Nelson Mandela - Happy Birthday, Madiba!

On 18 July Nelson Mandela will be ninety-three years old. Without a doubt he has distinguished himself as an International icon never to be forgotten. His dignity, compassion, forgiving nature and positive outlook on the future are only some of the excellent attributes he possesses that have made him one of the most respectable leaders in the world.

I was already a mother of two when I first heard of a man named Nelson Mandela, who was jailed for life on June 12 back in 1964, because he was one of the organizers of a revolution.

I was seven years old in 1964 and blissfully unaware of the world outside my personal zone. Just like many other white South Africans I saw Nelson Mandela for the first time on the day he was released from jail on February 11, 1990. Glued to our chairs in front of televisions, we waited anxiously for him to determine the lot for the whites. Surprisingly it was not his plan to organize another revolution. Taking revenge for being locked away for almost thirty years was not at all his secret agenda, but rather to merge all people living in South Africa into one rainbow nation.

Four years later, on May 10, 1994 during his Inaugural Address speech, he clearly stressed: “The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.”

Being born on 18 July 1918, Mandela is forty years my senior. An entire generation exists between him and myself and all my peers.

By the time I was born, Apartheid had already been established by the National Party who came into power in 1948. The ten different African (black) tribes in the country (70% of the population) had their own Homelands, occupying only 13% of the land. Members of these tribes were only allowed to be guest workers in ‘white’ South-Africa.

The Coloured people, who were born in South Africa as a result of the Dutch who landed on African soil in 1652 and got to mingle as they please with the natives and slaves that were imported from nearby islands and Mid-Africa, were also disenfranchised and separated from whites as well as from the Africans. Many years after these traumatic changes my mother told me that her best friend was classified as a Coloured and was forced by law to break her engagement with a white man. Indians were also not regarded as ‘whites’ and were bound to the land that was given to them.

History was one of my favorite subjects in school. But that was all about Jan van Riebeeck who came all the way from the Netherlands to establish a halfway house for ships at the southern point of Africa, and about all the good fortunes they’d enjoyed until the British took over. I’d written exams about the struggles of my white ancestors who were born in South Africa; about the dialect of Dutch, named Afrikaans, they had developed, which eventually became an official language in 1925 and is classified today one of eleven official languages in South Africa.

My peers and I had passed our grades one by one, enlightened with knowledge about The Groot Trek and our courageous white Afrikaner ancestors who had crossed the Orange River to find their Promised Land ‘up north’ in ‘Dark Africa’. They were Christians, we were told, true Christians, Calvinist, and not ‘lost’ like the Catholics and Anglicans and the Africans. We, the ‘blessed’ and ‘chosen’ ‘Boere’ (Farmers ), were convinced that God had protected our ancestors against the hordes of barbaric Africans and ruthless British soldiers.

Adults never discussed any ‘adult-topics’ in the presence of children. Or let me rather say - children were never allowed to be in a room where adults were conversing. A child, who dared entering a space where adults were socializing, was promptly confronted, “Can we take our teeth out for you to count? If you want to complain about something, or tell on somebody, go to the magistrate before the streets are covered with devil's thorn.” Only children with serious injuries had a good enough reason to enter the holy spaces where adults discussed matters not meant for “little mice with big ears”, as we were called.

To make a long story short, I grew up in the era of Apartheid, beatifically under the impression that we had finally gained the victory over all our enemies when the National Party, who was elected to power in 1948, managed on 31 May 1961 to change South Africa into an independent republic no longer a part of the Commonwealth.

In the meantime, while my peers and I were enjoying our carefree childhood, indoctrinated with the believe that it was ‘God’s will' for Whites, Coloureds, Indians and Africans to live in a system of segregation, Nelson Mandela and his co-fighters-for-freedom were incarcerated.

was something I was not aware of while I was a child in my parent’s home. During the week my father was a lecturer at a technical college; weekends he was a missionary, preaching the gospel in the language of the Africans in our region, Sesotho. There was no church for them; the churches in the vicinity were ‘for whites only’. Sunday afternoons our garage was their church. The times we lived in the suburbs of towns, my father would organize assemblies wherever he could find a suitable venue.

But we were surrounded by racist!

Nelson Mandela stated the conditions in South Africa clearly when he had to justify the illegal actions of himself and his comrades in the early sixties during the Rivonia Trial: “SA is the richest country in Africa... only whites enjoy what may well be the highest standard of living in the world, whilst Africans live in poverty and misery... compulsory education for all white children at virtually no cost, while similar facilities are not provided for the African children... approximately 40 per cent of African children in the age group seven to fourteen do not attend school...”

Another reason why I never heard of Nelson Mandela or the ANC, could have been because the Africans in the regions I grew up, were Basotho, meaning ‘people of Sotho’. They still have an independent country in the middle of South Africa called Lesotho. Opposed to the Zulu’s and Xhosa’s they were peaceful and apparently contented with the trend of events in the country.

Fact is, I was in my early twenties when I heard for the first time of Nelson Mandela.

"... after his meething with Mr. Mandela in jail the State President, Mr. PW Botha, confirmed that Mr. Mandela will not be released..."

What? Who? Why?

However, at that time I was too busy with my own life to find answers for any gnawing questions. Besides being a wife, mother, sister, sister-in-law, daughter, daughter-in-law and friend, I needed and wanted to focus on my businesses, music instruments, poems, journals, photo albums, not to talk about focusing on God and ‘his’ church where I loaded myself with responsibilities of all sorts.

