Cruywagen’s Spiritual Mandela extract

Dennis Cruywagen’s book about Nelson Mandela’s spiritual beliefs, is to be published in North America next year. The publication of the book will coincide with what would have been democratic South Africa’s first president’s 100th birthday next July. Charlesbridge Publishers from Massachusetts will be the US publishers of The publishers told Cruywagen: “It is important to be reminded of who Mandela was, what he stood for, and how spiritual and religious beliefs can be balanced with political beliefs.” Cruywagen said: “I was and still am absolutely stunned by the news. I never for one moment thought that

would be released in the US.” He added: “I’m most grateful to all who were involved and contributed to this book first being published a year ago.” EXTRACT from Dennis Cruywagen’s The Spiritual Mandela:

At the same time, Mandela had to adjust to life as a free man. He had become accustomed to being told where to go and what to do by other people. He now had to dispel the many myths that had built around him in the twenty-seven years he had spent in jail, as evidenced by the questions people still asked about his beliefs and his political affiliations, and even about how he looked. But the most difficult thing Mandela had to adjust to was how much the world had changed since 1962. Technological advances, for instance, completely eluded him, and his knowledge of running an office was outdated.

He would need a lot of help if he was to become the leader of a free South Africa and he got it from Barbara Masekela, a former ANC activist who was appointed his chief of staff. Her duties for Mandela involved a range of tasks, including the day-to-day management of his political campaign and the organisation of his office and home.

Some were of a more personal nature, as when she had to read to Mandela the letter that Winnie had written to her lover, Dali Mpofu.

Working this closely with Mandela meant that Masekela, a member of the ANC’s national executive committee from 1991 until 1994, got to know him as very few other people did. What she learnt was that it was nearly impossible to separate the man from the politician. “I think politics was his main love. Through politics, he felt he could serve,” she says. According to Masekela, Mandela believed that serving the needs of the people was the highest honour that could be afforded to anyone.

For him, it was only through caring constantly for others that people could achieve their full potential.

Masekela says that this was why Mandela had a number of close friends in the clergy. He respected religious leaders and turned to them for help and advice, because he understood the importance of their role in society, which is to serve people by attending to their spiritual needs. By attempting to bring people closer to God, regardless of who or what this god means to each believer, religious leaders unite people in a common good.

Mandela believed this to be a valid and worthwhile contribution to any social system, as it is only by working together that people can improve its structures.

For Mandela, then, the respect that ministers received in society was completely justified.

Regardless of this, Mandela continued to keep the details of his own religious beliefs private.

His spirituality anchored him to the kind of morality and philosophy that underpinned the ideals he promoted throughout his lifetime, such as reconciliation and non-racialism, but he never felt the need to reveal this side of himself to the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, there were people who witnessed this hidden aspect of the president’s character, such as his bodyguard, Jeremy Vearey, a former MK guerrilla who had been imprisoned on Robben Island from 1988 to 1990. Following his release from prison, Vearey worked for MK’s VIP protection unit, which Mandela overhauled during the run-up to the 1994 elections, arranging for its members to receive training in modern protection methods from British security experts. Only a few of them passed, and they were honoured at a graduation ceremony in Sandton which Mandela attended.

Vearey explains the uniqueness of the security personnel’s dealings with Mandela: “We had a (vastly) different relationship. We were his first line of defence.” They witnessed the more personal side of Mandela because of the amount of trust he placed in them, and this is how Vearey discovered just how much Mandela depended on his faith to guide him through the trials he faced every day. Vearey remembers one occasion, at a hotel in Cape Town in 1993, when he entered Mandela’s room one morning to find the politician praying with a Bible next to him. Vearey was quite surprised by this scene as Mandela had never alluded to being religious or having any spiritual beliefs before this time. He quickly retreated and warned another guard not to go into the room.

Vearey came to realise that this was typical of Mandela’s morning routine: he would pray and study the Bible (which he also read every night, Vearey says), watch some cartoons on television and then take a walk, after which he would have breakfast. Sometimes there would be slight variations to this schedule, particularly, it seems, when Mandela was in need of more spiritual guidance than usual.

On another occasion in the early 1990s, during a trip to the Western Cape, one of the guards, André Lincoln, saw a light on in Mandela’s room at around three in the morning. Knocking on the door, the guard found a perfectly calm Mandela, who assured him that he had simply stayed up late praying.

Perhaps the political unrest that defined this period in South Africa’s history had induced Mandela to stay up late in the night to pray. Or maybe, being the religious man that he was, he merely found relief in engaging in the confessional elements of prayer and meditation.