Now our turn to carry Madiba’s baton into the future
FOR days now, we have been on what feels like Mandela Watch. The rest of the world and indeed South Africa is watching and following reports on the progress of former president Nelson Mandela in hospital. We were kept up to date on who comes in to visit him, what the doctors say and the number of days he’s spent in the hospital.
It is as if we are standing outside the hospital entrance (thanks to the media) but still wanting a bedside view. In quiet Qunu, where he’s lived after years spent in prison, and in busy Johannesburg, there is an army of journalists from all over the world who sit and wait, watch and report.
I worry about his family who are asked to share everything with the public, even his last days. Children of political leaders generally spend years sharing the attention and time of their parents with the general public. Personal relations between parents and children go by the board.
All 94-year-olds are frail and deserve peace and quiet as reaching that age alone is an achievement, not to mention someone like our leader, who made the most of the time given to him. Is it too much to ask that Mandela not be viewed just as an unfolding story or possible scoop?
Who doesn’t remember his first address in Cape Town after his release from prison? The speech was delivered to an audience full of expectation and even doubt after years of separation due to the cruel laws of the apartheid government. It seemed like a dream as he stood tall before those who had sacrificed so much for his release.
Before then, for many he had been a grainy image in banned books, a rallying cry at countless rallies, and an example of bravery.
For millions of young people, this was a long-awaited introduction to the leader and hero of our fathers who had reached mythological proportions. I was too young to understand a speech peppered with political speak and its beauty was lost on me. However, its significance and weight was conveyed to me by the words “Ubomi bam busezandleni zenu” (“My life is in your hands”). Mandela had placed his life in our hands and had come “not as a prophet but a servant of the people”, as he said in that same historical speech.
To paraphrase J F Kennedy: What can we do to serve? This is the question we should ask ourselves, and not Mandela, who has given so much.
Sure, use his life as a manual on selfless public service but now it is our turn to carry the baton which he boldly snatched from others before him. In the dock in 1964, while facing possible death along with Andrew Mlangeni, David Motsoaledi, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and “the others”, he said: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society where all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.”
How do we contribute towards the complete realisation of these cherished ideals?
While he was in prison, South Africa produced capable leaders through civic and church structures, etc, proving that every era produces its own leaders. Later, many of those leaders were wise, humble and selfless enough to defer and allow themselves to be led by Mandela.
In an unemotional way, we must evaluate his leadership, his strengths and flaws, as we must do with all leaders, and not create an atmosphere where he is viewed as untouchable. There is always much to learn from such an exercise for the benefit of future generations. But for now I think we watch with the hope of a miracle and wish that we can take the pain away. — Phethuxolo Soga, via e-mail
Protect his name
THE way of all life awaits . . . and the world icon teeters on the verge of his journey to the ancestors. How it is happening, though, is macabre and were it not a person of his stature, truly ghastly.
He became a brand and unfortunately legends are worth more dead than alive.
Already many are cashing in; that is why the daughters are now so aggro about the rampant raking in of moolah [money] by the supposedly undeserving.
The public relations exercise that Mandela has become has, to use today’s language, gone viral. It is too much. He said himself he is no saint, but he’s been made a god, deified. But he is not God, as some would believe.
He has run his race and served his innings but what is happening now only serves the hawks and the condors circling him on his deathbed. — Pat Kondile, Mdantsane
I WONDER what the Presidency thinks about the millions of rands the Mandela family is fighting about.
Why are they so quiet on this issue, whereas they are the first people to comment about his health?
There will be a time for manifestos and his name will be the first to be heard in song and in those manifestos.
I hope the sacred name of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is not used in vain.
South Africans must do all they can to save this noble man’s name even if his family is not willing to do so.
For his cause – and that of those who he fought alongside – we can try to be good citizens by preserving what they fought for.
Let us save the good cause of our democracy by striving to be good. — Vuka, East London I HAVE no idea if Ben Maclellan (“An insult to atheists”, DD, June 20) is an atheist or if, as I suspect, he had his tongue in his cheek (when he protested about President Jacob Zuma calling for prayers for Madiba). The responses prove that some people have missed the crux of what he said: Nelson Mandela is an old man whose time to die has come. We all die; it is inevitable.
Madiba’s mind and spirit have, indisputably, already gone. Why do they insist on keeping the body alive?
Depending on your religion, you supposedly believe that we pass to a better world or are reincarnated into this one. Whatever the truth, death is a doorway. If you truly believe in whichever God you pray to, why are you not prepared to let your god take Madiba to his rest? If you really love him, let him go. — Dave Rankin, Cambridge