18th July was yet another ordinary scorcher of a day until I realized its importance for something very sacred and greatly significant — It was the ‘great’ Nelson Mandela’s birthday.
Mandela also known as Madiba, attributing to his clan, is struggling to recuperate in Pretoria’s local hospital. Like many across the globe I pray for his longevity and expeditious recovery. Though I am fully aware that his exploits will remain monumental and immortal posthumously as well.
He is an inspiration and a role model to many like me who value his Heroics for emancipating blacks and at the same time keeping the whites in South African society strongly intact with the national fabric — a big feat to achieve in what was previously a very polarized country during apartheid.
There are so many fascinating dimensions to his struggle or you may call it his passion to bring social, political and economic harmony in his motherland that I get bamboozled to find any other example in modern era that could match his genius.
It was his master stroke that united a country with William Ernest Henley’s ‘Invictus’. I believe if he had not narrated that poem to Francois Pienaar, the springboks captain during the 1995 rugby World Cup, things would have been different in South Africa today.
Mandela leveraged sports to bring the two races, at loggers head with each other, closer and showed how black and white races can assimilate into each other to form a rainbow nation. The poem that he narrated to the springboks captain was a bouncing bag for Mandela himself while he was doing time in Robben island prison.
From 27 years of prison and straight to the presidency seems like a fairy tale to me. The saga didn’t end here. Another feather in his cap was the establishment of truth and reconciliation commission that led to fair and transparent accountability of the hate mongers during apartheid hence teaching the values of coexistence to fellow South Africans!
A Nobel peace prize recipient, his devotion as champion of peace and social justice is unmatched. Though drawing parallels would be unjust but I believe his grandeur somewhat surpasses the legendary Martin Luther king a notch, as he not only had to engage two races at daggers drawn but also had to unite a nation that was home to 11official languages.
He is not actively involved in politics today but he has left behind a legacy of compassion, tolerance, peace and racial equality that will guide many a generations to come. May he witness more birthdays in his lifetime …..it will be apt to wish him in his native Xhosa language:
” halala ngemini yakho yokuzalwa “
The Mystic recluse 