Nelson Mandela
Apart from the fact that he emerged
from 27 years in apartheid prisons bearing so little malice. And that he
insisted on “reconciliation” being central to a truth commission in order to
heal wounds caused by years of bitter racial hatred.
And that he donned a Springbok
jersey and took to the field during the 1995 rugby World Cup final in a bold
bid to unite the nation behind the mainly-white South African team.
And that he stepped down after just
one term as president, unlike too many world leaders who, once given a whiff of
power, cling to it until it destroys them or they destroy the nation they are
leading.
These are some of the anti-apartheid
icon’s better known qualities.
But for journalists lucky enough to
track his remarkable career from the day he walked out of prison in 1990,
through the years of transition to the first all-race elections and the
presidency in 1994, and on until the day in 1999 that he bowed out — far too
quickly for many — of the political arena, there was more, much more.
This was no ordinary politician.
Covering the “Mandela story” was a
life-enhancing experience. He humbled us all into trying to be better human
beings and, more especially, to embrace reconciliation at a time when all South
Africans, black and white, were still bearing the scars of apartheid.
Take the time when — during a very
tense political campaign rally in Alexandra township on the edge of
Johannesburg, when anti-white sentiment was whipping through the crowd after
yet another massacre of black people reportedly by a white “third force” —
Mandela stopped mid-speech and fixed his attention on a white woman standing
somewhere towards the back. Read more
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