David Uri
2013-12-05 22:10:50 UTC
BBC News obituary
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22892784
Obituary: Nelson Mandela
By Fergal Keane
BBC News
To those who observed him closely, Nelson Mandela always carried
himself as one who was born to lead.
As his former cellmate and long time friend, Ahmed Kathrada, said
recently: "He was born into a royal house and there was always that
sense about him of someone who knew the meaning of leadership."
The Mandela who led the African National Congress into government
displayed a conspicuous sense of his own dignity and a self-belief
that nothing in 27 years of imprisonment had been capable of
destroying.
Although Mr Mandela frequently described himself as simply part of the
ANC's leadership, there was never any doubt that he was the most
potent political figure of his generation in South Africa.
To the wider world he represented many things, not least an icon of
freedom but also the most vivid example in modern times of the power
of forgiveness and reconciliation. Back in the early 1990s, I remember
then President, FW De Klerk, telling me he how he found Mandela's lack
of bitterness "astonishing".
His fundamental creed was best expressed in his address to the
sabotage trial in 1964. "I have fought against white domination, and I
have fought against black domination," he said.
"I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which
all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It
is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be,
it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
Born in 1918, Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela was raised in the village
of Mvezo in the Transkei in the Eastern Cape. He was one of 13
children from a family with close links to the royal house of the
Thembu people.
Mr Mandela often recalled his boyhood in the green hills of the
Transkei with fondness. This was a remote landscape of beehive-shaped
huts and livestock grazing on poor land.
He was only nine when his father died of tuberculosis. Always closer
emotionally to his mother, Mr Mandela described his father as a stern
disciplinarian. But he credited his father with instilling the
instincts that would help carry him to greatness.
Years later Mr Mandela would write that "my father possessed a proud
rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness " His death changed the
course of the boy's life.
The young Mandela was sent from his home village to live as a ward of
the Thembu royal house, where he would be groomed for a leadership
role.
This meant he must have a proper education. He was sent to a Methodist
school, where he was given the name Nelson. He was a diligent student
and in 1939 went to Fort Hare University, then a burgeoning centre of
African nationalism.
It was at Fort Hare that Mr Mandela met the future ANC leader, Oliver
Tambo, with whom he would establish the first black law practice in
South Africa. Both were expelled from the university in 1940 for
political activism.
First as a lawyer, then an activist and ultimately as a guerrilla
leader, Mr Mandela moved towards the collision with state power that
would change his own and his country's fate.
The late 1950s and early 1960s were a period of growing tumult in
South Africa, as African nationalists allied with the South African
Communist Party challenged the apartheid state.
When protest was met with brute force, the ANC launched an armed
struggle with Mr Mandela at its head.
He was arrested and charged with treason in 1956. After a trial
lasting five years, Mr Mandela was acquitted. But by now the ANC had
been banned and his comrade Oliver Tambo had gone into exile.
Nelson Mandela went underground and embarked on a secret trip to seek
help from other African nations emerging from colonial rule. He also
visited London to meet Tambo.
But soon after his return he was arrested and sentenced to five years
in jail. Further charges, of sabotage, led to a life sentence that
would see him spend 27 years behind bars.
He worked in the lime quarry on Robben Island, the prison in Cape Town
harbour where the glaring sun on the white stone caused permanent
damage to his eyes; he contracted tuberculosis in Pollsmoor Prison
outside Cape Town, and he held the first talks with government
ministers while he was incarcerated at the Victor Verster prison farm.
In conversation, he would often say prison had given him time to
think. It had also formed his habits in sometimes poignant ways.
I recall a breakfast with several other journalists, where Mr Mandela
was briefing us on the latest political talks. The waiter approached
with a bowl of porridge. Tasting it briefly, the ANC leader shook his
head. "It is too hot," he said. The waiter went away and returned with
another bowl. This too was sent back. The waiter was looking
embarrassed as he approached for the third time.
Fortunately the temperature was now cool enough. The famous broad
smile appeared. The waiter was heartily thanked and breakfast - and
our questions - were able to continue.
"That was a bit fussy wasn't it," I remarked to a colleague
afterwards.
