Mandela feature

NELSON MANDELA FATHER, FIGHTER, FRIEND

1918 - 2013

Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013

20 T H E V O I C E DECEMBER 12 - 18, 2013

FREEDOM FIGHTER

VISIONARY: Nelson Mandela persevered to go from political prisoner to South Africa’s President

Nelson Mandela had the mental strength to achieve his vision of a united South Africa and became a global voice for justice, writes Joseph Harker

BY JOSEPH HARKER

T

WO DECADES on, the highlight of my journalism career remains my interview with Nelson Mandela, three months after his release from Victor Verster prison.

It was May 1990, and we met in the Johannesburg headquarters of his African National Congress (ANC) party.

The first thing that struck me about him was his height – he was over 6 foot tall – his confident, upright posture, and his very firm handshake.

For a man of 72 years old, who’d just spent 27 years in prison, he really was in remarkably good shape.

I remember feeling immediately that this was a man who really could live up to the hopes that the nation, if not the world, had entrusted in him.

Straightaway I gave him a copy of The Voice newspaper of February 13, 1990, which had recorded his release.

Editing that edition had been another unforgettable experience.

In those days the paper came out each Tuesday, but we normally wrapped it up on the Saturday, before it went up to our printers on Sunday for distribution around the country on Monday (no internet or social media in those days!)

But on Saturday afternoon, February 10, came the news that Mandela was to be

released the following day.

I immediately called up our reporters – Clare Hynes, Diran Adebayo and Heenan Bhatti – who, along with our design and production team, were all happy to give up their Sunday for such a historic story.

And in that one day we produced a five-page special edition with, on the cover, a closeup shot of Mandela walking to freedom with his right hand clenched in the air. “Free at last” declared our headline in massive type.

Richard Adeshiyan, our deputy editor, was in that day too, but his day was mostly taken up leading our coverage of the other huge story of that day – the overnight knockout of the “invincible” Mike Tyson by

the previously unknown boxer Buster Douglas.

That night I drove the bromide originals of the paper up to our printers in Lincolnshire (again, no internet!) and stayed up all night while they made the metal plates and printed it off the following morning.

As the first editions rolled off the presses I scooped them up, and drove them back down to our offices in Brixton, where I proudly showed them off to our staff who were still buzzing, like black people everywhere, from the excitement of Mandela’s release. That issue was a great team effort – from journalists to the design and layout team, to our typesetters and printers.

And for a paper which was then just eight years old, it

proved how much potential we had to make a real difference.

It’s no coincidence that over the following months and years The Voice’s sales soared.

Three months later the editor, Steve Pope, sent me to South Africa for a month-long assignment, to follow up on the impact of Mandela’s freedom. And so it was that I came to be in the ANC party HQ. At the time, the country’s future was uncertain. It was by no means clear whether there would be any kind of meaningful handover of power at all – let alone a peaceful one – from the minority apartheid regime to the country’s black majority.

Violence was flaring in South Africa’s Natal region, where gangs affiliated to Chief

Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha movement were attacking antiapartheid supporters, killing hundreds at a time.

I asked Mandela if he had a timetable for change. He wouldn’t be drawn. Five years? He still wouldn’t say. And when I asked if he’d like to see the kind of mass mobilisation of protesters which had, a year earlier, brought a sudden end to the regimes across Eastern Europe, he simply said: “We are not comparing ourselves with any other part of the world."

I remember at the time feeling a little frustrated because, having seen the brutal injustices of apartheid, I wanted the regime swept away as quickly as possible.

But today, years later, I see

Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013

DECEMBER 12 - 18, 2013 T H E V O I C E 21

“They have the advantages of education opportunities, are highly qualified and skilled, therefore they are crucial to the further development of this country in all spheres. We need their cooperation.”

nt page at iconic Voice fro SIGNIFICANT: Th

that he had a plan; and that his age and wisdom had given him the patience to see what was best for his country in the long term.

Was South Africa, after years of schoolkids boycotting classes - resulting in a generation without education - ready for a complete and immediate handover of power?

And over the following years, with various conflicts in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse – from Bosnia to Armenia to Chechnya - it became clear that the ideal of "freedom" did not necessarily bring hope, and certainly not peace.

