MANDELA: AN ICON WORTHY OF IMMORTALITY
On July 11, Nelson Mandela, the late South African anti-apartheid hero was remembered by the United Nations on the occasion of the Nelson Mandela Day. He remains a matchless reference point.
There are men who walk the surface of the earth and never leave until they leave their footprints on its sands. These men lead simple, ordinary lives but somehow manage to touch many other lives in profound and extraordinary ways, so much so that their memories become monuments to the transcendental tenacity of the human spirit.
Between 1884 and 1885, some European powers sat in Berlin, Germany, and with extraordinary arrogance and presumptuousness partitioned Africa among themselves.
It was to mark the onset of colonialism which was an offshoot of the heinous transatlantic Slave Trade. The conference yielded colonialists and saw a continent most of them thought as nothing but the dark continent become a continent of colonies.
The marked tragedy of colonialism was unequally pronounced across the continent. While some countries fared better under their colonial masters, a country like DR Congo was the epicenter of colonial atrocities under Belgium. It is no exaggeration to say that the turmoil in DR Congo today can be traced back to its colonial heritage under Belgium.
But perhaps, it was in South Africa, more than any other country on the continent that the true horrors of colonialism found its most vicious visage under a system that was the very embodiment of the evils of inequality.
For years, Mandela fought for a racially equal South Africa spending 27 years in prison as the Apartheid regime found the prospect of the end of its hold over South Africa unfathomable. Besides his unbreakable tenacity in the fight to liberate South Africa from the clutches of a regime that was darkness itself, Mandela’s non-violent approach to the struggle marked the legendary African freedom fighter as an exemplar for the ages.
In 1994, upon independence, Mandela became South Africa’s first Black President. He willingly left office in 1999 and died in 2013. His name continues to echo around the world.
Today, many African countries, including his native South Africa, could do with leaders like him: towering monuments to integrity and probity to pilot the affairs of their increasingly troubled and desperate countries.
Across the African continent, many countries have continued to struggle under the weight of corrupt and oppressive governments. In some of these countries, inept and corrupt military officials have seized power from their equally inept and corrupt civilian counterparts to reduce their country’s democratic hopes to dust and preclude genuine development.
In countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Sudan, the military which initially professed that it came into power to sanitize things has morphed into a monstrous problem on their own, jeopardizing possible democratic transitions and frittering away the resources of their states.
To those who turn the public funds of their country into their personal funds and see governance as an opportunity for personal and family enrichment and aggrandizement, Mandela offers a withering rebuke even from the grave.
Experience has shown that governments which fail to put their citizens in front and center are not only harbingers of grinding poverty but also succeed in opening the doors of their countries to terrorists who serve only insecurity and instability.
For years, the world has crucially looked towards Africa in the firm hope that the second most populous continent, can finally begin to live up to its promise. That expectation has until now been crucially cut short.
It also appears that danger Is firmly on the horizon. Mandela was perhaps the most prominent figure of the towering African figures who fought in different African countries to give their people a voice. Just like immortal icons like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Patrice Lumumba of the DRC, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, among others, Mandela had fought for the liberation of his country.
By the time he died on 5th December 2013,he was very much a member of a dying breed.
Today, across many African countries, the sobering situation is that despots and even outright criminals now pose as democrats. They capture the resources of their states before proceeding to plunder its resources while weakening state institutions and immersing their people in instability and immiseration.
Every year, July 11 gives the world an opportunity to remember a man worth every iota of immortality. Those who occupy positions of power the world over surely have a lot to learn from him, especially African leaders, many of whom have become the greatest tragedies ever to happen to their states.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
