Nelson Mandela's Body Left Us Today, But Not His Spirit

The world lost one of its greatest heroes today with the death of Nelson Mandela.  Mandela was from South Africa but a treasure of all humanity.  His messages of freedom, hope, equality, persistence, perseverance and magnanimity will continue to resonate, because they appeal to the better and affirming side of our natures.  As was said of Abraham Lincoln, "now he belongs to the ages."

Madibe Mandela was born in 1918.  Prophetically, his tribal name means "troublemaker."  Mandela was given the name "Nelson" by an elementary teacher who told him he needed to have a Christian name in order to attend school. 

Remarkably, Mandela was able to earn a degree in law in the rigidly-segregated South African system.  He was not, however, permitted to use it.  Following the massacre of 69 freedom demonstrators by security forces in 1960, he joined the freedom movement of the African National Congress and was soon under heavy surveillance by the police.  Nelson Mandela explained, "Good and evil are always at war.  Good men must choose."

He was jailed in 1962 and put on trial for treason.  After telling the judge in his final trial statement that he was willing to die for the cause of freedom, Mandela was sentenced to life at hard labor in 1964.  Days breaking rocks under the blazing sun and nights sleeping on the floor of an unheated eight by eight cell were to be his lot for the next 27 years.   

Mandela became a worldwide symbol of dignified and principled resistance to injustice.  Marches and vigils were held around the globe for his release and for the realization of his cause during all that time.  Nonviolent resistance from the 80% of black South Africans, much of it directed or inspired by their leader in prison, followed the model of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  Finally, international sanctions drove the apartheid regime to the breaking point. 

Mandela was finally released from prison in 1990 at the age of 72.  He ran for election as South Africa's first democratically elected president by all its people in 1994, and won with 62% of the vote.  Despite all the injustice he had suffered, Mandela remained unscathed by bitterness and a visionary of reconciliation.  In his inaugural address, the president said, "Now is the time to heal old wounds."

Mandela served as president for five years and then stepped down and retired.  The voluntary relinquishment of power, so unusual for Africa, was another pointed object lesson from a man whose whole life constituted one.  "I am not a prophet.  I am not your ruler.  I am nothing but a servant," he explained.

Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 in tandem with Frederik Willem de Klerk, the last apartheid-era South African leader, "for their peaceful termination of the apartheid system."  His life and legacy are ensured for all generations.  The people of South Africa are not in glum and silent mourning tonight.  Instead, they are singing and dancing in the streets.  Rather than pine for what they have lost, they celebrate what they have gained, and the remarkable man who did so much to make it possible.  As Mandela summed up shortly before his death, "There is nothing more powerful than the words, 'This is not right.'"

                                                                        

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

News that President Barack Obama had been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace stunned the world today. He has been in office less than nine months, leads a country involved in two ongoing wars and has yet to bring about the end of any of the world's many extant conflicts. His conservative political opponents in the United States derided the choice, ascribing it to his "star power," in the words of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. Michael Binyon of the London Times called the decision "absurd" and a "mockery." See the NY Times account here.

Obama himself, in a brief Rose Garden statement, said, "To be honest, I do not feel I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize..." He said he was "surprised and humbled" by the award and would accept it as "a call to action" and an "affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations." So how are we to make sense of this?

We do that by taking a look at things from the perspective of the rest of the world. This choice was a sigh of relief on behalf of many in the world community. The world's most powerful nation had literally been frightening people of good will around the globe for several years. In a large sense the Committee's award was a repudiation of Obama's predecessor and the direction he was leading the United States and the world. What was the world community to make of the planet's erstwhile champion of rights and human values engaging in torture, "disappearing" suspects, scoffing at climate change, treating other nations with ill-disguised contempt, militarizing one problem after another, showing a smug and superior attitude in dealings even with its allies, refusing to even talk to those with whom it had disagreements, starting a war and justifying it by obvious lies and having a second in command who openly spoke of working "the dark side" in pursuit of his aims?

The Nobel Committee, in its statement, praised Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," and said he had "created a new international climate." Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said, "The question we have to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world. And who has done more than Barack Obama?" He likened the selection to that of German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1971 for his "Ostpolitik" diplomatic outreach to Communist-ruled Eastern Europe. The fall of Communism there was not to come for another eighteen years but the thaw may well have begun with Brandt's initiative.

Obama has ordered an end to torture, passed fuel efficiency and cap and trade legislation, offered an open hand to the Muslim world in June in Cairo, started talks with Iran and North Korea, begun winding down American involvement in Iraq, has taken steps with Russia on nuclear proliferation, speaking recently in Prague of "a world without nuclear weapons," brought China into the Korea talks, has begun an initiative in the Middle East and is reassessing U.S. policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan. As his recent election rival John McCain observed today, "I think part of their decision-making was expectations. And I'm sure the President understands that he now has even more to live up to."

The Nobel Committee is the latest to evidence what most of the world has felt about Obama from the start of his campaign, that his election would signal something very different and healthy in the psyche of the American populace and a commensurate positive change in the way his country was ready to relate to the world. He has not disappointed so far. Just think of where American diplomacy and the international climate were one year ago. And indeed, who has done more in the past year to foster world peace than Barack Obama? Obama has barely begun to scratch the surface in terms of bringing about international accord in his less than nine months in office. But he has restored the one indispensable element to getting it off the ground--hope. From where things stood a year ago, that in itself is an achievement to be celebrated.