Gandhi and Mandela serve as models for us all
IN A country besieged by political impotence, as we are currently witnessing, South Africa boasts a rich culture of men and women of the highest calibre, despite the inadequacies of the influential few who are depleting the rich tapestry of leadership of a bygone era.
We also, sadly, have witnessed the financial marauders, who have paid scant regard to the sovereignty of a land deep in heritage, history and diversity.
When Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – the Mahatma (great soul) – landed on these shores as a barrister to represent as counsel in a legal matter, I suspect that he little knew or realised that his lengthy traversal from the subcontinent was going to alter the history of an alien land and indeed the world.
The indelible mark he left behind remains to this day and will for all eternity.
Gandhi championed the rights of the beleaguered Indians of Port Natal at the time, whose indenture was simply one of servitude to the white masters, who exploited them as slaves and in despicable bondage.
His resistance and ultimate incarceration in South Africa ensconced his international stature, which he admirably used in the fight for the freedom of India from the British.
While the black compatriots of South Africa were being equally repressed and humiliated with grotesque and despicable inhumanity, Nelson Mandela, like Gandhi, would not have imagined his impending role in the liberation of a land consumed by the power of the bullet, and the mastery of a white minority, whose lust for rule and control demonised our beloved country.
In a world ravaged by wars and animosity between nations, these two men, from two different continents, strove to change the unchangeable with principle, morality and the virtues of a common humanity as their weapons.
They taught us the value of believing and the merit of humanitarianism, even at the expense of their very own freedoms and lives, with a simple credo that all men are equal and all humanity is one.
Their resilience in principle, their fortitude against evil and their formidable indisposition to injustice was a mantra they took to their graves. No eulogy would have done justice to their living testament as bastions of righteousness.
Without underplaying the roles that multitudes of other men and women have played in releasing South Africa from a pathological system that sought to disenfranchise and ultimately destroy the fabric of a great majority of our citizenry, the Mahatma and Mandela have come to epitomise what and how our land should be like.
I must be pardoned if I panegyrise about two icons, whose stature and command can only be canonised simply because of their incalculable contribution to our beloved land. Their legacies are worthy of a million emulations.
Then enter the Guptas.With stealth and a promise of benignity, they invaded the sanctity of a nation, glorified by its bloodless transition to a democratic order while being beclouded by an impending doom that never happened.
Little was known of these mercenaries of wealth and grandeur, pompous paragons of power whose malignant influence on our corrupt-liable government led to the dastardly flagitious revelations that have turned South Africa on its head.
Gupta is a name now synonymous with corruption, infidelity and a diabolical opprobrium that perforce is welcomed by all and sundry.
The inimitable legacy of Gandhi and the moral contagion of the Guptas is reflective of where we have reached – a nadir and an abyss that has become all consuming.
How ironic is it that two Indian names have had diametrically opposing effects on our country – one for freedom and one for bondage of a different sort.
The Guptas have become both a distasteful indictment and a pathetic blight on what promised to become a land of milk and honey for the millions of folk who yearned for that “better life for all”.
Indeed, the Guptas have milked the land and nidified their future, as they invaded the minds of a weak and faint-hearted president and his merry men and women, who yielded disgracefully to wealth and self-enrichment.
There can be no palliation for the Gupta invasion, as they nobbled their way into the South African coffers, but lest we forget, there will always be a Gandhi who serves as an antidote.
There will always be a Mahatma and a Mandela to remind us of the irrevocable good that lurked prodigiously in their souls, and their magnanimous beneficence will be a benchmark in perpetuity for all mankind.
Written in memory of Mahatma Gandhi and our beloved former president Nelson Mandela on the anniversary of his birthday – two men enjoined in giving us freedom and democracy