Mandela: Venit, vidit, vicit

The gods of many ancient civilisations evolved from among the people or, if they had been sent on earthly mission from Above lived like mortals and shared the triumphs and foibles before returning back to the celestial realm from whence they had come. One Example: Shango, the Yoruba god of thunder, was an Alaafin of […]

The gods of many ancient civilisations evolved from among the people or, if they had been sent on earthly mission from Above lived like mortals and shared the triumphs and foibles before returning back to the celestial realm from whence they had come. One Example: Shango, the Yoruba god of thunder, was an Alaafin of Oyo in those days of expansionist wars in Yorubaland. His favourite wife, Oya, A Nupe princess, eventually had to return to her birthplace when Shango came to a tragic end which even today is discussed in whispers. In honour of Queen Oya, the Yoruba name for River Niger is Odo Oya.
We have always had gods living among us. No matter how they ended up there was always a lesson to learn from their earthly sojourn. Mandela did not drop from the sky. Born to a royal family in the humble village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, Mandela rose above the circumstances of his birth to become the most recognisable face on the surface of the earth. Perhaps God favoured him too generously; or how do you explain how one man could combine the qualities of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Pope John Paul II so seamlessly?
In a world where self-confessed and high profile Christians and Moslems often demonstrate by their actions that they are the worst advertisement for the religion they profess, Mandela lived to the dot the injunction of Christ in Matthew 5: 43-47 regarding love for enemies:
 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you … If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?
Yet he rejected being characterised as a living saint. He once said he was but a sinner making consistent efforts at improvements.
At the initial stage, he was misunderstood and even reviled by some South Africans who wanted a reversion to the Mosaic Law of “an eye for an eye”. Even former wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela reportedly lashed out that her former husband had let blacks down and that he was wrong to have shared the same stage with his former enemy, FW De Klerk, in Sweden when both men received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993. She even described Archbishop Desmond Tutu as a “cretin”. I am sure that she is wiser now. Mandela has now been canonised for exactly the same reasons for which some narrow-minded revenge seekers insulted him.

Only a Mandela could have got away with holding hands with Muammar Ghaddafi and Fidel Castro, considered by the West as enemies. “They stood by us when those criticising us supported our enemies”, he replied western critics. His was the voice that roundly condemned President George W Bush for invading Iraq. He went to the extent of calling the president’s father, George Bush Snr to counsel his son. By and by, Mandela became the moral leader of a world torn apart by ancient hate and implacable enmity.
Only a Mandela could have given his former wife, Winnie a soft landing at their divorce proceedings. He even had cause to caution Winnie’s counsel not to provoke him to disclose things that would damage the woman for life. In several interviews thereafter he accepted partial blame for the divorce saying that he was to blame for leaving a beautiful young wife to raise their children while he rotted away in jail. Such large-heartedness!
If we were ever in search of a solution to the intractable Middle-East crisis, all we have to do is take a cue from Mandela. Passing on hate from one generation to the next will never bring peace to the world. There has to come a time when one person has to step back and say “we have tried hate over many generations and fallen short of our goals; why don’t we try love for a change?”
In the last one week, the unspoken test of the importance of any political leader in any continent of the world was whether he or she had made it to Johannesburg to worship at the altar of Madiba. With 92 Presidents and heads of government physically present, the gathering was like a scheduled meeting of the UN General Assembly, complete with its Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon. Mandela’s death orphaned all races of the world as if he sired them all. But he did – by force of character; by rising above the racial fray to highlight shared humanity.

Ahmed Kathrada, his former jail mate brought people to tears at the burial service yesterday when he asked how he, Ahmed, was expected to cope now without his mentor. “I’ve lost a brother. My life is in a void, and I don’t know who to turn to”, he said tearfully. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey, Prince Charles and business mogul Richard Branson were also in Qunu to bid Madiba farewell.
His relevance to Nigeria? Mandela was Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Azikiwe, Aminu Kano, Michael Okpara, Joseph S. Tarka, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and Margaret Ekpo all rolled into one. Those claiming that some Nigerian leaders were comparable to Mandela should go and wash their putrid mouths with hezadecytrimethym ammonium chloride.
Mandela lifted himself above the circumstances of his birth and the evil of apartheid to bring the world under his feet. It was of legends like him that the ancient Latin books wrote, Venit, vidit, vicit (He came, he saw, he conquered). At his passing even his former enemies wept.
He lived his life in such a way that as he breathed his last, even Death was sorry.