My colleague pulled me up short with his reply. "Think about it. If
you spent 27 years in jail, most of the time eating food that was
either cold or at best lukewarm, you are going to end up struggling
with hot food."
There it was, expressed in the most prosaic of realities, a reminder
of the long vanished years of Nelson Mandela.
Prison had taken away the prime of his life. It had taken away his
family life. Relations with some of his children were strained. His
marriage to Winnie Mandela would end in divorce.
But as I followed him over the next three years, through embattled
townships, tense negotiations, moments of despair and elation, I would
understand that prison had never robbed his humanity.
I remember listening to him in a dusty township after a surge of
violence which threatened to derail negotiations. Fighting between ANC
supporters and the predominantly Zulu Inkatha movement had claimed
thousands of lives, mainly in the townships around Johannesburg and in
the hills of Natal.
In those circumstances another leader might have been tempted to blame
the enemy alone. But when Mr Mandela spoke he surprised all of us who
were listening: "There are members of the ANC who are killing our
people We must face the truth. Our people are just as involved as
other organisations that are committing violence We cannot climb to
freedom on the corpses of innocent people."
He knew the crowd would not like his message but he also knew they
would listen.
As an interviewee, he deflected personal questions with references to
the suffering of all South Africans. One learned to read the
expressions on his face for a truer guide to what Mr Mandela felt.
On the day that he separated from Winnie Mandela, I interviewed him at
ANC headquarters. I have no recollection of what he said but the
expression of pure loneliness on his face is one I will always
remember.
But my final memory of Nelson Mandela is one of joy. On the night of 2
May 1994 I was crammed into a function room full of officials,
activists, diplomats and journalists, struggling to hear each other as
the music pulsed and the cheers rang out.
The ANC had won a comprehensive victory. On the stage, surrounded by
his closest advisors, Nelson Mandela danced and waved to the crowd. He
smiled the open, generous smile of a man who had lived to see his
dream.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22892784
Obituary: Nelson Mandela
By Fergal Keane
BBC News
To those who observed him closely, Nelson Mandela always carried
himself as one who was born to lead.
As his former cellmate and long time friend, Ahmed Kathrada, said
recently: "He was born into a royal house and there was always that
sense about him of someone who knew the meaning of leadership."
The Mandela who led the African National Congress into government
displayed a conspicuous sense of his own dignity and a self-belief
that nothing in 27 years of imprisonment had been capable of
destroying.
Although Mr Mandela frequently described himself as simply part of the
ANC's leadership, there was never any doubt that he was the most
potent political figure of his generation in South Africa.
To the wider world he represented many things, not least an icon of
freedom but also the most vivid example in modern times of the power
of forgiveness and reconciliation. Back in the early 1990s, I remember
then President, FW De Klerk, telling me he how he found Mandela's lack
of bitterness "astonishing".
His fundamental creed was best expressed in his address to the
sabotage trial in 1964. "I have fought against white domination, and I
have fought against black domination," he said.
"I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which
all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It
is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be,
it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
Born in 1918, Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela was raised in the village
of Mvezo in the Transkei in the Eastern Cape. He was one of 13
children from a family with close links to the royal house of the
Thembu people.
Mr Mandela often recalled his boyhood in the green hills of the
Transkei with fondness. This was a remote landscape of beehive-shaped
huts and livestock grazing on poor land.
He was only nine when his father died of tuberculosis. Always closer
emotionally to his mother, Mr Mandela described his father as a stern
disciplinarian. But he credited his father with instilling the
instincts that would help carry him to greatness.
Years later Mr Mandela would write that "my father possessed a proud
rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness " His death changed the
course of the boy's life.
The young Mandela was sent from his home village to live as a ward of
the Thembu royal house, where he would be groomed for a leadership
role.
This meant he must have a proper education. He was sent to a Methodist
school, where he was given the name Nelson. He was a diligent student
and in 1939 went to Fort Hare University, then a burgeoning centre of
African nationalism.
It was at Fort Hare that Mr Mandela met the future ANC leader, Oliver
Tambo, with whom he would establish the first black law practice in
South Africa. Both were expelled from the university in 1940 for
political activism.
