Nelson Mandela - Man of Peace

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Nelson Mandela - Man of Peace

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Nelson Mandela was a rare man. He managed to hold together conflicting forces and forge a workable nation at a time when most thought open civil war would break out. For that singular feat he should be remembered with respect.

I did not know much about Mandela when he was released from a South African prison in 1990. What I did know was biased and ill-informed. An imprisoned black man in far off South Africa was little noticed by most. Though the world had begun to focus on the despicable apartheid policies and was bringing pressure on the minority white government to end this system forever, still, Mandela and his country was far away.

Then, in 2000, I traveled to South Africa and heard a comment that made me take notice about Nelson Mandela. I visited a white farmer in Kwa-Zulu Natal who had large holdings of tea and sugar cane. He employed many black workers and managed to survive and thrive within the changing cultural and economic landscape.

Once he told me he even narrowly avoided a planned ambush by extremists, laid specifically for him. “If not for Mandela”, he said, “we (whites) would have all been killed in 1994 when majority rule came. Mandela held back the anger that wanted to bring the country to riots and chaos”. That made me think deeply about what one man’s actions can do prevent violence and division.

Mandela had spent his years in prison thinking deeply about his enemy. He learned the difficult Afrikaans language. He studied the ways of the unique Anglo-Dutch culture. When he was released he had come to point where he realized reconciliation was a better path forward than continued resentment that would lead to anarchy for his people. Mandela chose cooperation. He enters history as a man who changed and worked to bring together diverse people divided by race, language and culture. His example is frankly a classic study in reconciliation. All of us would do well to study Mandela’s life and example.

Christ said, ‘blessed are the peacemakers”. May God bless the efforts of any who work for peace between all men. 

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Comments

  • EvanToledo
    I heard the BBC radio report early this morning about Mr. Mandella's passing. His life of humility, non-violence and service to others, even his trial was very reminiscent of the Apostle Paul, who despite being imprisoned, patiently made the most of his time in learning and not holding grudges, and his powerful example when released. I wonder if Nelson Mandella was put in that place in history to show the result of meekness and service rather than the macho fighting that permeates so much of Africa today.
  • dusty
    Remembered with respect? Hardly. Mandela was a communist and a terrorist. He was a member of the South African Communist Party. He co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, a terrorist organization that killed civilians, including children. Fast food outlets and supermarkets were favored targets. Additionally, the military wing of the African National Congress tortured and executed suspected government agents. Post-apartheid South Africa is ruled by the ANC and the South African Communist Party. The ruling ANC defines itself as a "disciplined force of the left." Today's South Africa, the one that Mandela helped create, has declined to the status of the world's most violent and crime-ridden country. As Reuters and NBC News reported last November, "In a country cursed by one of the world's highest murder rates, being a white farmer makes a violent death an even higher risk. Some of South Africa's predominantly white commercial farmers go as far as to brand the farm killings a genocide." Populist leader Julius Malema and the ANC's youth wing are demanding that white-owned land be turned over to black South Africans and this incites the barbarous murders. This is the legacy of Nelson Mandela.
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