{"id":116392,"date":"2013-12-08T00:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-12-07T18:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=116392"},"modified":"2013-12-13T19:37:03","modified_gmt":"2013-12-13T14:07:03","slug":"nelson-mandela-1918-2013-to-honour-mandela-is-to-learn-from-his-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/nelson-mandela-1918-2013-to-honour-mandela-is-to-learn-from-his-example\/","title":{"rendered":"Nelson Mandela 1918-2013: To honour Mandela Is To Learn From His Example"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rajan Philips<\/span><\/a> –<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Rajan<\/a>

Rajan Philips<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the most inspiring moments in our life time was watching Nelson Mandela<\/span><\/a> walk out of prison on 11 February, 1990.\u00a0 He looked tall and determined, defiant yet kind.\u00a0 He looked taller than his 6\u20191\u201d height, even though the twenty seven years in harsh prison conditions had shrunken his massive 200+ lb frame that he took to the prison.\u00a0 On Thursday, 5 December 2013, Nelson Mandela passed away quietly in his Johannesburg home after keeping an anxious nation awake for several months.\u00a0 The world that watched him walk out of prison 23 years ago is now ready to watch his last journey through the land that he liberated from apartheid.\u00a0 \u201cWhat would be his legacy?\u201d \u2013 his longtime friend, anti-apartheid activist and Nobel laureate for literature, Nadine Gordimer, was once asked.\u00a0 \u201cIt depends on what we make of it\u201d, was her response. \u00a0The world could make a lot of it.\u00a0 Even Sri Lankan leaders could benefit hugely from Mandela\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

As a prisoner, Mandela became the icon in the world\u2019s final fight against political racism.\u00a0 In South Africa, the site of that struggle, Mandela mediated the transition from apartheid to freedom.\u00a0 Today, he is revered by everyone and everywhere.\u00a0 But for the greater part of his political life as a leading member of the African National Congress, he was reviled by powerful forces in and out of South Africa.\u00a0 Never before, or after, has the international community \u2013 governments as well as civil societies \u2013 become so involved as it did in the 1980s movement to free Mandela from prison and apartheid in South Africa.\u00a0 The modern NGOs emerged and made their mark on the world stage through the anti-apartheid struggle.<\/p>\n

\"Nelson\"<\/a>The Commonwealth led the sanctions against apartheid, with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney leading the way and breaking ranks with his powerful friend Margaret Thatcher<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 Thatcher despised the African National Congress and applauded the South African government for its economic prowess.\u00a0 She was ideologically blinkered from seeing apartheid as inhuman racial exploitation that underpinned South Africa\u2019s economic success.\u00a0\u00a0 Her ideological soul mate, President Ronald Reagan declared Nelson Mandela a terrorist and put him on the US list of terrorists.\u00a0 By oversight and mistake, the Mandela name remained on the US terrorist list until 2008, when Hillary Clinton<\/span><\/a> under President Obama formally took the name off the list.\u00a0 The definition of terrorism and heroism vary across time and space.\u00a0 A terrorist in the west or north could be a hero in the east or south, and a terrorist now could be a hero later.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka<\/span><\/a> has had direct and indirect connections to apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa.\u00a0 When the Sri Lankan government disenfranchised the Tamil plantation workers, IDS Weerawardena, the progressive Political Scientist, condemned it as an extension of \u201cMalanism\u201d \u2013 the term coined after DF Malan, South African Prime Minister (1948-54) and the father of apartheid.\u00a0 At the height of the international anti-apartheid movement, the Sri Lankan government turned to the apartheid government in South Africa for lessons and resources, to fight Sri Lanka\u2019s version of terrorism.\u00a0 The Tamil groups for their part established links with sections of the ANC.\u00a0 Post-apartheid, Sri Lankan scholars and NGOs have been inspired by and have studied the example of South Africa\u2019s Truth and Reconciliation Commission for dealing with the postwar reconciliation challenges in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 Just the last month during the Commonwealth Summit, South African President Jacob Zuma is reported to have indicated to President Rajapaksa, his government\u2019s willingness to share South Africa\u2019s reconciliation experiences and help Sri Lanka deal with its postwar challenges.<\/p>\n