First as a lawyer, then an activist and ultimately as a guerrilla
leader, Mr Mandela moved towards the collision with state power that
would change his own and his country's fate.
The late 1950s and early 1960s were a period of growing tumult in
South Africa, as African nationalists allied with the South African
Communist Party challenged the apartheid state.
When protest was met with brute force, the ANC launched an armed
struggle with Mr Mandela at its head.
He was arrested and charged with treason in 1956. After a trial
lasting five years, Mr Mandela was acquitted. But by now the ANC had
been banned and his comrade Oliver Tambo had gone into exile.
Nelson Mandela went underground and embarked on a secret trip to seek
help from other African nations emerging from colonial rule. He also
visited London to meet Tambo.
But soon after his return he was arrested and sentenced to five years
in jail. Further charges, of sabotage, led to a life sentence that
would see him spend 27 years behind bars.
He worked in the lime quarry on Robben Island, the prison in Cape Town
harbour where the glaring sun on the white stone caused permanent
damage to his eyes; he contracted tuberculosis in Pollsmoor Prison
outside Cape Town, and he held the first talks with government
ministers while he was incarcerated at the Victor Verster prison farm.
In conversation, he would often say prison had given him time to
think. It had also formed his habits in sometimes poignant ways.
I recall a breakfast with several other journalists, where Mr Mandela
was briefing us on the latest political talks. The waiter approached
with a bowl of porridge. Tasting it briefly, the ANC leader shook his
head. "It is too hot," he said. The waiter went away and returned with
another bowl. This too was sent back. The waiter was looking
embarrassed as he approached for the third time.
Fortunately the temperature was now cool enough. The famous broad
smile appeared. The waiter was heartily thanked and breakfast - and
our questions - were able to continue.
"That was a bit fussy wasn't it," I remarked to a colleague
afterwards.
My colleague pulled me up short with his reply. "Think about it. If
you spent 27 years in jail, most of the time eating food that was
either cold or at best lukewarm, you are going to end up struggling
with hot food."
There it was, expressed in the most prosaic of realities, a reminder
of the long vanished years of Nelson Mandela.
Prison had taken away the prime of his life. It had taken away his
family life. Relations with some of his children were strained. His
marriage to Winnie Mandela would end in divorce.
But as I followed him over the next three years, through embattled
townships, tense negotiations, moments of despair and elation, I would
understand that prison had never robbed his humanity.
I remember listening to him in a dusty township after a surge of
violence which threatened to derail negotiations. Fighting between ANC
supporters and the predominantly Zulu Inkatha movement had claimed
thousands of lives, mainly in the townships around Johannesburg and in
the hills of Natal.
In those circumstances another leader might have been tempted to blame
the enemy alone. But when Mr Mandela spoke he surprised all of us who
were listening: "There are members of the ANC who are killing our
people We must face the truth. Our people are just as involved as
other organisations that are committing violence We cannot climb to
freedom on the corpses of innocent people."
He knew the crowd would not like his message but he also knew they
would listen.
As an interviewee, he deflected personal questions with references to
the suffering of all South Africans. One learned to read the
expressions on his face for a truer guide to what Mr Mandela felt.
On the day that he separated from Winnie Mandela, I interviewed him at
ANC headquarters. I have no recollection of what he said but the
expression of pure loneliness on his face is one I will always
remember.
But my final memory of Nelson Mandela is one of joy. On the night of 2
May 1994 I was crammed into a function room full of officials,
activists, diplomats and journalists, struggling to hear each other as
the music pulsed and the cheers rang out.
The ANC had won a comprehensive victory. On the stage, surrounded by
his closest advisors, Nelson Mandela danced and waved to the crowd. He
smiled the open, generous smile of a man who had lived to see his
dream.
--
David Uri.
Please visit my town - http://allezblancs.miniville.fr
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David Uri.
Please visit my town - http://allezblancs.miniville.fr
Every visitor increases the population by one.
Email: ***@bigfoot.com (remove VEST to reply)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/daviduri
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