Mandela's friend and
fellow freedom fighter, Walter Sisulu, wrote this obituary towards the end of
his own life. He did not live to see it published but it remains a worthy
tribute and a revealing portrait.
As he rests in his eternal sleep, I am
certain of one thing: that Madiba's face is enveloped in a gentle, enduring
smile. No, not the broad, beaming smile we are accustomed to. Not the one so
full of warmth that one felt bathed in sunshine.
Rather, the quiet smile,
reflective, born out of looking over his life and times; a smile tinged with a
hint of mischievousness for having beaten the odds, cheated the hangman and
knowing he had helped make South Africa and the world a better place.
Overarching his life of struggle, hardship, humiliation, pain and suffering
there must be the sense of fulfilment that he has left an indelible footprint
in the service of humankind.
His is a life that touched millions not
only in South Africa, not only in our continent of Africa, but throughout the
world. For the greater part of his life he was a beacon of the struggle.
In his later years he became the symbol
of hope. In death he stands confirmed as the embodiment of humanity's hope for
the future.
In subtle, often unnoticed ways, life
is a matrix of chance, change, challenge and opportunity in which one makes
choices. We make choices all the time - in the best of times and the worst of
circumstances. Often we are unaware of the choices &main=we make;
nevertheless we make them. In everything Mandela has said - be it in writing or
the spoken word - his focus has always been on the oppression -“ the causes,
form and consequences.
Very little emerges about his personal hardships. His
eyes have always been cast on the condition of the people - both before and
after 1994. That is why there is a logical link between the choice he made in
the early Forties and the manner in which he responded to the offer by PW Botha
to release all political prisoners if we renounced violence.
The response was read on his behalf by
his daughter Zinzi at a mass meeting in Jabulani Stadium, Soweto, on 10
February 1985. I looked at the video recording after my release from prison and
felt once again the affirmation of the masses that, in him, the oppressed
people had a person who was truly their servant, when he said: "I cherish
my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom... I cannot sell
my birthright, nor am I prepared to sell the birthright of the people to be free...
I cannot and will not give any undertaking when I and you, the people, are not
free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated. I will return."
He was born into oppression. There was
no choice in that. But he never allowed this to preclude him from making
choices about his life. If there is a message he would have liked to leave with
each of us it is embodied in one of his favourite poems:
I am master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
("Invictus" by WE Henley)
He was part of a people who were and
remain the victims of oppression, and he never compromised with the
perpetrators of oppression. But he expected each of us as individuals - victims
and perpetrators - to take responsibility for our actions and not remain robots
programmed by fate. Whether living the life of an outlaw, or of an accused in
court, or of a prisoner, Mandela conducted himself with the demeanour and
dignity of a free man.
He never evaded the responsibilities that went with his
choices, nor did he flinch from their consequences. It may be that this thread
- which binds victims and perpetrators in a world riven with conflict, which
holds those in office accountable in a world in which those holding office
succumb to the immorality of power, and which shaped Mandela into a reconciler
and nation-builder - explains why he is held as an icon.
In a world of the powerful and the
powerless, among decision-makers and the marginalised, among children and
adults, he was at ease and at home. And he made each of us feel less
disempowered and more "captains" of our lives. A chance of birth -
for Madiba was born into Xhosa aristocracy - determined that he was born to
rule. Changes in his life created the opportunities that made it possible for
him to become the founding President in 1994 of democratic South Africa by
choice of the people.
His flight to Johannesburg was
fortuitous (he was avoiding an arranged marriage to a lady as he knew that she
was in love with his best friend).
But it changed his world. Joburg was
the pulsating heart of a rapidly urbanising South Africa, deeply scarred by the
colour bar that pre-determined for white and black two separate pathways in
life. Joburg was bustling, brazen and dehumanising. The black world of Joburg
was a maelstrom of African people drawn from different tribes within South
Africa and beyond. Here Madiba found his horizon, which had been defined by the
life and heroic struggles of the Xhosa, broadened into an African
consciousness.
He brought with him a strong sense of self-esteem and confidence
shaped by his upbringing in the home of the Regent, Chief Jongintaba. He was
fired by the knowledge that Xhosas shared with Zulus, Sothos, Tswanas, the San
and the Khoisan people, Ndebeles, Shonas, Barotses, Hereroes and all other
African tribes a common history of struggle and heroism against colonialism.
Somewhere between 1941 and 1944, in
Joburg, Madiba reached the moment when his life was committed to the struggle
of the oppressed. His choices thereafter were always to be made on the basis of
what was required and in the best interests of the struggle. All other
interests, personal or family, took second place to the demands of the
liberation of the people.
In 1952, we decided to launch the
Defiance Campaign and we needed to appoint a National Volunteer-in-Chief who
would be the driving force. Mandela had just qualified as an attorney and was
due in August to open the first African law partnership practice with Oliver
Tambo. He did not hesitate to accept the tasks imposed on him by the Defiance
Campaign.
He was there when it became necessary to go underground and live the
life of an outlaw in 1960 at the conclusion of the four-year long Treason
Trial. He stood uncompromising in the defence of our ideals when we faced the
prospect of death in the Rivonia Trial. This was a commitment that took him
from freedom fighter, to prisoner, to president. With it went a stubbornness
that at times seemed unrelenting.
In my simple way I have always believed
that stubbornness against the apartheid enemy was a commendable quality, but
that it was questionable in one's interaction with one's colleagues. Whatever
Madiba did, he did it with persistence, application and zeal.
In the early Forties he decided he
wanted to study law. He got employment with Lazar Sidelski, and he set about
studying part-time. At the same time he became increasingly absorbed in
political activity. He rented a room in Alexandra township and studied by
candlelight. He completed his BA by correspondence and enrolled for the LLB at
Wits.
He did not shine as a student but he
persisted and qualified as an attorney. He did not complete the LLB degree at
Wits. When he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in 1962, he immediately
registered for the LLB with the University of London. He persisted along this path
until he successfully completed the course.
He brought the same application and
tenacity as he grappled with political and philosophical ideas. He could be
unrelenting, even ruthless, in debate. However his stubbornness was mitigated
by his capacity to listen to the views and arguments of those from whom he
differed. Many of us would cling to our views in a debate and listen to our
opponents only with an eye to overcoming their ideas.
Winning out in the
discussion was all that counted. Madiba was no different. But I know that he
would go away, reflect on what others had to say, read and follow up the ideas.
Debate and discussion never ended up for him simply as a battle of wits, where
winning is all that counts. Often this process would strengthen his views.
At the same time, I have known him to
change his views radically. His life has been marked by such changes. Once he
embraced an idea he would champion it vigorously. Truth for him was never
something out there, clinically defined and dispassionately stated. He combined
passion with his search for truth and understanding, and such understanding
implied for him a commitment to act in accordance with it.
He was at heart a
man of action. And when he loved, he loved. This was true in his public and his
private life. His love was unstinting and unreserved. And because he was so
generous and giving of himself, he touched so many of our lives in so many ways
- small and big - that we can go on living with hope.
Gracias a la vida!
Walter Sisulu was secretary-general of
the ANC from 1949-1954 and deputy president of the ANC from 1991-1994. He spent
26 years in prison, from 1963 to 1989.
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk
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