The legacy and example of Nelson Mandela<\/b><\/p>\n

Nelson Mandela leaves behind a South Africa that is still struggling with many searching questions.\u00a0 Despite its status as an upper middle income economy, the largest economy in Africa and the 28th<\/sup> largest in the world, the socioeconomic statistics present a woeful picture of challenging demographics, high unemployment, widespread inequality, and the scourge of HIV\/AIDS.\u00a0 But Nelson Mandela answered the more foundational questions facing post-apartheid South Africa and placed the country on a secure constitutional democratic footing.<\/p>\n

Most of all, like the first American President George Washington in another era, Nelson Mandela established the exemplary precedent by relinquishing office just after one term.\u00a0 The constitution limits presidential tenure to two terms of five years each, and provides a good balance between presidential and parliamentary powers.\u00a0 Also, by having the President elected not directly by the people but by a majority in parliament, the constitution has avoided the risk of creeping presidential dictatorship.<\/p>\n

Mandela could have continued in office for as long as he wanted, but by choosing to retire from politics he has steered South Africa away from the path taken by so many African countries, where once-elected governments have entrenched themselves permanently. Once so entrenched, elections are orchestrated to achieve endorsement of the status quo and avoid at all cost any potential for an alternative government.\u00a0 Rather than staying in power and atrophying democracy, Mandela abandoned power and encouraged people\u2019s participation in every election, whether local, provincial or national.<\/p>\n

His biggest achievement was the way he weaved the rainbow fabric of a free South Africa out of its multi-hued and multi-lingual co-existences.\u00a0 A \u2018nation\u2019 of 52 million living in nine provinces, South Africa has 11 official languages (the largest number in the world), spoken by multi-ethnic Black Africans constituting 80% of the population, and significant concentrations of European, Asians as well as multiracial hybrids.\u00a0 Mandela had started the weaving process long before he was sent to prison.\u00a0 He saw national synthesis as the surest response to a deeply divided society.\u00a0 He focused on pulling the different strands of South African society together and avoided projecting an ideological vision even if it could have included all the Black Africans.\u00a0 Mandela did not want to exclude anybody.<\/p>\n

He described his rainbow perspective in eloquent terms in the course of his four-hour long statement from the dock during the trial that led to his imprisonment: \u201cI have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities.\u00a0 It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.\u00a0 But if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.\u201d\u00a0 The white Afrikaner judge hearing the case decided in his wisdom to commit Mandela and his comrades to life imprisonment instead of a death sentence.\u00a0 It would take 27 years before Mandela could lead his people to the realization of his cherished ideal.<\/p>\n

How he survived his long imprisonment without sacrificing his spirit and his ideal for his country, is a long story that has been narrated many times.\u00a0 The manner of his survival is also a testament to the man and his bearing.\u00a0 Where lesser leaders would have opted for retribution and reparation, Mandela chose to seek truth and achieve reconciliation.\u00a0 He tellingly responded, when asked about prosecuting whites from the apartheid regime, \u201cProsecution?\u00a0 I am not interested in prosecution. I am interested in building a nation.\u201d Truth and reconciliation, he sought and achieved not only in politics but also in personal life.\u00a0 He would not condone the political abuses of his activist wife, Winnie Mandela, and would not shy away from a public divorce of their marriage torn by long separation and little cohabitation.\u00a0 He was true to his feelings in marrying at the age of eighty, Graca Machel, thirty years his junior and the stately widow of independent Mozambique\u2019s first President, Samora Machel.<\/p>\n

Nelson Mandela is a hard act to follow even for well-equipped leaders.\u00a0 But even lesser leaders can learn from him that it is possible in life, personal as well as political, to rise above the many differences that humankind has created over time and across cultures and to discover the overarching commonality of all human beings.\u00a0 His biggest example is that he made it possible for South Africa to lay the constitutional foundation and start the process of democratic nation building that would erase the legacy of apartheid and replace it with the project of achieving unity and equality amidst diversity and inequality.\u00a0 That is Nelson Mandela\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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