allAfrica.com: South Africa: Mandela - He Who Has Laid the Foundation of Kindness (Page 1 of 2)

Allow me to join the millions of our people and the people of the world who proclaim their respect and admiration for our leader and former President of South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

His birthday is on 18 July and that is a special day in his life. And we wish him many happier returns as well as bountiful good health. But to us, every day of his life is very precious. Therefore we celebrate today, we will celebrate tomorrow, we will celebrate on 18 July, we will celebrate on 2 August, when the ANC hosts a rally in his honour, and of course, generations to come will celebrate his centenary and for ever thereafter.

Throughout his life, Mandela, has been in harness of the struggle for liberation from colonialism and national oppression. From his predecessors he learned about discipline, dedication, humility and sacrifice. He learned never to demand of others what he himself would not be prepared to do.

As a student he involved himself in the struggles of students and that resulted in his expulsion from Fort Hare University. He played an active part in the formation of the ANC youth league in 1944. He was instrumental in crafting and canvassing support for the adoption of the Programme of Action at the 35th National Conference of the ANC in 1949.

He became the volunteer in chief during the 1952 Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. He was among those charged for sedition. He was banned and debarred from participating in meetings and conferences of the ANC. He was one of 157 treason trialists in 1956. I say 157 because the Guardian newspaper was also an accused in that trial.

When time for armed struggle came he led from the front and was among the first of our militants to receive military training in Algeria. He became the commander in chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). He was the first accused in the Rivonia Trial and was sentenced to life imprisonment which he served on Robben Island and Pollsmoor prison.

For all of the 27 years that he spent behind bars, his family was subjected to unrelenting persecution and harassment at the hands of the state security branch.

The movement waged the struggle under four pillars; the first being the international mobilisation and isolation of the apartheid regime and the second being the legal mass work, and the third being the underground organisation, and the fourth being the armed struggle.

It was once the regime banned the ANC that 48 years of peaceful forms of struggle came to an end. As Nelson Mandela put it, the leadership took the view that "there comes a time in the life of every nation when the choice is to surrender or to continue the struggle", and the choice they made was to continue the struggle.

Mandela participated in all those four pillars. That is why he is so special in our hearts, because he was the first to be sent by the movement to prepare the ground for those who would end up in exile. And he taught most of the African states that were on the eve of attaining their independence from colonisation about our struggle. He addressed the first meeting of PAFMECSA, which preceded the formation of the Organisation of African Unity.

His comrade, friend, brother and partner at law, Oliver Tambo, led the campaign for the isolation of the apartheid regime. Not once did Oliver Tambo accept an award in his own right and his own name because he understood the power and the symbolism of those who were behind bars. Everywhere he went all the awards were received in the name of Nelson Mandela.

It is those efforts by Oliver Tambo which made Nelson Mandela an international icon, a world-renowned struggle leader and revolutionary.

Nelson Mandela waded through his years in prison with fortitude and remained an inspiration to those of us who were young; remained an inspiration to our combatants in the camps; and remained an inspiration to our people, even in the remotest of villages.

It was from that same prison confinement that he initiated discussions with the regime. The first meeting was with Kobie Coetzee, who was Minister of Justice, to communicate to him the very important message that when all is said and done, the struggle of our people was surely going to triumph. That was the beginning of the talks about talks. So, Mandela, having played a leading role in the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, in the recruitment of combatants, took up arms not because he was a violent person; he took up arms because it was necessary to defeat the monster of apartheid.

Our historical obligation

In his poem, To Posterity, the world-renowned German poet Bertolt Brecht says, "To those who shall emerge from this flood into which we are sinking" remember that those who took up arms did so in order "to lay down the foundation of kindness". But they themselves could not be kind because they had to confront a brutal regime. Therefore, to the younger generations, to posterity, to those of us who have benefited from the efforts of the generation of Nelson Mandela, we have to choose very carefully our historical obligation, because we cannot take up arms when we have a democratic constitution and country.

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