Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

Rolihlahla Mandela was born in the Madiba clan, the village of Mvezo, on the Eastern Cape, July 18, 1918. Hearing the elders’ stories of his ancestors’ valour during the wars of resistance, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the freedom struggle of his people.

Nelson completed his BA through the University of South Africa and went to the University College of Fort Hare for his graduation in 1943. Meanwhile, he began studying for an LLB at the University of the Witwatersrand. By his own admission he was a poor student and left the university in 1952 without graduating. He only started studying again through the University of London after his imprisonment in 1962 but also did not complete that degree. In 1989, while in the last months of his imprisonment, he obtained an LLB through the University of South Africa. He graduated in absentia at a ceremony in Cape Town.

Mandela, while increasingly politically involved from 1942, only joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944, when he helped to form the ANC Youth League (ANCYL). Mandela rose through the ranks of the ANCYL and through its efforts, the ANC adopted a more radical mass-based policy, the Programme of Action, in 1949.

On March 21, 1960, police killed 69 unarmed people in a protest in Sharpeville against the pass laws. This led to the country’s first state of emergency, the banning of the ANC, and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) April 8th. Mandela and his colleagues in the Treason Trial were among thousands detained during the state of emergency. During the trial Mandela married a social worker, Winnie Madikizela, on June 14, 1958. They had two daughters, Zenani and Zindziswa. The couple divorced in 1996. After he and his colleagues were acquitted in the Treason Trial, Mandela went underground and began planning a national strike for 29, 30, and 31 March.

On January 11, 1962, using the adopted name David Motsamayi, Mandela secretly left South Africa and was arrested in a police roadblock outside Howick and charged with leaving the country without a permit and inciting workers to strike. He was convicted and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, which he began serving at the Pretoria Local Prison. While facing the death penalty his words to the court at the end of his famous “Speech from the Dock” on April 20, 1964 became immortalized.

On June 11, 1964, Mandela and seven other accused were convicted, and the next day were sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela’s mother died in 1968 and his eldest son, Thembi, in 1969. He was not allowed to attend their funerals.

He was released Sunday 11 February 1990, by South African President F.W. de Klerk, nine days after the unbanning of the ANC and the PAC and nearly four months after the release of his remaining Rivonia comrades. Throughout his imprisonment he had rejected at least three conditional offers of release.

Mandela immersed himself in official talks to end white minority rule and in 1991 was elected ANC President to replace his ailing friend, Oliver Tambo. In 1993 he and President FW de Klerk jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1994 he voted for the first time in his life.

On May 10, 1994, he was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically elected President. On his 80th birthday in 1998 he married Graça Machel, his third wife.

True to his promise, Mandela stepped down in 1999 after one term as President. He continued to work with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund he set up in 1995, and established the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and The Mandela Rhodes Foundation in 2003.

Nelson Mandela never wavered in his devotion to democracy, equality and learning. Despite terrible provocation, he never answered racism with racism. His life is an inspiration to all who are oppressed and deprived; and to all who are opposed to oppression and deprivation. He died at his home in Johannesburg on December 5, 2013, at the age of 95.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has bequeathed us a roadmap that has been tested and proven workable within and between nation states.

Our American Moses, Martin Luther King Jr., has employed the roadmap in a fashion that further confirms the reliability of the Gandhian bequest to the world. The Gandhian nonviolent method was user friendly in the South African crisis effectively addressed by Nelson Mandela’s government to end the more than fifty years of apartheid oppression. Daisaku Ikeda has effectively used Gandhian and Kingian nonviolent methods to democratize and internationalize the imperialistic military state of Japan since 1960. The most convincing sanctions for the effective use of nonviolent approaches to conflict resolution are seen in the diplomacy of the United Nations, and the state departments of all nations. The nonviolent diplomatic philosophies have been demonstrated by many world leaders such as Mother Teresa, Jesse Jackson, Pope John Paul II, Jimmy Carter, Mary McLeod Bethune, Baclav Havel, Johnnie Coleman, Marian Wright Edelman, Chief Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, and Han Park.

