Madiba benches will bring Robben Island to the people HALF ART

Mandela Day has come and gone, but in this centenary year the events and campaigns will continue for some time. Expect more social media self-promotion, corporate marketing opportunism and overworn inspirational quotes splashed alongside images of Madiba.

It’s easy to feel jaded and resort to a default cynicism about the use and abuse of Mandela as a symbol. Yet, if you listen carefully, you can discern through all the noise those facts about his life that, however familiar, remain astonishing.

For me, at first, it wasn’t so much a case of listening as looking. When 1,500 of us lined up at the start of the Rundela 27km race at the weekend, we knew the route would take us past sites of significance in Mandela’s career: the Old Fort where he was first imprisoned, on what is now Constitution Hill; Wits University, where obtained his law diploma; his house in Houghton.

I only realised afterwards, however, that while we were padding through the morning mist still hovering over the icy streets of Jozi, we had run past Chancellor House, where Mandela and Oliver Tambo set up their legal practice in the 1950s — and where the young lawyer’s political conscientising truly began.

A few days later, as 15,000 of us thronged Wanderers Stadium, there was a chance to listen. From Njabulo Ndebele sharing little-known anecdotes about Mandela to Barack Obama mapping the trajectory of his life against the broad sweep of the 20th century, we were presented with opportunities to think about the boy from Mvezo anew.

There’s no question that Obama is the foremost political orator of our age. Even when he’s having an off day or loses his way, he is a winsome and convincing figure at the microphone. But underneath the running joke initiated by Cyril Ramaphosa about the former US president’s inability to dance like Mandela lay a serious affirmation: for all his accomplishments, Obama’s life story (so far) pales in comparison with that of Madiba.

Obama knows this, and indeed celebrates it. No statesman, revolutionary hero or backwater-kid-made-big can lay claim to “knowing what it was like” to be Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

Those who decry the 1994 compromise, who toss around labels such as “sellout”, who underestimate Mandela’s early radicalism and who downplay his suffering and sacrifice, would do well to remember the impossibility of walking even an imagined mile in his shoes.

This salutary reminder might also be issued about spending a night in his Robben Island cell — a prize that was to be auctioned off to the highest bidder in a harebrained scheme cooked up by the same misguided souls who brought us the CEO SleepOut. You can’t buy Nelson Mandela’s hard-won wisdom.

Yet there remains a place for empathy: for a quiet, humble attempt to come to terms with the man, his changing mission, and what it might mean for each of us.

For this reason, I was pleased to learn about Erhardt Thiel’s iMadiba Project, which, instead of taking the CEO to Robben Island, envisions taking Robben Island to the people. Thiel used the dimensions of the famous cell to create a series of “micromuseums”, partial reconstructions that function as spaces of contemplation and dialogue. The walls of the cell stop at the height of concrete benches for individuals or groups to sit, think and learn on. Six vertical poles remind visitors of the bars through which prisoner 466/64 stared.

Thiel hopes to install 100 of his sculptures by this time next year, and so far he has made good progress. There are already a dozen spread across the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape and Gauteng. Their varied contexts, from schools to tourist destinations, from galleries to the JSE, will no doubt ensure diverse conversations.

They also accommodate critiques of Madibamania and rainbowism gone awry. In Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, sitting in the cell means staring at that awful statue through the bars. Is it implied that the great man’s image has been “imprisoned”?

At the Nelson Mandela Museum in Qunu, the iMadiba sculpture looks out across a landscape “behind bars”. Are Madiba’s people not yet free?

/Supplied Moments to capture: An iMadiba Museum in Qunu, Eastern Cape. The walls, at the height of a commonly found public concrete bench, replicate Nelson Mandela’s famous cell on Robben Island. The micromuseums are to be erected across the country.