Mandela

So Madiba’s Long Walk has ended.  May he rest in peace.

I woke around 9:00 Gulf time on Friday morning and, as usual, switched on the tv for my breakfast News intake. I was just in time to hear Martine Dennis on BBC World News announce (again) his passing.  To be honest it came as no great surprise.  He was 95 after all, and had been fading for several years, spending some months in hospital this year with a lung infection.  I remember remarking to my wife when he was finally released and sent home that he was probably going to battle through to his birthday and then quietly slip away – which is essentially what happened.  Quietly is probably not the right word, given the street party going on outside his house the last week or so, but still…..he was at home, surrounded by his family, and I can think of few better ways of dying.  Certainly better than being lonely in an old people’s residence somewhere, ignored by all except the staff there and forgotten by the people who should care most.

Like most people outside of South Africa (with the honourable exception of anti-apartheid campaigners) I hadn’t heard of him until the bandwagon for his release from Robben Island started in the late 80s and early 90s, and came to prominence with the Free Mandela Concert at the old Wembley Stadium.  I didn’t watch it, but have since seen some excerpts and it must have been a pretty good day – the other night I watched Eric Clapton on YouTube, playing “strictly rhythm” like Guitar George with Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing”……and he seemed perfectly happy strumming away at “all the chords”, while Knopfler, as usual, made his old guitar sing.  Nice moment.  But the Concert served to bring the name of Nelson Mandela to a wider audience, and Labour councils the length and breadth of Britain - and indeed the world over - leapt onto the bandwagon, as politicians tend to do still, and named roads and parks and buildings in his honour.  Even the BBC got in on the act, with the Trotter family in the classic Only Fools and Horses living in Nelson Mandela House, Peckham.

But to many people, he was still a terrorist, and he and the ANC were blacklisted as such by, amongst others, the UK and the US for years, even after his release and elevation to the South African Presidency.  Which only goes to show that one man’s terrorist is another man’s statesman. As far as I could tell, the man was not a terrorist, if you accept the definition of terrorism being an effort to remove a legitimate government through means of violence and the widespread use of weapons on innocent parties and the general public.  Certainly he wanted apartheid to end, as did most right minded people, and was prepared to die for that cause, but I don’t remember him threatening violence to achieve those aims – like the Dalai Lama and others he favoured diplomacy and the ballot box.  Nevertheless, the South African government still banged him up for the best part of 30 years, for fomenting terrorism (though I would have thought their own police service’s operations in places like Sharpeville and Soweto did a far better job than anything Mandela might have said in that respect).

Over time, the Court of Public Opinion had its way and a more moderate President de Klerk released him from Robben Island.  I can remember it being broadcast live on tv, and watching it while on holiday in Cornwall.  It was raining there so the beach was not an option, and my kids wanted to know who he was and what all the fuss was about and when was the weather going to improve so that we could go out somewhere.  I remember too the way he walked out hand in hand with his wife Winnie, both waving and smiling to the massed cheering crowds at the gates, and realizing that here was a momentous moment but without really grasping all of its importance – I don’t possess a crystal ball, nor was I much interested in politics of any kind, let alone global politics.  But it seemed clear that the winds of change were blowing through South Africa, and that Mandela was destined to play a huge role in all that came to pass.

And so he did.  His subsequent election, as the first democratically empowered black President in the first multi- racial election in that country, changed not only South Africa but the world.  Whether he was a good President, or whether his various policies and initiatives were successful or not is open to debate, and for people more qualified than me to comment on.  But it seems inarguable that South Africa has changed for the better as he and his ANC successors have continued the process he started 30 years ago.  Certainly there is still inequality there, as indeed there is in most other countries in the world – the rich continue to get richer and the poor poorer everywhere, and rightly or wrongly this seems to be human nature, and neither capitalism not communism, nor any other political system makes a scrap of difference to that.  But most people are better off and have better prospects for a good life, an education and health care than was the case previously, where non-whites were at best ignored and at worst treated little better than domesticated animals.  It’s Africa’s tragedy that other nations have been unable to follow Mandela’s and South Africa’s lead and bloodbaths continue to proliferate the length and breadth of that vast Continent to this day, and show no signs of abating.

Mandela retired from the Presidency in 1999, and became a world statesman, feted everywhere, an example to everyone, young and old, that huge change could be attained through dialogue and patience and understanding.  He was a wise old man, and many of the things he said have been quoted over the last week or so on tv and newspapers and websites and blogs, and they all make huge amounts of sense.  My favourite is the one about no-one being born to hate, that you have to learn it, and if you can learn to hate you can learn to love too, and that’s a much better thing to do.   If only more people could actually do so…….

And so to yesterday’s memorial service, where the Great and the Good (and the Not So Good) gathered at the Johannesburg football stadium to celebrate his life and times.  There was music, and speeches, and over 100 world leaders and past leaders, pop stars and supermodels, and ordinary South Africans, came together in the pouring rain, and it seemed a fine time was had by all.  Of the bits I saw (not many as I was at work) Obama’s speech stood out – or at least the bit of it about not enough leaders trying to emulate Mandela by making things better and too many standing on the sidelines doing nothing to ease suffering the world over, struck a chord: I wonder who his remarks were aimed at (and whether they care very much anyway?).  The festivities, if you can call them that, will continue for days yet, with a Lying in State until the weekend and a final (allegedly quiet) family burial in his home village in the Eastern Cape.  And then Nelson Mandela will truly pass into the pages of history.

My memories of him are like many people’s, I guess – a smiling and genial old man, with a terrible taste in shirts.  But one with a twinkle in his eye (at least until old age and infirmity dulled them), who seemed to like a laugh and a joke with people – whether with the locals in Soweto, or popes or pop stars or royalty.   He loved his sport, as do I – the pictures of him in his usual loud shirt and SA baseball cap presenting the rugby World Cup to Francois Pienaar are wonderful, and for me capture the spirit of the man more than any other.  The exchange between them speaks volumes too – Mandela: “Thank you for all you have done for my country.”, Pienaar: “Thank you for all you have done for mine.”  And his love of music too resonates – the way he would suddenly start jigging around whenever the mood and the music caught him, even if he was up on a stage somewhere speechifying – brilliant (and I dance like him too, which is to say badly, but who cares).  I loved his quiet dignity in later years, on the rare occasions he was wheeled out (sometimes literally) into the public eye, when he bore it all peacefully.

He was a unique man and a unique politician, that rarity that unites people rather than divides them.  I can’t think of another in my lifetime like him – Churchill maybe, but he did it during World War 2, before I was born, by which time he was on the wane.  No British Prime Minister since then, of any persuasion, has done anything except divide – Wilson, Thatcher, Blair, Brown, Cameron….all as bad as one another.  The same in the US and France and Germany and any other country I can think of.  It’s sad, but perhaps Madiba was the last of a dying breed, a politician who sought and worked in office through personal conviction, for the good of all his people rather than for a chosen few, for a lifetime, no matter the consequences. It was not a career choice to garner the wealth and power that by fair means or foul (and increasingly foul) these days comes the way of any President or Prime Minister, in and out of office, but a lifelong conviction and belief and determination to Make A Difference – and in this he undoubtedly succeeded.

He was a Great Man.