In fact, Mandela was at pains to tell me that, despite their decades of racist privilege, South African whites were still crucial to the nation’s future.

“They have an important role to play,” he said. “They have the advantages of education opportunities, are highly qualified and skilled,

therefore they are crucial to the further development of this country in all spheres. We need their cooperation.”

And he continued: “We have stopped thinking in terms of blacks and whites. We are thinking in terms of all South Africans.”

Hearing his words now, I can’t help recalling the same message of unity being put forward in 2004 by the then junior senator Barack Obama, who told the Democratic party congress that it shouldn’t think in terms of “red states, and blue states” [ie Republican and Democrat] but of the “United States.”

As it turned out, exactly four years after our meeting in Johannesburg, Mandela became president of South Africa after being voted in by a huge majority in the country’s first-ever free elections.

The intervening years had seen much bloodshed, many stalled negotiations, and many deliberate attempts to derail the whole transition process. But despite his years, Mandela had the vision, and the physical and mental strength, to overcome the obstacles, and then to

serve his five-year term as head of state. He handed over a nation united – which was a significant achievement given its bloody history.

This required intelligence and a strategic mind – and a man prepared to lead by example.

He did this most symbolically by wearing a Springboks shirt when congratulating the national rugby team on winning the 1995 Rugby World Cup (rugby was a predominantly white sport in the country and had been hit by the sporting boycott which had isolated South Africa in the 1970s and 80s).

But in addition to his national leadership, Mandela became a global voice for justice – he backed Neville and Doreen Lawrence after their son was murdered, at a time when the police and the British establishment were against them. He spoke out against the invasion of Iraq; against the way the West keeps the developing world in poverty; and for those suffering from Aids.

Looking back now on his impact, I still can’t help feeling that South Africa’s whites got off lightly given their long col-

lective oppression of the country’s black majority. I’d like to have seen a more robust effort to redress the sharp racial inequalities, which still afflict the country today.

But without doubt Mandela’s legacy was to create a country which remained stable, is now an established democracy, whose overall economy is now prospering, and which was confident and capable enough to host the glorious football World Cup of 2010.

His country, and the world, is immeasurably better for his 95 years with us.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela BORN: July 18, 1918 DIED: December 5,2013 PRESIDENTIAL TERM: May 10, 1994 - June 14, 1999 PLACE OF BIRTH: Mvezo, South Africa CHILDREN: Makaziwe Mandela, Zindziswa Mandela, Makgatho Mandela, Zenani Mandela, Madiba Thembekile Mandela SPOUSES: Graça Machel (1998 – present) Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (1958–1996), Evelyn Mase (1944–1958) EDUCATION: University of South Africa (1943), Healdtown Comprehensive School, University of the Witwatersrand, University of London International Programmes, University of London, University of Fort Hare AWARDS: Mandela received more than 150 awards in his lifetime, most notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 Before his presidency, Mandela was an antiapartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress (ANC) and its armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe Mandela spent 27 years in prison – Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison – on convictions for crimes during the struggle against apartheid

YOUNGER YEARS: Nelson Mandela before he was imprisoned MAGICAL MOMENT: Journalist Joseph Harker hands Mandela a copy of The Voice

Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013

22 T H E V O I C E DECEMBER 12 - 18, 2013

MOURN MANDELA THE MAN, NOT HIS POLITICS Did a focus on forgiveness come at the expense of black advancement?

Marc Wadsworth, founder of the Anti-Racist Alliance, examines the debate

BY MARC WADSWORTH

I

SAT next to Nelson Mandela in May 1993, after arranging for him to meet Neville and Doreen Lawrence, the parents of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

It was a magical moment when Mandela walked into the room at the Athenaeum Hotel in Piccadilly, central London.

Afterwards, in front of TV cameras, he said: “The Lawrence tragedy is our tragedy. I am deeply touched by the brutality of the murder – brutality that we are used to in South Africa, where black lives are cheap.”

This monumental statement jerked the Met Police into arresting the suspected murderers after weeks of dragging their feet. Mandela was an international ambassador for the black cause without equal.

