Nelson Mandela is going home. He has departed this world of mortals but it is very clear that were it to be the subject of a Big Brother-like vote, the global aplomb would almost surely have been for him to continue to remain in the house. This is how well he touched us. But we are not God.
And the Methodist-raised Mandela was always conscious of
that. And he did not even allow his characteristic sense of solidarity with his
comrades in the African National Congress, Umkhoto wa Sizwe and the South
African Communist Party to touch him in this regard. When for example he saw
that his comrades were elevating ‘winning the struggle’ over and above the
imperatives of peace and development and electing to continue to prosecute the
very debilitating ‘black on black violence’ against the Inkatha freedom Party
(IFP), Mandela broke with the party line and made his way down to Kwazulu Natal
for a one-on-one with Gatsha Buthelezi. It paid off. The war ended.
A second example came also whilst he served as President and
had to do with the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) Programme that he had put
in place to help long-locked out Africans from the commanding heights of the
South African economy. Because the majority of the beneficiaries were
ex-combatants who were not adept with the mechanics of commercial business and
enterprise, the firms that they had now secured proprietorship over soon began
to flounder. Again, much against the party grain, Mandela reached out far and
wide to get accomplished business players from across the world, whites
included, to come and teach his black boys how to do it properly!
A third reference has to do with the penchant for sit-tight
leadership in the continent where pioneer-leaders like Mandela encourage
themselves or secure encouragement anyways to continue to remain in office
indefinitely. When Mandela sensed that some of his associates had begun making
underground moves to return him to the ballot for a second time in office, he
again broke with the caucus and publicly declared that he was not a candidate!
This is the stuff of which great leadership is made.
Watching the bevy of world leaders and common people to wit,
rising to pay tribute to him on worldwide television yesterday and the effusive
display of love and respect being showered on a man who gave up literally all
of his comfort so his people can get theirs, almost brought a tear from my
eyes. And a question also: are these leaders seeing what some of us are seeing?
Are they getting inspiration, motivation and vision with which they would
return home to their respective states, make restitution, repent of their old
prodigal ways and commit now to joining other men and women of goodwill and
honour to drive the world to the heights of glory possible only with
self-effacing leadership lifestyles like that which Madiba has so eloquently
demonstrated.
Practically then, what is the quintessential legacy of
Nelson Mandela?
A lot of this can be found in the story of his life and
struggles. He was born a privileged Xhosa prince from the Thembu ruling house but
he elected for the struggle to elevate all of humanity to the pedestal of
honour, love and justice where the Almighty God had established them to be in
the first place. When things got heated and the system whipped at him very
mercilessly, he could have taken the easy way out, cut a private deal and chickened
out of ‘his foolishness,’ but like the Biblical Issachar, he chose to bow his
shoulders further to bear some more burden and become a servant unto tribute.’
Mandela was truly a man who lived more than a man’s basic share of life. He was
legendary. He was a phenomenon. And because he lived so gloriously, he would
almost literally be remembered eternally.
Three points come out for this writer as the core essentials
of the Mandela brand that will win any day. The first is that planning over the
long haul and living your life with a firm recognition that tomorrow would
surely come is a critical success factor that cannot be glossed over.
Second, that man or woman that would amount to much in a
respectable way must find out what his calling in life is and live for it. As
the philosophers would say, if you live for everything, you will fall for
anything. The challenge then is to identify the critical something that
resonates with you and commit to living for it no matter how many obstacles are
placed on your path.
And third, the winning person must be a person of courage, a
will-do and can-do type. This flows from an essential recognition that life
does not hand over laurels for wishful thinking, but on the contrary to people
with a ‘solid weight of personal achievement,‘ as that other equally recently
departed achiever, the venerable Chinua Achebe would put it.
And then we close on this point. As many commentators have
very well asserted already, the Mandela type is a rarity in our world today for
several reasons. While the purpose of this piece is not to go into elaborate
detail about ‘why we are indeed so blest,’ it may be important to state that
this state of degradation is clearly not unconnected with the decline and loss
that we have suffered on the prism of values. For if the truth is to be told,
the world in which we live in today is caught in a very frightening tailspin
where the pristine values that forged and kept communities in the past have
slowly but gradually been denuded with very little being done to replace them.
But for the moment, let us savour the privilege of the
moment and bask in the glory of the fact that Mandela came, saw, lived and
conquered even in these besmirched times. And if we would be willing to sit
where he sat, then we can still have a few more Mandelas in the years that
follow that will continue to point us on towards the path of rectitude, honour
and good sense. Here indeed was a great man. When comes another? We wait.
This piece was first published in Hallmark Newspaper of Wednesday, December 11, 2013.