With only one ear I listened to news bulletins about riots in African townships. How could ‘they’ burn their schools and trains and busses? Exactly how barbaric were ‘they’ to kill their own neighbors with necklaces of burning tires? Can one really blame the Police when they shoot those crazy ringleaders? I marvelled in total ignorance.

I had no idea how intense and serious the social issues of Africans were until 1994, when I bought and read Nelson Mandela’s biography, ‘Long Walk to Freedom’. This book has given me insight I never had before. It is a book about unfair suffering, determination, perseverance, courage, forgiveness and love, of a man who deserves the utmost respect of every person on Earth. On the back page of the book I bought is a letter written by Nelson for his readers:

Dear Reader

When I was seven, my father decided to give me something he had never enjoyed – an education. Ever since then, I have been able to appreciate the value of reading and lifelong learning.

This book is my personal contribution to developing and strengthening a culture both of learning and reading in South Africa. It is a shortened version of my Biography, ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, and has been written so that everyone can share my experience.

But it is not my story. It is the story of all of us and our struggle to be free. I hope you will enjoy reading it.

Yours

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

Rolihlahla Mandela was born on July 18, 1918 in the tiny village Mvezo on the banks of the Mbashe River. He was born into the Madiba clan, which are part of the Thembu tribe. Madiba was the name of a Thembu chief who ruled in the 18th century.

The name Rolihlahla means ‘pulling the branch of a tree’ - an idiom for ‘trouble maker’. He was named by his father, Chief Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, who was a member of the Thembu Royal family and the principal councilor to the king. Rolihlahla’s mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of his father’s four wives. Together they had three daughters and one son, Rolihlahla.

At the age of seven Rolihlahla’s father sent him to school even though formal education was not imposed by Law or Thembu custom. It was a local mission school where the names of African students were promptly changed to a more ‘civilized’ name. Rolihlahla became Nelson.

At the age of nineteen Nelson joined Justice at Healdtown, the biggest college in the country for Africans with over one-thousand students. There, Nelson recalled the principal, Dr. Arthur Wellington, tried to turn students into ‘black Englishmen’.

At the age of twenty-one Nelson continued his studies at the university of Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape. Established in 1916. This university was a key institution in higher education for Africans. Only the cream of African society went there; Nelson was one of the exclusive 150 students. During his second year he was elected onto the Students’ Representative Council, but he reclined his position as it did not have the power students expected it to have.

Before Nelson could graduate, he was confronted with another custom of his people, namely arranged marriages. To avoid his, he fled to Johannesburg where he worked for a short while as a mine policeman and then as a clerk at one of the largest law firms. At the end of 1942 he completed his Bachelor's Degree in Arts through the University of South Africa (Unisa) and continued with his study LL.B. studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. He reaped the fruit of his studies when he opened his own law office in August 1952.

In 1944, at the height of the Second World War, Nelson and fifty-nine young members of the ANC formed a group in order to transform the ANC into a more radical mass movement and to establish African Nationalism and Liberation. They called themselves the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). In 1948 Nelson was elected as the league’s National Secretary. This was the same year the National Party (of the whites) won the (white-only) elections. Their goal was to establish Apartheid. The ANCYL decided to set boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-co-operation as their Program of Action. Nelson’s participation as a leader in the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws eventually led to his life imprisonment on June 12, 1964. For almost three decades he would be Prisoner 466/64.

The Struggle for Freedom continued while he was in prison. On his release on February 11, 1990, he was able to pursue his strive to demolish injustice in South Africa. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa – as they were banned for decades - Mandela was elected President of the ANC, and on May 10, 1994 he was inaugurated as the first President of a democratic South Africa.

“...We understand that there is no easy road to freedom. We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves. Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. Let freedom reign.”

After only one term as President, Nelson stepped down in 1999. He founded three foundations: The Nelson Mandela Foundation, The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and The Mandela-Rhodes Foundation.

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against African domination. 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,” Nelson said in April 20, 1964.

Monday, on his 93rd birthday, Nelson will be able to repeat these words, knowing that he had, indeed, achieved his goal.

Against the tradition of his people, Nelson married Evelyn Mase in a civil ceremony at the Native Commissioner’s Court in Johannesburg in 1944. They had four children, of whom one died in infancy. They separated in 1955 and finally divorced in 1958.

He fell in love with Nomzamo Winnifred Madikizela (Winnie) in 1957. She was eighteen years younger than himself and highly educated with a degree in social work and a Bachelor's degree in International Relations. She was a qualified Social Worker at the Baragwanath Hospital when he saw her by chance, waiting at a bus stop. He was struck by her beauty. They were married in 1958 and had two daughters, Zenani and Zindzi. For twenty-seven-and-a-half years they were forced by Nelson’s imprisonment to live apart which eventually took its toll when they divorced on 19 March 1996.

On his 80th birthday in 1998 Nelson Mandela married Graça Machel, the widow of the former president of Mozambique, Samora Machel.

Dear Nelson Mandela, on behalf of all South Africans who were deprived of sight and hearing by their leaders, I wish you a Happy Birthday and only the best of health and joy ahead.

© Martie Coetser

Credit to my English Grammar Checker, Lany Olivier :)