But as we mourn the death of the most admired statesman on the planet, it is important to separate the politics from the emotion.

In historical terms black people in the West will understand, Mandela was a Martin Luther King whereas his Zimbabwean counterpart Robert Mugabe is a Malcolm X. One preached forgiveness and reconciliation towards the oppressor and the other, black power.

White people will not shed a single tear when Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe dies.

Mandela, on the other hand, has been afforded iconic status by the West’s leaders and news media.

Mandela served a life sentence in jail because he dared to fight for the overthrow of South Africa’s racist apartheid state. His sacrifice was heroic.

But so was the sacrifice of others, including the often-forgotten black nationalist Robert Sobukwe, leader of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, who died in jail.

Let’s be clear, the African National Congress (ANC) Mandela led to an electoral win in 1994, struck a compromise deal with the country’s old rulers that black nationalists have heavily criticised.

Under the deal, South Africa’s black majority gained political power for the first time – black faces in high places – but the

FRIENDS NOT FOES: Mandela and then South African President FW De Klerk in Oslo, Norway, where they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1993

old rulers kept a firm grip on economic power and key civil service and other public sector jobs.

Another controversial plank of the compromise was that those people responsible for tens of thousands of murders, beatings and false imprisonment during the appalling apartheid era, from Presidents Botha and DeKlerk downwards, would not be brought to justice.

Mandela played his role as “healer of the nation”, most memorably when he donned a Springbok shirt and cap after

the South African team won the Rugby World Cup in 1995.

The photograph used in news media around the globe featured a beaming President Mandela surrounded by white players. It was a bit much for some black people to take, mindful that after the photo opportunity, life remained just as impoverished for the vast majority of South Africa’s black population.

Not that some elite black South Africans haven’t got their hands on riches. Fellow Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond

Tutu once chided Mandela by saying that the ANC once complained about the apartheid state’s “gravy train”, but once the party won power they had merely stopped it so they could climb aboard. There are now black millionaires, including controversially ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, the former mineworkers union leader.

I visited South Africa in June this year and discovered that, 20 years after the ANC was elected, a furious row is still going on about the changing of street names from those of the

apartheid era.

It is therefore no surprise the Afrikaner names of the two major cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria have remained the same. This is symbolic of how South Africa, far from being Mandela’s claimed “rainbow nation” is still the Guinness nation with white people on top.

But, with elections coming up next year, political rebels who are ex-ANC, including the charismatic Julius Malema, are mounting a challenge. They claim that inequality in South Africa is worse now than under apartheid.

The top five per cent of earners take home 30 times more than the bottom five per cent.

One in three South Africans are unemployed, often having dropped out of school into an underclass scarred by poverty and crime.

Malema has formed the Economic Freedom Fighters party, which is winning big support from the black poor and dispossessed. Now Mandela is dead the gloves are off. * Marc Wadsworth is the editor of citizen journalism website the-latest.com

Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013

MANDELA HELPED STEPHEN GET JUSTICE

DECEMBER 12 - 18, 2013 T H E V O I C E 27

MANDELA’S BRITAIN In 2007, Nelson Mandela made the last of many pivotal visits to the UK. Professor Kurt Barling looks back on a very special relationship

BY KURT BARLING

HELPING HAND: Nelson Mandela meets Neville and Doreen Lawrence on May 6, 1993, and backs their campaign to get justice for their son

INVOLVED: Mandela shows off his moves as he meets dancers in Brixton while Operation Black Vote (OBV) director, Simon Woolley, looks on with a smile

BY DOREEN LAWRENCE I REFLECT on the legacy that Mr Nelson Mandela has left for all of us who are fortunate to be alive to witness, and on my own personal association with him during the campaign for justice for my son Stephen. Nelson Mandela was ready to die for his view that the laws in South Africa were unjust to the majority of its people. That readiness led him to spend 27 years of his life in prison. Mr Mandela wanted freedom of movement for black people around the country, for equality, better living standards, housing and employment. The brutality on black people from the South African Government under the apartheid regime and police cost many lives. Mr Mandela wanted and campaigned for majority rule. His campaigning was selfless and the sacrifice was for the whole country not just for black people. Nelson Mandela, a man of justice and peace, he gave so much without any thought for himself.

