”No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause”. Theodore Roosevelt, 26th American President 1901-1909, Republican.
In starting this tribute on Nelson Rolihlahia Mandela, ex-president of the Republic of South Africa (RSA), I have to quote Professor Aliu Babatunde Fafunwa (1923-2010), one-time education minister and the first Nigerian to acquire a Ph.D. in Education in 1955. In his words, Nelson Mandela led his people out of the ‘shackles’ of Apartheid, and still forged reconciliation between the races. He had a clear and great vision for South Africa, and was able to set out and accomplish his goals. Incredibly, unlike other leaders on the continent, the great man handed over power after just one-term. Imagine that happening in other African Countries! He is a great leader and not the ‘accidental type’ in the words of Rev. Fr. Matthew Hassan Kukah, the current Catholic Bishop of Sokoto State.
The Madiba (old man) has a singular leadership quality that is making oneself available in other words dispensability of leaders. In a continent where we have sit-tight leaders like immediate past president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, former Libya’s strong-man, Muammar Gadafi, the late Omar Bongo of Gabon, President Yoweri Museveni of uganda among many others, Mandela demonstrated that it was not how far but how well power is used to uplift the society. His one-term 5-year tenure (1994-1999) as the president of a non-racial, democratic Republic offers lessons in leadership for African Countries. In 1996, two years after he assumed power, he said “I must step down when there are one or two people who admire me”.
Jerry Long Fellow once said: “The heights that great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night”. The Holy Bible in Proverbs Chapter 22, verse 20 also says “Seest thou a man delight in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men”? The above quotations could be said to be apt in describing Nelson Mandela, a quintessential leader and administrator par excellence.
In the dark days of apartheid in South Africa, he remained fearless, refusing to be cowed in silence. No doubt, Nelson Mandela believed in the words of Harry S. Truman, 33rd American president (1945-1953) Democrat when he said and I quote “Do your duty and history will do you justice”. Through exemplary aptitude, Nelson Mandela contributed immensely to the growth of the people of the Republic of South Africa. His fearless defence in the case of South Africa stands him out. He is a man of his words and a man of truth.
The inauguration took place on May 10, 1994 in the Union Buildings amphitheater in Pretoria and was attended by politicians and dignitaries from more than 140 countries. As part of the ceremony, he pledged his allegiance to South Africa and his determination to continue his work for reconciliation. “I do hereby swear to be faithful to the Republic of South Africa and do solemnly and sincerely promise to promote that which will advance and to oppose all that may harm the republic and all its people”. Jubilant scenes on the streets of Pretoria followed the ceremony with blacks and whites celebrating jointly.
At 94, he has proved himself as a leader with boundless energy, sharp and probing intellectual capacity and great patriot. A living legend and man of honour and worth. Nelson Mandela remains a true captain who will not abandon ship even when about to sink. He is a distinguished leader and rare gem, a man of character, outstanding scholar, urbane democrat, a humanist, citizen of the world, fearless defender of the masses, advocate of justice, equity and fair play.
Nelson Rolihlahia Mandela was born on the 18th of July 1918, in Mvezo, South Africa, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (NPP). The first black president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela became a world symbol of resistance to the injustice of his country’s apartheid system. Imprisoned for more than 27years, and before that banned from all public activities and hounded by the police for nearly a decade. Mandela led a struggle for freedom that mirrored that of his black countrymen. After his 1990 release from the Robben Island prison, his work to end apartheid won him the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize (which he shared with then South Africa president, F. W. De Klerk) and then the presidency itself a year later.
Mandela’s father, Chief Henry Mandela, was a member of the Thembu people’s royal lineage; his mother was one of the chief’s four wives. Mandela grew up in Qunu, a small village in the Eastern Cape. At age seven, he became the first member of his family to attend school. When his father died two years later, Nelson, the Christian name he had acquired at school, was sent to live with Chief Jongintab Dalindyedo, the regent, or supreme leader, of the Thembu people. From the regent, Mandela said, he learned that “a leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting most nimble go on ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind”.
