Madiba more special than we realise
http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/madiba-more-special-than-we-realise-1.1618345#.UqL1_-VRpjs
So what, exactly, is it that makes Nelson Mandela so
special?
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.
“That woman over there,” he said with a broad smile, “saved
my life. She nursed me back to health when I had TB.”
He called her on stage and embraced her warmly, recounting
how in 1988 while in Cape Town's
Pollsmoor prison he had contracted tuberculosis and was admitted to hospital
where he had been under her professional nursing care.
The mood in the crowd changed. Large roars of approval
drowned out the snarled demands for revenge.
And there was the time when, as South African president,
Mandela was hosting a meeting of the Southern African Development Community, a
regional economic grouping.
All the key presidents and prime ministers from across the
region were there. They had to come up with a united response to yet another
crisis somewhere in Africa. Journalists had
been waiting since morning for the press conference. An agitated radio reporter
had to dash off mid-afternoon to pick up her son from school, praying that the
press conference would not take place while she was away.
She got back just in time and the boy was sitting at her
side when the leaders walked in, Mandela in his trademark “Madiba shirt”, the
others in formal suits.
Mandela saw the boy and without hesitating walked straight
up to him, shook him by the hand and said, “Ah hello there. How nice of you to
take time out from your busy schedule to be with us today.”
The boy beamed, so did his mother. The journalists were spellbound
while the African leaders looked on in bemusement.
This became the pattern. We watched in awe as Mandela time
and again stepped easily into the role of senior world statesman, and we
watched humbled when his own fragile humanity was exposed.
During divorce proceedings he confided publicly that the
woman he loved so deeply, Winnie, had not spent a single night with him since
his release from prison.
An activist, Strini Moodley, who served time on Robben Island,
tells how Mandela kept a photograph of Winnie in his cell. Moodley asked to
borrow the picture so he could do a sketch. Mandela told him, “You can have her
during the day, but at night she comes back to me.”
THE PERSONAL TOUCH
On the campaign trail, Mandela never failed in the morning
to ask journalists how they had slept and whether they had managed to get some
breakfast. He came to know many reporters and photographers by name, stopping
often to speak to them and adding without fail: “How very nice to see you
again.”
One of the many defining moments of his relentless efforts
to reconcile deeply divided communities came when he visited Betsie Verwoerd,
widow of the architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, who had effectively put
Mandela in jail.
It was under Verwoerd's term as prime minister from 1958
until he was assassinated in 1966 that the African National Congress and the
South African Communist Party had been outlawed, driving Mandela underground
and leading to his eventual arrest, prosecution and jailing for life in 1964 for
“acts of sabotage” and “conspiracy to overthrow the government”.
The “tea with Betsie” meeting took place at her home in a
whites-only enclave known as Orania in Northern
Cape in August 1995. Mrs. Verwoerd, then 94 and very
frail, afterwards said little apart from the fact she was happy the president
had visited her.
Her granddaughter, Elizabeth, was less welcoming, reportedly
stating that she wished rather that he had been “president of a neighbouring
country”.
GRACIOUS
Mandela was gracious and generous, saying the way he had
been received in Orania “was as if I was in Soweto,”
the sprawling black township outside Johannesburg
where he is regarded as a hero.
Always ready to stress that he saw himself as just one in a
long succession of South African leaders, he posed beside a six-feet tall
statue of Verwoerd erected at Orania.
“You made him (Verwoerd) very small,” he said in
disappointment to the residents of Orania, as, at six feet two inches (1.90
metres), he towered above the sculpture.
Months earlier, on April 27, 1994, journalists gathered at a
school outside Durban
where Mandela was to cast his ballot in the country's first all-race election.
We all thought: “Is this really happening? Is Mandela really voting? Is
apartheid really ending?”
Yes it was. Mandela made a brief speech stressing the
dawning of “a new South
Africa where all South Africans are equal”.
Then he dropped his ballot into the box and, literally glowing in the early
morning sunlight, smiled long and happily.
It was the kind of smile that you know is not put on for the
cameras. The kind that wells up from the very depths of the soul. In Mandela's
case, a very rare soul indeed.
* Bryan Pearson, AFP's Middle East English desk chief,
worked as an AFP correspondent based in Johannesburg
covering the period from Nelson Mandela's release in 1990 until the end of his
term as South Africa's
first black president in 1999. -AFP
10-day Mandela programme
http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/10-day-mandela-programme-1.1618395#.UqLzHOVRpjs
Johannesburg - A 10-day
programme of activities has been arranged leading up to the state funeral of
former president Nelson Mandela in his hometown of Qunu, in the Eastern Cape.
President Jacob Zuma told reporters in Johannesburg on Friday that Sunday, December
8, would be a national day of prayer and reflection.
“We call upon all our people to gather in halls, churches,
mosques, temples, synagogues and in their homes for prayer services and
meditation, reflecting on the life of Madiba and his contribution to our
country and the world,” he said.
An official memorial service would be held on Tuesday,
December 10, at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg.
“From 11 to 13 December, the remains of our beloved Madiba
will lie in state at the seat of government, the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where he served
as the first president of this young democracy,” Zuma said.
“During these days, official memorial services will also be
held in all provinces and regions.”
Mandela's state funeral would be held on December 15, in
Qunu.
“We should all work together to organise the most befitting
funeral for this outstanding son of our country and the father of our young
nation,” said Zuma.
He thanked South Africans for “the dignified manner in which
they have respected and responded to the monumental loss of this monumental
icon”.
“(Mandela was) a symbol of reconciliation, unity, love,
human rights and justice in our country and in the world,” he said.
Mandela died at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg, on Thursday night. He was
95-years-old.
African National Congress secretary general Gwede Mantashe
said the ANC in each province and 54 regions across the country would hold
memorial services while Mandela was lying in state.
“We have agreed that not every memorial service will have a
(Mandela) family member,” he said.
“You can't expect the Mandela family to be in 54 memorial
services, or to be in nine provincial services.”
He said the ANC would “all” move to the Eastern Cape on
December 14, prior to the
state funeral.
Mantashe said Zuma, as president of the ANC, would be
deployed to one of the party's
memorial services.
“But we are not going to interrupt his role as the president
of the Republic
of South Africa.”
Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane said further
details of the events, and the arrival of foreign dignitaries would be
announced later.
Parliament to hold special Mandela session
http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/parliament-to-hold-special-mandela-session-1.1618338
Mandela greatest figure of our time
http://www.iol.co.za/business/news/mandela-greatest-figure-of-our-time-1.1618300#.UqL06-VRpjs
Johannesburg
- Former president Nelson Mandela was one of the greatest political figures of
all time, Geely SA said on Friday.
“Madiba changed the course of history for the South African
people, South Africa as a
country, Africa as a continent, and the
world,” the car company said in a statement.
A trip down memory lane
http://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/a-trip-down-memory-lane-1.1602151#.UqLyVuVRpjs
A photographic exhibition at the National Library of South
Africa is ringing out the old. Hundreds of photographs of central Cape Town, dating back to
the 1800s, will be on display from today. From scenes of wagons and horse-drawn
carts in St George’s Mall to the Adderley Street flower sellers in the early
1900s, the exhibition brings Cape Town of old to life. Included in the
exhibition is one of the earliest known outdoor Cape Town photographs, taken in 1852. The
exhibition is a photographic collaboration between the National Library and the
Cape Town Photographic Society. While Greenmarket
Square and Wale Street may be household names, this
is so much more than just the same old story.