I will always appreciate the support he gave my family and me back in 1993 after Stephen’s murder. His words made a big difference and led to the first arrest of some of the perpetrators of Stephen’s murder. Mr Mandela understood what it meant to lose someone because of racism. I will always remember a calm natured man who cared so much for others and saw the good in everyone. That meeting on the Thursday, May 6, in 1993, was very important and made a big difference in how we ran our campaign for justice.

With the leadership Mr Mandela showed, he managed to inspire the next generation who want to carry on working in his footsteps. South Africa is a better place because of Nelson Mandela’s tireless efforts and sacrifice in bringing about changes. However, it is not just South Africans who have benefited from this giant of a man as demonstrated by the legacy he has left behind. We can see this extent with leaders of countries across the globe lining up to pay tribute to this inspirational man.

Rest in peace. With love, Baroness Doreen Lawrence of Clarendon.

MANDELA MANIA: Crowds in Brixton go wild as the icon visits the heart of Black Britain

RECOGNITION: Mandela speaks at the unveiling of a statue of himself in Britain’s Parliament Square next to Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill

KEY MOMENT: Nelson and Winnie Mandela salute crowds during a concert in his honour at Wembley Stadium

NELSON MANDELA was no stranger to London. He came to the capital in 1962 looking for support for the ANC’s struggle against the noxious apartheid regime. The winds of change were blowing through Africa but South African whites were determined to resist the decolonisation movement.

Mandela came to London and with Oliver Tambo, lobbied the British Left to support their cause. Tambo would remain in exile and direct the campaign for freedom from his home in Muswell Hill, north London. His comrades were brutalised, tortured, imprisoned or murdered in South Africa itself.

Some of the last known pictures of Mandela before he was sentenced to life imprisonment after the Rivonia trial were of that visit. A couple of particularly poignant black and white pictures were taken in front of the Houses of Parliament where he joked that one day there would be a statue of him in Parliament Square.

For the duration of his 27 years imprisonment there were no pictures of him, but the mythology surrounding him was stoked by years of anti-apartheid movement rallies, boycotts and political agitation. All of this was organised from offices in Islington.

One of the features of the antiapartheid movement (AAM) in Britain was its racial mix. Unlike many other political movements in the 1970s and 1980s, people led it from all ethnic backgrounds. Black Britain was deeply linked to the struggle for emancipation in South Africa.

Despite being largely locked out of domestic politics and suffering from discrimination and racism in the UK, black activists flocked to the cause alongside white comrades and both shared a common ambition to rid South Africa of a racist regime.

It also provided political inspiration and education to an emerging generation of black activists in Britain focused on racial inequality at home in.

Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng, Diane Abbott and Keith Vaz all had links to the AAM. Once they were elected to Parliament in 1987, as the first minority MPs in the modern era, the debates on sanctions became arguably more hotly contested in political discourse.

Looking for the sources of Nelson Mandela’s greatness is not self-evident.

His mythological status was cemented at a time when he was in a prison cell.

On his release his initial overtures to white South Africans were interpreted as a weakness by some of his comrades.

But ultimately history would be kind to him because of his sound judgment that forgiveness was a better path to reconciliation than bloodshed.

It is a miracle after over 40 years of brutal apartheid; vengeance did not become the mantra of black South African politics once President Mandela

was elected.

It is no coincidence that Mandela returned to London just weeks after being released in February 1990. The global concert on his 70th birthday in 1988, held at Wembley, was an extraordinary spectacle and for him and his advisors, it was important that his first global speech was given from a major international venue, so a second concert was hastily pulled together in the spring of 1990.

No one who was alive at the time could forget the eight-minute ear-splitting ovation Mandela and his wife Winnie received when they appeared on stage at Wembley and he spoke to a truly global audience via satellite technology.

In that same February, Bernie Grant MP had been invited to Cape Town to meet Mandela on his release. On his return he pressed his claim with then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, that Britain had a special responsibility to help black South Africans prepare for a post-apartheid democratic future.

Thatcher wrote that she believed, “there is a case for practical assistance to those who have previously been excluded from the political process” reversing years of personal antipathy to a man and a movement she and her party had regarded as terrorists.

