Representative of a humane order yet to be born
It was both his character and the vagaries of fate that gave us the icon, writes Joel Netshitenzhe
THE attribute of great leadership is the ability at once to follow and to inspire. Its attendant punishment is the loss of the private self: becoming, often by default and sometimes by design, common property.
Some glide in comfort in this challenge of leadership. They ride the wave in perfect harmony with the tide. They indulge themselves in the glory of power and authority. Thus myths are created around them.
Others suffer the discomfort of pretence, thus they seek artificially to create their own myths.
Individual styles of leadership over millenniums have reflected the tricky balance between these extremes. When perfect balance in the middle is attained, a good leader emerges who is able to take a nation to new heights, but not necessarily remarkable in the public consciousness as “a maker of history”.
The mark of greatness is imbalance, imperfection and unique remarkability.
Where does Nelson Mandela fit in? He was revered and yet not feared. He was loved and adored, at times and uniquely, precisely for his weaknesses.
The myth endured to the very end, and by dint of mass adulation, Mandela died a saint in ripe old age.
With him, it was not what could have been, nor what initially was, but what endured to the very end: that imposing young man of peasant stock; that petulant and defiant activist in whom the ANC’s collective of young leaders of the 1940s saw qualities of leadership they honed in on; that famous prisoner wallowing in the fortunate glory of a misfortune; that negotiator and reconciler; that manager of a vexed transition; and that retiree held in even greater awe.
Mandela walked the era of greats, so created by the circumstances of history: the commanders in a world war, the guerrilla leaders in liberation struggles, the symbols of national independence, the Cold Warriors. But if history does make leaders, how do we explain the fact that none of these circumstances quite expressed themselves in any pronounced form in the South African struggle and in Mandela’s life?
Perhaps it is from the confluence of the things humane that the South African struggle itself spawned or borrowed — such as non-racialism, non-sexism, concern for the totality of the human condition, environmental issues and so on — that Mandela derived his unassailable greatness. These are the things his people strive to represent, things his movement has championed, things the world embraces as it struggles to discover its humanity.
He stands out as having been the last to bury the corpse of European colonial domination in Africa; the first to tower the world during geopolitical realignments that characterised the end of the Cold War; the symbol of an emergent democratic and inclusive statehood in an era of rising social movements; a global icon in an epoch of globalisation.
Prose has been penned and dirges composed about his role in reconciling a divided nation. Dare we not pose the question, though, whether this has not been remoulded and oversimplified into the fluff of magic and miracle? For contained in the attributes he embedded in the South African psyche were the Gandhian quality for simple humaneness; the Leninist tact in managing a revolutionary moment of political authority
He is the archetypical symbol of unfinished business, a child of the 20th century and a grandfather of the 21st
changing hands; and a Kennedian touch in making it look so eminently reasonable. And, lest we forget, to him it was solemn duty to couple “nation-building and reconciliation” with “reconstruction and development”.
Mandela was feted by kings and queens, presidents, prime ministers and executives of conglomerates. Yet what undergirded the reverence of the powerful was the outpouring of adulation by ordinary people to whom he seemed by his mere presence to answer the question: What is life all about?
To what extent the nebulous tentativeness of the cause of social justice in the era of globalisation impacted on his portrayal and perhaps his own thinking is a matter of conjecture.
But what we can say with confidence is that Mandela was a representative of a humane order yet to be born and he, in turn, grew in stature by personally embracing that cause to which the 21st century cannot but dedicate itself, including the promotion of children’s true happiness and the fight against HIV/Aids. He is the archetypical symbol of unfinished business, a child of the 20th century and a grandfather of the 21st.
It was both his character and the vagaries of fate that conspired to bequeath to our society — and to the world — the icon.
For his leadership qualities, he could easily have landed at the head of the notorious criminal gangs of Alexandra township or cowering pitifully as a stooge in apartheid’s Bantustan toy governments. But upbringing and fate placed him in the socially conscious and passionate group of the young Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Anton Lembede, Yusuf Dadoo, Lillian Ngoyi, Ashby P Mda, Bram Fischer, Helen Joseph and others.
These leaders saw in Mandela that fine blend of ambition, empathy for the underdog, pride, arrogance, magnetism and discipline. Mandela has mused about how the patience and intellectualism of the Sisulus and Tambos sometimes irritated him. From their perspective, what they saw in him was the ability to translate the fine art of theory into practical programmes for national emancipation.
If some of his peers in the leadership of the ANC were theoreticians and strategists, Mandela was a tactician par excellence. He knew how to gauge and respond to the mood of the people and to important turning points in history, but to do so in a responsible fashion.
If there is anything that marks the measure of Mandela’s genius, it was his mastery of human relations. Names of acquaintances and distant associates rolled off his lips with ease. His expression of affection and empathy were truly genuine. From him, one felt the sense of being valued and the confidence of valuing oneself.
The tragedy of his personal life aside, what we can celebrate is that he found even more happiness in his last years, and he savoured it to the full. Above all, there was the community — the people of South Africa and the ANC — which nurtured him, because it knew he had become common property, the symbol of its very self.
And so the body of staid gait and mien lies motionless, still towering in the imagery but prostrate and hapless in the stillness of deathly silence. It exudes the permanent injunction for us to do good, to be honest, to be ethical . . . in the knowledge that, in his own words, saints are sinners who keep trying.
By dint of circumstance, Nelson Mandela fought no major wars. By design of principle, he enjoyed no exaltations of a conqueror. But there, in the humane bequest of unfinished business for a new century resides the greatness of Madiba. His fame and power are founded on their own strength, the strength of humanity searching for a better life.
Netshitenzhe is a member of the ANC national executive committee