Nelson Mandela Day

Today is the birthday of Nelson Mandela, and as a result 18 July is an annual day of remembrance called Mandela Day, not just here in South Africa, but globally, as a fond reminder of the icon who left a legacy of hope and freedom against all odds. Born on 18 July 1918, this will be the 101st anniversary of the man known as the father of the nation.

Having spent 27 years in prison on Robben Island a few miles offshore in Table Bay, with Table Mountain and Cape Town in the distance on the mainland, Mandela has become the epitome of a man who sacrificed a third of his life for the cause of liberating his nation from the oppression of the racist colonialists from Europe.

In fighting for the human rights of his countrymen and women, he was able to give them dignity once more, self-respect and self-belief, all the things that were stripped away from them while they were being oppressed for no reason on their own land. By bearing his burden he became a martyr for the cause of humanity, he bore the punishment and underwent the sacrifice that freed his people, in true messianic fashion. It’s no wonder he is revered for what he did.

But he had the character of a nobleman, raised from a royal line, born to be a chief, a king already, based on his lineage, he was a natural leader, who educated himself to become a lawyer, passing the bar, despite the color bar. He also became a boxer in his youth, standing tall and strong despite the blows of the opponent before him. Such qualities showed up in his character all through his life. Even after 27 years in prison, he emerged free from bitterness, resentment or revenge, and was able to set the example, walk the higher path and show the way to his millions of compatriots that reconciliation can be achieved without a shot being fired.

As a result the United Nations in 2009 declared this day of his birth as Nelson Mandela International Day, as an honour to his legacy. In other words it’s not just a local phenomenon but a global one for this Nobel Peace Prize laureate. It calls on us all to carry the torch and spend even 67 minutes in being of service to humanity on this day, one minute for each year he spent in service to the collective cause of humanity. As his widow said, Mandela Day is a way of being, rather than an event. It is a reminder that any one of us, even one person alone, can make a difference, and has the power to drive transformation.

As president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999 Mandela oversaw the “Truth and Reconciliation” era, where hearings were held to allow for repentance, or forgiveness, for reconciliation so that the nation could move forward and heal. The revolution took place without a shot being fired. This peaceful transition in a nation once torn apart across the racial divide, showed the world what can be done, with the right leadership and insight. Mandela achieved the impossible; he healed a nation of diverse ethnic minorities and brought them together as one rainbow nation. In a speech given to business leaders just months after his release from prison after 27 years, he said

"If the South African economy doesn't deliver, how can any politician hope to? We hope that the fact that we are meeting here signifies that there is a common acceptance among us that we necessarily must cooperate to ensure that the people do indeed enjoy a decent standard of living, in conditions of freedom."

He then went on to quote Shakespeare from the Merchant of Venice, taking a quote that perfectly epitomises the divide that was being experienced in the country at the time and for the previous 50 years between the haves and the have nots, a divide that is real but at the same time not enough to alienate us from each other irrevocably.

"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that... the villainy you teach me, I will execute; and it shall be so hard, but I will better the instruction."

And it appears like this still today in South Africa decades later, where the black man who has been shown such abuse by the white colonialist can now only exact that same retribution upon those who taught him so well how to despise and undermine the dignity afforded to the other. The karma has run full circle and the white man is now the racial underdog, the minority, the outsider and the despised victim of hate, abuse and moral degradation at the hand of the small criminal element of the black population who feel entitled now to reap vengeance by committing crimes of theft and worse upon the former oppressor.

The black man now feels fully entitled to treat the white oppressor as he was treated. He feels justified in stealing what he feels is his and that he is entitled to it, whether it is property, land or dignity. The black man feels that he has a right to rectify the balance and claim what is due to him. That is what the white colonial oppressor has brought upon himself a generation later, much like the Jew Shylock in Shakespeare’s play. “The villainy you teach me, I will execute” he says in his defense. It may be incorrect but is is the way human nature works unfortunately. Look at he Jews in Israel today. They may have been oppressed by the Nazis in WWII, and having being taught that kind of oppression, they now oppress the Palestinians in just the same way, corralling them like cattle, like “goyin”, in the biggest open air concentration camp in the world called the Gaza Strip.

It is tragic but is is human nature. Seldom do we have the moral fiber, the spiritual strength to rise above the hurts of the ego, to transcend the degrading behaviour of the oppressor and take the moral high road, to set the example, and teach by nobler example. Most of us simply repeat the inhumane treatment we were subject to, by enacting it upon some other lesser wretch because we now feel righteous justification, or because we know no better. We cannot help ourselves. So the black man, like the Jew, is now the oppressor, having once been the oppressed. He has learned well the skills of his former tyrannical prison warder, and now he simply repeats the same torture upon his former captor, or upon some other weaker helpless soul who dares to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is the Shakespearean tragedy in which we find ourselves in today. We the white minority in the black man’s land, the once former tyrant, now victim of crime, violence, rape and torture at the hands of the well-trained black oppressor. We reap what we have sown. And the Palestinian in his own accursed land must now reap the brunt of all the vengeance that the Jew wishes to express in his righteous indignation, because he thinks he is special, is different, is better than his fellow human being, thinks he is God’s gift to the planet, and anyone else is just a piece of cattle to be herded into an open air pen, starved of water, of rights, of dignity as a lesser creature although in exactly the same human body.

Well the cries of the Shylock ring true even from the mouth of the Palestinian now, as they do from the white man in South Africa, and as they once did from the black and the Jew. The shoe is on the other foot, but it is the same humanity that mistreats itself, the same blind ignorance that fails to see the brother as his own flesh and blood, to see the sibling as child of the same father in heaven and mother earth. This spiritual blindness is something we impose upon ourselves, upon each other generation after generation. We simply take it in turns to be the oppressed or the oppressor in a karmic wheel of degradation lifetime after lifetime.

Unless and until a Mandela arrives to break the cycle, to remind us of our common humanity, to rise up and show the noble path like a true king. But such a leader is rare, and unfortunately when he passes on, as Mandela did on 5 December 2013, South Africa fell back into its ignorant ways and the black man resumed his hatred of the white former oppressor and the crimes and violence simply increased because the wounds had never fully healed, or the spiritual insight was not penetrating enough to see the fellow human being in the body of the differently pigmented and cultured brother. Or perhaps he called upon his god by a different name, in a different tongue, as if there can be any other god but god.

Such is the nature of our spiritually blinded vision of ourselves, of humanity and of reality in general on planet earth. We cannot even see our fellow humans as brothers, as worthy of the same respect that we demand, what to speak of seeing it in every living entity. We are not merely oppressed by our fellow brother, but we are oppressed by our own ignorant selves. We do it to ourselves, generation after generation, the crime is perpetuated, the bad example is repeated and taught to the next in line as we all take it in turns to be the victim or the victimiser. Well we need a Mandela today more than ever, one in every continent. Especially in Africa and in the Middle East, so that the tortured Jew does not take out his tortured anguish on his own neighbour and Semitic cousin, the Palestinian, and the tortured black man does not take out his hatred, greed and envy on the hapless white bodied brother from another mother. The Mandela government of South Africa officially recognizes the state of Palestine and the two state solution as the final solution.

So will the real Mandela please stand up, your time has come and it is now.