London Mayor Boris Johnson admitted to me last week that his party had plainly got it wrong.

Mandela returned to London several times, announcing it was his favourite foreign city. In 1993 he met with Neville and Doreen Lawrence, to share their grief over the death of their murdered son Stephen.

But it was on his state visit to Britain in 1996 that Mandela probably had his most direct and transformative impact on Black Britain. He visited Brixton where people thronged to get a glimpse of him, a rainbow community turning out to see a global icon. Remember, this was over a decade before Barack Obama.

In the past week I’ve spoken to people as varied as community organiser Ros Griffiths, MP Chukka Umunna, actor Cyril Nri and Paul Reid, director of the Black Cultural Archives, who were all there that day.

They confirm it was not just a day that turned heads but fundamentally changed minds, inspiring them to strive for achievement.

The last time Mandela came to London was as a frail man in 2007. The years had taken their toll on him as he watched the unveiling of the glorious likeness of him in Parliament Square.

That site of pilgrimage this past week is almost on the very spot where all those years before he had dreamed of an apartheid-free South Africa before embarking on his own and his people’s long march to freedom. *Kurt Barling is a professor of journalism at Middlesex University and a BBC special correspondent

Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013

THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE BEST OPTION: A street vendor clears elections posters after Mandela becomes South Africa’s first black President

Richard Adeshiyan, former deputy editor of The Voice, recalls the euphoria which gripped a nation as a journalist covering South Africa’s first democratic elections

BY RICHARD ADESHIYAN

I

MAKING HISTORY: Mandela delivers his victory speech

N 1994, I landed on South African soil to report the nation’s first democratic elections. My stay gave me a unique insight into why Nelson Mandela was essential to the nation’s healing process.

This was a South Africa staring into the abyss. I arrived just ten days after the infamous Johannesburg massacre when ANC security guards shot and killed 19 Inkantha Freedom Party members after marching on Shell House, the ANC headquarters. The massacre trig-

LONG WAIT: Elderly black voters at the Tokoza polling station on the outskirts of Johannesburg queue after winning the right to vote for the first time

gered a state of emergency, so the tension in downtown Johannesburg was palpable, especially as I was working out of the pro-ANC New Nation newspaper on Wanderers Street, just a stone’s throw away.

Thankfully, things settled down and it was the smiling face of Nelson Mandela on ANC election posters that said it all: ‘Mandela for President - The People’s Choice’. It was a message that helped carry South Africa over the finishing line on April 27.

While Mandela was clearly the embodiment of the struggle, I gained a real sense of the collective struggle and how Mandela’s journey reflected the experiences of South Africans everywhere. To truly understand the man, it was important to understand the lofty expectations placed on his narrow shoulders and the unfettered joy he brought to black townships.

When I decided to report this election, I knew I wanted to cover proceedings from a very different perspective, which entailed meeting black South Africans in their respective communities. Fortunately, I was based at the family home of Mathatha Tsedu, the political editor of the Sowetan newspaper, a wise and wily campaigner.

Mathatha had been introduced to me by the London-based South Africanborn journalist Lionel Morrison, a former president of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and one of the youngest detainees of the 1956 treason trial (read Lionel Morrison’s tribute on page 29), which included Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu.

Mathatha had earned his reputation as a fearless journalist, and in the 1980s was imprisoned and banned with other leading journalists, including the late former Sowetan editor Aggrey Klaaste and Zwelakhe Sisulu, son of Walter, two men I was privileged to meet. Mathatha’s revealing testimonials of the destructive apartheid era, opened my eyes to the human face and sacrifice made by black South Africa.

I was introduced to a wide-range of people who saw the election of Nelson Mandela as the culmination of their own personal struggles. Meeting local figures in the troubled Alexandra and Soweto townships helped paint a more rounded picture.

Mathatha wanted me to see the real South Africa and so took me to meet his friend Adolphus Masithe, a local fruit seller and evangelist in Kliptown, Soweto’s oldest residential district. The Freedom Charter, which set out the aims and aspirations of the opponents of apartheid, was signed in Kliptown in

1955. Sadly, repeated violence and poverty over the decades and serious under-investment has left the area a mass of sprawling makeshift corrugated iron shacks.

