Mandela and I: “He was a friend and a mentor, and I learnt many things from him that shaped and sharpened my firmness for nationalism. I know quite a number of the Generation Z would read this and their slamming would echo and vibrate everywhere, but it is what it is, as I remember a wonderful personality today, and for the unique things I learnt from him.”
“The mentality of retaliation destroys states, the mentality of tolerance builds nations. The weak can never forgive…forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela who was born on July 18, 1918 and passed on December 5, 2013, would have been 106 years old today. We knew him, he was a South African anti-apartheid activist, politician, and statesman who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.
He was the country’s first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.
I am very sure any child who was born eleven years ago and children yet unborn would read and come to know about this great man who walked the roads of the African continent and other continents with his larger than life attributes. He was a friend and a mentor, and I learnt many things from him that shaped and sharpened my firmness for nationalism.
I know quite a number of the Generation Z would read this and their slamming would echo and vibrate everywhere, but it is what it is, as I remember a wonderful personality today, and for the unique things I learnt from him.
Mandela was a leader. He was a father. He was a nationalist to the core, and one who believed in the cord of unity against the odds that threatened to dislodge that cord. He was a forgiver and was very wealthy in ignoring those things that did not foster unity and progress and development.
He suffered humiliations for all his principles to stay focused on his conviction with the depth of belief that he could never be greater than his country to such an extent that because of the sufferings and humiliations he had to endure for the freedom of his people and country that he had to set his country, South Africa, ablaze. He forgave all, and he was loved by many, and many distrusted him because they wanted him to return violence for violence, which he was incapable of giving.
Today, which would have been his one-hundred-and-six-years on earth, I am sharing one of his acts of forgiveness.
After Nelson Mandela became President, he asked one day that some members of his close protection to stroll with him in the city, have lunch at one of its restaurants. They sat in one of the downtown restaurants and all of them asked for some sorts of food. After a while, the waiter brought them their requests. Mandela noticed that there was someone sitting in front of his table waiting for food. He told one of the soldiers: “Go and ask that person to join us with his food and eat with us.” The soldier went and asked the man to join them at their table on the invitation of the Mandiba. The man brought up his food and sat by Mandela side as Mandela requested and began to eat. The man’s hands trembled as he ate constantly until everyone had finished their food and the man departed.
When the man had left, the soldier turned to face Mandela and said to him; “The man was apparently quite sick. His hands trembled as he ate.”
“No, not at all.” Said Mandela. “This man was the guard of the prison where I was jailed. Often, after the torture I was subjected to, I used to scream and ask for a little water. The very same man used to come every time and urinate on my head instead. So, he was not in any way sick at all; he was scared, trembled, and expected me to reciprocate now, at least in the same way, either by torturing him or imprisoning him as I am now the president of the State of South Africa…but this is not my character nor part of my ethics! The mentality of retaliation destroys states, the mentality of tolerance builds nations. The weak can never forgive…forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
The hateful and vengeful mind would have wanted Mandela to pay the prison guard in his own coin, but Mandela’s mind was bigger than all the pettiness that makes us to think backward and revisit ugly pasts that do not lead to progress.
That act of forgiveness from that great African son has stayed with me to this day, that the future is always better than the past which we must leave behind while we do everything within the power in us to understand the present and allow the light to shine out from it.
Of course, there is always the tendency to look back and start recounting the shame, humiliations, deprivations and short changes we have been subjected forcing us to want to retaliate, but at the end of the day, the question remains: What is the use of plotting revenge and stooping low not to conquer, instead, to be worse off than the thoughtless who thought he was doing you harm.
Nationalism for Nigeria has been in my blood and I shall continue to swim in it going with the current in the direction that we may have suffered the worst and undeserving of treatments but getting ashore safe and purposeful away from all bitterness, real or perceived because nothing can ever be greater than a family united in spite of different thinking and orientation than seeing the family torn apart by division.
Maybe on this day we should allow the act of Mandela flow in our veins, especially amongst the youths of this great country that everything rests in their hands despite the hurts they might have passed through and still going through by forging ahead and looking forward that forgiveness may seem tasking, but its reward is unfathomable in the end.
Between Mandela and the prison guard who lost? While Mandela became a free bird and flown in the skies of the world, the prison guard could only tremble sickly in the presence of that freedom. It is what forgiveness does. And what Christ did, and all entities that love the light should do.
- Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State, who wrote this to mark Mandela’s 106 posthumous birthday on July 18, 2024 sent the piece to TheNiche on August 18, 2024.