ndiWeliMilaMBo enaMagaMa

Ndiwelimilambo enamagama in Xhosa means literally, ‘I have crossed many rivers’. Mandela explains that the fuller implication of the expression is that, “... one has travelled a great distance...one has had wide experience and gained some wisdom from it”. he had crossed many important rivers... the Mbashe and the great Kei on the way to healdtown... the Orange and the Vaal on the way to Johannesburg but (he) had many rivers yet to cross”.

From his actions during his formative years we see that Nelson was a person like many others - he had no special aversion to lying, physical violence, and theft. It is equally obvious that his honesty, nobility, and extraordinary sense of honour made it impossible for him to excuse or gloss over his early transgressions. he demonstrates unreservedly in his autobiography that punishment follows crime even when injustice is the catapult that launches a good man into actions that are unworthy of his true nature.

Nelson Mandela has been criticised by certain steely-minded critics for his recommendation after March 1960 of a violent solution to the overthrow of South Africa’s repressive policies and racist laws but, until that time, he had practised and promoted most particularly the non-violent political actions of Mohandas (Mahatma) gandhi that had earlier borne fruit in India’s own struggle for self-government against the british.

Mandela felt constrained to recommend violent resistance to the apartheid policies of the racist South African government of hendrik Verwoerd after the massacre of 69 and physical injury to 150 others of a group of some 350 Africans peacefully protesting the Native Pass Laws outside the Sharpeville police station on 21 March 1960.

In the wave of violent incidents that followed upon Mandela’s call to action there were civilian casualties. It is a blot on Mandela’s otherwise unblemished record of fair and just legal and political activism on behalf of all Africans but we must not forget that violence was not the moving force of his life.