I was visibly shocked at the abject squalor I encountered on that Saturday afternoon. It was an experience that illustrated quite vividly the huge challenges facing Mandela in removing the evil stench of the apartheid years. After that visit I was in no doubt why the people had placed so much hope in Mandela.

A week later I witnessed the potency of the Mandela effect at a special rally in Soweto’s Orlando Stadium for slain politician Chris Hani. The rally doubled as an election rally with many of the ANC’s high command present and an expectant 10,000-strong crowd bussed in from the surrounding areas.

As Mandela’s car entered the stadium the crowd erupted and photographers, camped on the infield, jostled for position. But unlike his ANC colleagues, he stopped his car and completed a lap of the stadium on foot sending the crowd into rapturous dancing and singing on the terraces.

The singing was coupled with shouts of “Viva Mandela!” and “One President, One Mandela” echoing around the stadium. It was a spine -tingling moment.

I spent the majority of the historic election day in Soweto and was assigned to The Sowetan journalist Ruth Bhengu, who was born in Sophiatown, but the family later moved to Soweto. To witness the pure unadulterated joy and exuberance of thousands of young and old people waiting patiently in snaking queues outside several polling stations, still sends shivers down my spine to this day.

The rest of the day was spent back in central Johannesburg where the streets were packed with people in a jubilant mood. I remember seeing the words: ‘I’m the boss in the New South Africa’ emblazoned across a black woman’s T-shirt, which seemed to sum up this moment of optimism.

Caught up in the excitement of the moment I could not resist securing my own piece of historic memorabilia from a Johannesburg lamppost. Today, Nelson Mandela is still smiling from the ‘Mandela for President - The People’s Choice poster, which sits proudly on my wall at home. *Richard Adeshiyan, covered the elections for the Weekly Journal and The Voice. He was also a special correspondent for The Sowetan and Jamaica Herald

(PIC: NIGEL DAVIES)

28 T H E V O I C E DECEMBER 12 - 18, 2013

TENSIONS: Richard Adeshiyan, right, and fellow British journalist David Gyimah (far left) witness the devastation in Johannesburg after a car bomb exploded

Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013

DECEMBER 12 - 18, 2013 T H E V O I C E 29

GROWING UP WHITE IN MANDELA’S SOUTH AFRICA

BY HEATHER WALKER

COMRADES: Anti-apartheid activist Lionel Morrison is reunited with his mentor in 2008

HE KNEW THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS Fellow South African activists praise Mandela’s inspiration and leadership

INSPIRED: South African Ellen Lebethe

BY NATRICIA DUNCAN

V

ETERAN JOURNALIST and activist Lionel Morrison braved assault, prison and death to stand alongside Nelson Mandela in the fight to eradicate apartheid.

The first black president of the UK’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) described Mandela as a giant of his era.

Born in South Africa, Morrison said he was “awed” when he first met the antiapartheid revolutionist.

He said: “I was only young, but I remember being struck by his height, because he was a tall man and he had this great charisma.”

Years later, Mandela presented Morrison, who was imprisoned at 20 and was one of the 156 people arrested in the famous 1956 South African treason trial, with a plaque for his contributions to the struggle during a private lunch with the former South African president in 2008.

He said: “Mandela and freedom fighter Walter Sisulu were our mentors. We went to them

for advice. They kept us inspired during the long fight for freedom.”

Ellen Lebethe, 76, who was also born under the yoke of apartheid in South Africa, said she was urged by Mandela into activism.

Still an avid campaigner, she fights for pensioners’ rights and to defend public services and the welfare state.

She said: “My activism comes from my experience of fighting against apartheid.”

Lebethe, a former member of the once banned youth arm of the African National Congress (ANC), set up by Mandela, Sisulu, Ashley Peter Mda and Oliver Tambo, described how her activism empowered her.

She said: “We were forced underground, but we were determined. It was dangerous, but I was not afraid because we were standing up against injustice. I have to say it was a nice feeling outdoing the police at times.”

Both activists praised Mandela for the indelible mark he made on their lives.

