By John Dramani Mahama
ACCRA, Ghana — FOR years, it seemed as
though only one photograph of Nelson Mandela
existed. It showed him with bushy hair, plump cheeks, and a look of serious
determination. But it was a black-and-white shot, so grainy it looked ancient —
a visual documentation of an era and an individual whose time had long passed.
In the early 1960s, fed up with the
systematic oppression and inhumane treatment of indigenous Africans, Mandela
successfully proposed a plan of violent tactics and guerrilla warfare,
essentially forming the military wing of the African National Congress. Within
a few years, this martial division, aptly named Umkhonto we Sizwe or Spear of
the Nation, was discovered and its leadership detained. In 1964 Mandela was
found guilty of sabotage, and ordered to serve a life sentence.
During his trial, in lieu of testimony,
he delivered a speech from the dock. “I have cherished the ideal of a
democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and
with equal opportunities,” he said. “It is an ideal which I hope to live for
and to achieve. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
I was 5 years old when Nelson Mandela
became prisoner number 46664, and was banished to spend the remainder of his
years on Robben Island, five square miles of land floating just north of Cape
Town. Robben Island had been the site of a colony for lepers, a lunatic asylum
and a series of prisons. It was a place of exile, punishment and isolation, a
place where people were sent and then forgotten.
But the haunting image in that
photograph did not let us forget. In the 1970s, I was a member of the African Youth Command, an
activist group that protested against social and political injustices. We
idolized Mandela. We hung posters of that photograph in our dormitory rooms; we
printed it on pamphlets. We refused to let Mandela fade into irrelevance; we
marched, held demonstrations, staged concerts and boycotts, signed petitions
and issued press statements.
We did everything we could to decry the
evils of apartheid and keep his name on people’s tongues. We even burned
effigies of John Vorster, Jimmy Kruger and other proponents of that
government-sanctioned white supremacy.
Freedom on the African continent was a
reality for which we were willing to fight. Nevertheless, I think we’d resigned
ourselves to the likelihood that Mandela would remain a prisoner until his
death, and South Africans would not experience equality until well after our
lifetimes. Then on Feb. 11, 1990, the miraculous happened; Mandela was
released.
The world was spellbound. We wondered
what we would do if we were in his shoes. We all waited for an indescribable
rage, a call for retribution that any reasonable mind would have understood.
Twenty-seven years of his life, gone. Day after day of hard labor in a
limestone quarry, chipping away at white rock under a bright and merciless sun
— without benefit of protective eyewear — had virtually destroyed his tear
ducts and, for years, robbed Mandela even of his ability to cry.
Yet, the man insisted on forgiveness.
“To go to prison because of your convictions,” he said, “and be prepared to
suffer for what you believe in, is something worthwhile. It is an achievement
for a man to do his duty on earth irrespective of the consequences.”
By the time I finally came face to face
with Nelson Mandela, he had already been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and
elected president of a land in which he and all other black people had
previously been refused suffrage. He had become an icon, not only of hope, but
also of the possibility for healing.
I was relatively new to politics then,
a member of Parliament and minister of communications. It was my first time in
Cape Town. I had stayed out late with friends and was waiting to take the lift
up to my hotel room. When the doors opened, there was Mandela.
I took a step back, and froze. As he
exited, Mandela glanced in my direction and nodded. I could not return the
gesture. I couldn’t move, not even to blink. I just stood there in awe,
thinking: here was the man for whom we had marched, sung and wept; the man from
the black-and-white photograph. Here was the man who had created a new moral
compass for South Africa and, as a matter of course, the entire continent.
It is no coincidence that in the years
since Mandela’s release so much of Africa has turned toward democracy and the
rule of law. His utilization of peace as a vehicle of liberation showed Africa
that if we were to move beyond the divisiveness caused by colonization, and the
pain of our self-inflicted wounds, compassion and forgiveness must play a role
in governance. Countries, like people, must acknowledge the trauma they have
experienced, and they must find a way to reconcile, to make what was broken whole
again.
That night, as I watched Mandela walk
past me, I understood that his story, the long walk to freedom, was also
Africa’s story. The indignation that once permeated our continent has been
replaced by inspiration. The undercurrent of pessimism resulting from the
onslaught of maladies — wars, coups, disease, poverty and oppression — has
given way to a steadily increasing sense of possibility.
It wasn’t just Nelson Mandela who was
transformed during those years of his imprisonment. We all were. And Africa is
all the better because of that.
John Dramani Mahama is the
president of Ghana and the author of the memoir “My First Coup d’État: And
Other True Stories From the Lost Decades of Africa.”
Source: New York Times
No comments:
Post a Comment