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.'"