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Mandela, still a dominant figure at 90

Written by Dr. Garth A. Rose

Thursday, 17 July 2008

Former South African president Nelson (Madiba) Mandela, arguably the most renown and beloved African Leader, celebrates his 90th birthday on Friday, July 18. Although Mandela has grown frail with age, he is nonetheless a man of tremendous influence in South Africa, and all of Africa. Two weeks ago Mandela, in a rare public appearance, celebrated his birthday at a widely publicized rock concert held in London. On Friday he plans to spend his actual birthday privately with family in his boyhood village of Qunu, located 600 miles south of Johannesburg. This is the village where he built a replica of the house in which he was held after being removed from a desolate offshore prison on Robben Island, South Africa in which he spent 27 years. Mandela had been imprisoned on charges of treason brought by the South African government in 1962, during the heights of the oppressive system of Apartheid that gave Blacks few rights, making them an extremely oppressed people. However, despite his imprisonment, Mandela never gave up the struggle for a South African society where Blacks would be free, and continued to have a strong influence on his party, the African National Congress (ANC). Twice the government offered him freedom on its terms but he refused, wanting to accomplish his mission on his terms. With Mandela in prison his second wife, Winnie, waged an aggressive support for his freedom and drew international attention to the crippling atrocities of Apartheid. This resulted in severe foreign economic sanctions against South Africa creating losses of billions of dollars to the country. In 1990 President F.W. de Klerk, after meetings and negotiations with Mandela, released him from prison, to the resounding joy of Black people everywhere. Despite his several years of incarceration Mandela emerged a powerful leader, who gained the love and respect of both Blacks and Whites. In general elections held in 1994, Mandela and the ANC won convincingly, forming the country’s first non-apartheid government, but due to his age, he served as president for just one term. However, he entrenched the rule of the majority Black population in the country. Time magazine, in a recent cover story on Mandela, referred to him as “the closest thing to a secular saint,” although, according to the magazine, Mandela admits that he is just an ordinary politician. But, the great one greatly underestimates himself and his achievements. Very few people, including the majority of oppressed Blacks in South Africa, imagined during the 1980’s that Apartheid could ever be overturned, and much less that the imprisoned Mandela would be freed to return to become the president  of a “nonracial democratic South Africa.” Although no longer active in South African politics Mandela’s opinion is still greatly respected, and his leadership still sought. Most South Africans expect to hear from him whenever national crisis occurs. His voice and opinions are also heeded when crisis occurs in other African nations as it recently did after elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe. And, although he has tried not to interfere in other country’s politics he did refer to the violence in Zimbabwe as a “tragic failure of leadership.”  Mandela, now retired, is still actively involved in the fight against AIDS in his country and throughout Africa. Mandela has been married three times, first to Evelyn Mase in 1944 whom he divorced 1957, Winnie in 1958 and divorced in 1998, and is currently married to Graca Machel. Accounts are that despite the frailty of his age Mandela is in good health – good news for South Africans to whom Mandela will always be a dominant presence.

 

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