TO SERVE as a conference and multicultural institute, a place to organize international and community based forums within and sponsored by the Martin Luther King Ir. International Chapel, and to discuss a variety of perspectives affecting our common humanity. These could include such issues as community disintegration, denominationalism, enslavement, environmental injustice, ethnic cleansing, hate crimes, healing, inadequate schools, poverty, privileged markets, racism, school violence, the unity of science and religion, sexism, societal fragmentation, spirituality, terrorism, unemployment, unequal access to higher education, war, the prison industrial complex, and xenophobia. A large variety of groups crossing all cultural, economical, educational, gender, lifestyle, national, racial, and religious boundaries will discover new bases for the common ground between us. This Institute will inspire a more profound sense of domestic and international civility and humanity, helping us to appreciate that we are geographically one and are becoming spiritually one. Such diplomacy is reachable as a noble end of reconciling diversity toward which we should strive.

2TO MAKE KNOWN the life, work, and philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman, Benjamin Mays, Floyd McKissick, Samuel Woodrow Williams, Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, George Kelsey, William Jefferson White, Charles T. Walker, Charles Radford Lawrence, James Madison Nabrit, and with Mohandas K. Gandhi as the greatest world leader of the Twentieth Century, and

Africa, the American Friends Services Committee, the Highlander Institute, the George Mason Institute for Conflict Resolution, the Southern Poverty Law Institute, Oxfam America, the Synthesis Dialogues, Council for the Parliament of World Religions, Association for Global New Thought, the Appeal of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Foundation, the Knotted Gun Project, and the Indian American Culture Association of Atlanta, and the Tikkun Community.

Daisaku Ikeda as the contemporary embodiment of the philosophy of nonviolence institutionalized internationally.

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TO HONOR Kasturbai Gandhi for her singular, unsung contribution of role modeling and tutoring her husband in the practice of nonviolence. This will inaugurate a tradition of honoring women whom The Mahatma felt had a natural predisposition to providing nonviolent leadership.

4TO EXPLORE possibilities of exchanging visiting scholars and students from India and other countries who are experts on and interested in the application of philosophies of nonviolence internationally.

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TO BE A CONDUIT for partnerships and coordinated efforts of domestic and international organizations dedicated to reconciliation work. Some of these partners will be the Carter Center, the Peace Corps, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Soka Gakki International (Buddhist), the Atlanta Masjid of Al Islam, Science and Spirit Magazine, Holistic Health Magazine, the Morehouse Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership, the India Council of Cultural Relations (New Delhi), the Gandhi Hamer King Center (Denver), UNESCO, Operations Crossroads

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TO ASSIST in the fulfillment of Resolution GA/9500, unanimously adopted by the 55th plenary meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, November 10, 1998. The resolution called for the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World (2001-2010), with the year 2000 being a year of education. This includes the inauguration of “A Season of Nonviolence” annually, (January 30 - April 4), a period between the assassination dates of Gandhi and King, respectively.

7TO OFFER consultancy and guidance to institutions and individuals engaged in the study and research of nonviolence for problem solving. We would actively promote the introduction of foundation courses on Gandhian, Kingian, and lkedian philosophies in educational institutions, and facilitate a shift in the attitude of the print and electronic media towards rooting out the culture of violence by generative and creative kinds of nonviolence.

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TO UNDERTAKE the production and distribution of literature on nonviolence, peace, Gandhi-King-IkedaMandela studies, comparative religion, tolerance, appreciation of differences, and diversity-maturity.

TO DEVELOP a network of individuals and institutions engaged in the task of peace and justice education, conflict transformation, peace, and justice promotion activities.

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TO DEVISE suitable formats and programs to bring the arts, particularly performing arts/ dramaturge-in-residence, in peace and justice promotion. We will also seek to develop a comprehensive web page on Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Daisaku Ikeda and Nelson Mandela.

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We propose to utilize The GandhiKing-Ikeda-Mandela Institute for Cosmopolitan Virtue-Ethics and Reconciliation as an institutionalized forum linking practice, knowledge, and service. Our goal is to help develop thoughtful servant-scholar leaders who think and act differently about problems of oppression and insensitivity which tend to be examined within narrow contexts with little attention paid to their complex and often paradoxical generalities around the world. This program emphasis would further assist the dean of the Chapel and the other College offices in the theological and intellectual exploration of vocation with the future ordained and lay leadership. KING M · A I · N H D D E N L A A G P E R C I A Z E E P