The events of Nelson Mandela’s death and burial this week
conjure up a personal historical perspective. In the late ‘70’s and throughout the ‘80’s I lived in
Kenya. Still in the grips of the
Cold War, the U.S. and their allies were forever pitted against the Soviet
Union and their agents. The
West was against the African National Congress (ANC), not so much for their
desire to be free but their allegiance to the ongoing global tussle between the
political superpowers and the ideologies they supported. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned because
of his actions as, depending on your perspective, a terrorist or a freedom
fighter. It’s pretty easy to see
history 40 years after the fact, but not so clearly in the midst of the
struggle.
My wife and I boarded a plane for Johannesburg in 1980 to
visit friends working in South Africa.
We were granted a visa, but asked the embassy not to stamp our visa in
our passports. Having a South
African visa stamped in your passport during the days of apartheid was very
much like having a visa stamped from Israel. Travelers with an Israeli visa would
have problems entering other Middle East countries and those with South African
visas would have restrictions living or visiting other African countries.
Flying south from Kenya, the pilot announced over the
intercom that we were then flying over Rhodesia. He caught himself, and said, “Sorry, they have changed the
name of this country recently, we are flying over Zimbabwe.” The pilot went on to explain that the
capital was no longer Salisbury but Harare.
Robert Mugabe had been elected the new president and I remember vividly
the debate on Rhodesia independence with one commentator saying, “In Africa,
‘One man, one vote means one time.’” That turned out to be true for Zimbabwe as
Mugabe has remained in power for now 43 years and has been internationally
condemned for human rights abuse and bringing his country to financial
ruin.
Mugabe was not the only example of African despots. Our neighbor to the west, Idi Amin had
nearly destroyed Uganda and the fighting was still going on while we were
flying to Johannesburg. Gaddafi
was the tyrant of the north in Libya, and Mboutu, as the father of the
independent Zaire, was already head of state for 15 years and continued until
1997, embezzling millions of dollars from his poor nation.
Of course not all African leaders were tyrants. Our own first president of Kenya, Jomo
Kenyatta, came out of prison to lead a peaceful transition in independence. Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, also, was one
African president who led his nation well.
As stated earlier, history is clearly seen after-the-fact,
but during the ‘80’s the question was real. Would Mandela be a Kenyatta or a Mugabe? No one knew and it’s a bit disingenuous
to criticize the skeptics of four decades back.
History clearly shows that Nelson Mandela followed a closer
pattern of Kenyatta than Amin or Mugabe.
It is, therefore, right that we honor this man for the sense of
forgiveness and willingness to move his country on the pathway of peace after
his imprisonment. Many of his ANC
members, including his then wife Winnie, were not so forgiving and used their
newfound freedom and power to murder and try to divide the country. To Mandela’s credit, his example won
over his detractors on both sides of the political landscape. Mandela went beyond the good examples
of Kaunda or Moi (who succeeded Kenyatta after his death) in that he stepped
away from power after serving as president only five years.
The eulogies of Nelson Mandela today are lofty and
deserved. He was a remarkable man
in many ways. But one comment that
caught my attention today was one reporter who said, “Mandela was not a
religious man but who was spiritual.”
I’ve never really understood that term and pretty sure the people who
say such things don’t understand it either. Mandela will be buried in his ancestral village, probably
with a traditional African ceremony.
While some liberation theologians might say Mandela had the spirit of
Christ, as they sometimes say of Gandhi, he was probably was, at best, a
humanist. If Madiba believed in
the faith of his father, who as a village priest, rather than that of his
mother, a Methodist, then he would follow more into the category of an animist.
My thoughts on Nelson Mandela fall right down the
middle. I do not condemn him as a
former terrorist, nor do I elevate him to the status of saint. As a politician he set a good
example. He proved the skeptics
wrong that in Africa one man, one vote does not mean one time in every
situation. As a person he was an
example of humility and forgiveness, wish that the followers of Christ would
display as much. As to his relation to his Creator, we
can only hope he was more than just spiritual.