Mandela finished his secondary education at Healdtown, a missionary school where an emphasis on English traditions molded the students into “Black Englishmen”. Only as a student at Fort Hare University did Mandela begin to question the injustices he and all black South Africans faced. Fort Hare was considered an oasis of black scholarship; it was also a training ground for future leaders (lawyer and apartheid activist, Oliver Tambo was Mandela’s classmate and Freedom Charter originator, Z. K. Matthews taught there). However, a dispute with the administration over students’ rights caused Mandela to leave Fort Hare in his second year, at the same time, he broke with the regent rather than accept an arranged marriage.
When he arrived in Johannesburg in 1941, Mandela was jobless. As a result, he found work assisting a lawyer, a job arranged by activist Walter Sisulu, while finishing his bachelor’s degree by correspondence from the University of South Africa. His political education continued as he met members of the Communist Party of South Africa and, more important, the African National Congress (ANC). Of his decision to join the ANC in 1943, Mandela later wrote that he was motivated by “no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights”. Not quite long, Mandela and a group of fellow ANC members including Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo (with whom Mandela formed South Africa’s first black –run law firm), founded the ANC Youth League. Mandela also worked as the volunteer-in-chief of ANC’s Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, in which about 9000 volunteers defied selected laws and consequently were imprisoned. Based on this, the National Party government banned him from all public gatherings in 1952 and again from 1953 to 1955. When, in 1960, the government banned the ANC outright in the wake of the police massacre of demonstrators in Sharpville township, Mandela at this point decided that “it was wrong and immoral to subject his people to armed attacks by the state without them some kind of alternative”. As a result, in 1961 he went underground and he helped create the ANC’s parliamentary wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (spear of the nation), which carried out acts of sabotage against the government. Captured in August 1962, Mandela was charged with travelling outside the country without a passport and inciting workers to strike. At his trial, he acted as his own lawyer, arguing not that he was innocent but rather that the South African government had used the law “to impose a state of outlawry” upon him. Several months into his five-year sentence, Mandela was charged with treason and in 1964 was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Until 1962, Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island, South Africa’s most notorious prison, located just offshore from Cape Town. Initially, he lived in a cell measuring seven by seven feet, could write and receive only one letter every six months, and was forced to break rocks in the prison yard for hours daily. In the 1980’s, South Africa’s apartheid government, faced with international sanctions, began to make gestures towards Mandela, its most famous political prisoner, including moving him to Poolsmoor, a much less brutal environment than Robben Island in 1982. The negotiations unfolded gradually over the next decade. In 1985, President P. W. Botha publicly stated that he would release Mandela provided he “rejected violence as a political instrument”, a deal designed to alienate Mandela from other ANC leaders. Mandela rejected the offer. In 1988, he was transferred to a private facility at Victor Verster Prison where talks continued in secret. F.W. De Klerk succeeded P. W. Botha as president in 1989 and within a few months, he lifted the 30-year long ban on the ANC. On the 2nd of February 1990, he announced Mandela’s release from prison.
Greatness they say can be equated with accomplishment, fame, fortune, celebrity or wealth. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, ex-president of the Republic of South Africa (RSA), an astute administrator, achieved a feat in his public career.
From whichever perspective Nelson Mandela’s career is assessed, the virtues of consistency, sincerity of purpose, courage of conviction, utmost selflessness and doggedness in pursuing the people’s cause cannot be denied. Even those who may have cause to disagree with some of his actions and pronouncements cannot deny that his commitment to the realization of the common good is total. Let us therefore celebrate his life, leadership, integrity, commitment, professional excellence and achievements at 94.
I wish the great leader many more years of worthy contributions to the development of the Republic of South Africa and the human community in general. This is because he has been a tower of strength, a beacon of hope and a giant amongst men and leaders alike.
Charles Ikedikwa Soeze, fhnr, fcida, fcai, cpae, son, emba, ksq. is a Mass Communications Scholar from first degree to doctoral level and Head, Academic and Physical Planning (A&PP) Petroleum Training Institute (PTI), Effurun, Delta State, Nigeria. 08036724193
charlessoeze@yahoo.ca
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