Lebethe said: “Nelson Mandela was a phenomenal human being, a great leader and a liberator. He was com-

mitted to building a nation on human rights for all. Equality and peace were his contact pursuits.

“What I really admire and would respect forever is his unflinching principles. He did not give in or compromise. He said himself he was prepared to die to defend his democratic ideals. That is an amazing trait in any human being.”

She added: “He has left us with a legacy that if you need to change and you need to make a difference to the quality of life of people you will need to be a fighter.

“We will remember him for his courage, determination and most of all for the fact that he taught us forgiveness through reconciliation.”

Morrison said Mandela created “a moral compass” for the rest of the world.

He said: “His life served as a morality tale for the ages and what he did was he helped us to dream.

“The dream that we could live in South Africa as black people, as white people, as any people and all live as equals.”

He added: “I lived to see that dream come through and see the shackles fall - not just for us but also for the white people who oppressed us.

“Now that he has gone we need to complete the work and continue to make those dreams a reality.”

Mandela’s greatest legacy, according to Morrison, is that he succeeded in putting South Africans on a path to forgiveness.

Labethe added: “Mandela has had a worldwide reach because the principles that he stood up for are timeless pillars of humanity - equality, freedom, peace - principles that the world needs.”

I GREW up in a middle class suburb of Johannesburg, shielded from the atrocities of apartheid. Although Nelson Mandela was widely spoken of as a hero among black people, his image was banned and many white people saw him as a terrorist. Many [white South Africans] did not consider him or the ANC appropriate topics to speak to children about.

The first time I recall knowing about him was the day he was released from prison, one of my most vivid childhood memories as I watched it on TV aged eight. I sensed something historic had just happened, little did I know how significant that day would become.

By 1994, the year after Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with FW De Klerk, South Africans were still waiting for freedom in the form of our first democratically-elected government.

That day dawned when millions of all races queued together patiently to cast their votes what were a few hours when most had waited their entire lives?

The majority were looking for just one face on the ballot paper to mark their cross beside – Nelson Mandela’s. There were tears of joy for many who could scarcely believe this day had come; for others trepidation over the future of white people under a mainly black government. A great number didn’t stick around to find out; they packed up and emigrated.

Reverend Stephen Khumalo expresses this concern in Alan Paton’s classic South African novel Cry, the Beloved Country: "I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they [whites] are turned to loving, they will find we [blacks] are turned to hating."

Yet, remarkably, our new president expressed no desire for retribution. Instead, he said: “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.”

1994 was a year of almost bewildering change;

our country had a new government and a new constitution. I was 12 and in my last year of primary school. I clearly recall the day our principal called us together in the playground to raise the new flag and learn the new anthem, 'Nkosi sikel' iAfrica'. The following year I started at a multiracial high school – transformation was here.

There was hope and the will to unite – but at the same time there remained much bitterness and lingering racist attitudes. We’d just experienced the miracle of an essentially bloodless revolution and were at last a democracy - but how exactly did we 'do' democracy?

Luckily we received some help in the form of something well-known for its ability to unite – an international sports event. The 1995 Rugby World Cup to be exact, hosted on home soil for the first time after years of sporting isolation. As we came together to support ‘our boys’, this was something we could all share and suddenly we didn’t have to try to like each other – the feeling of unity was real.

The Springboks went on to win the tournament after beating the All Blacks in a nail-biting final.

Our win was seen as not only one of the greatest moments in South African sporting history, but a watershed moment in the post-apartheid nationbuilding process. The next time I experienced such intense national togetherness was during the next huge sporting tournament we hosted, the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Of course, it would be ridiculous to assume one rugby tournament could heal centuries of racial tension. But it really felt like a turning point.

I think South Africans started to believe then that perhaps, just perhaps, reconciliation might be possible.

It’s easy to feel discouraged by everything that is wrong with South Africa today. Economically, socially and politically we still have far to go. Yet looking back at that fragile period, surely we can only marvel at what we have accomplished already. *Heather Walker is the editor of UK-based newspaper, The South African

BREAKING BARRIERS: Mandela congratulates Springbok captain Francois Pienaar after winning the 1995 Rugby World Cup

“ For to be free is not

merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others

”

Nelson Mandela