphically and more coherently than President Bill Clinton did in his 2004 autobiography, My Life. On that day, he said, he “witnessed the ultimate testimonial in human endurance.” He, his wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea, whom they had pulled out of bed especially for that moment, he said, watched Mandela on television “take the last step of his long walk to freedom.” Mandela, Clinton said, “had endured and triumphed, to end apartheid, liberate his own mind and heart from hatred and inspire the world.”
In Mandela’s own words, he walked out of his prison that day with bitterness and malice to none. “The oppressor and the oppressed alike,” he said in his book, “are robbed of their humanity. When I walked out of the prison that was my mission, to liberate the oppressor and the oppressed both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that this is not the case. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.”
Mandela’s legacy, however, was not only of the need to love even thy enemy. He also left a legacy of knowing when to let go of power as the first black president of South Africa when he promised in 1994 to serve for only one tem and kept his word. He also left behind a legacy of living a simple life, in and out of power, which shunned primitive accumulation of wealth. You can hardly say the same of many leaders, in and out of power today, who have been falling over themselves in singing praises for the man.
When his friend and comrade in the struggle against apartheid, Oliver Tambo, died in April 1993, he had this to say of Tambo: “In Plato’s allegory of the metals, the philosopher classifies men into groups of gold, silver and lead. Oliver was pure gold.”
Borrowing from his tribute to his friend, it would be an understatement to say Mandela was Platinum, with a capital P.
FEEDBACK
Last week’s column on what I said was the persecution of Governor Sule Lamido by President Goodluck Jonathan received a 1,200-word rejoinder from EFCC, a couple of emails one of which I will publish next week, God willing, for the power of its logic, and 38 texts, mostly critical of my piece. I have since forwarded the EFCC reaction to the editors of this newspaper for publication for my lack of space. Below are a few of the texts.
Sir,
How much did Lamido pay you to publish this back-page foolishness you call an article? You deftly and deliberately ignored the real issue: did Lamido’s sons steal?
+2348096571185
Sir,
Are you saying Lamido’s sons were not caught in the act or that they should be left off the hook simply because their father is a performing governor? Be objective for once.
+2348033553191
Sir,
Governor Lamido was/is my man on performance. However, I won’t support indiscipline, corruption and law-breaking by any family member or governor. Journalists, cleanse our society.
Lanre Oseni.
+2347064181043
Only irredeemable fools and born cowards call the prosecution of politicians who use their children as conduit pipe to siphon public funds persecution. I urge Mr. President to fight corruption without fear and favour.
EHI
+2348076823815
Sir,
Instead of condemning Lamido for the ‘alleged’ looting of d state treasury through his children, you would rather be contented comparing who loots more than the other in the country. And, of course, in your own brand of patriotism a Nigerian governor or leader who performs better than his predecessor in office should be free to help himself with the state money. Very unfortunate.
Emmanuel Egwu
+2348037921541
Sir,
Imagine this scenario. Tinubu’s son or Murtala Nyako’s daughter commits an offence and the government must look the other way so as not to be accused of selective fight. Warped logic! Why hasn’t the govt picked any of Buhari’s relations for crimes? Let’s stop this elite nepotism. A thief is a thief, whether he steals N184b or N10b.
Ahmed Yahaya, Abuja
+2348037055027
