Remembering Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, 1918 – 2013

Nelson Mandela was born into a royal family of the Xhosa nation, one of the largest ethnic groups in South Africa. Xhosa young men, undergo a rite of initiation that involves isolation from their families during which they receive instruction by elder men, followed by circumcision, which continues to be practiced in many parts of central and southern Africa. Initiates are thereafter considered to be adult men. Mandela recalled his initiation in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.

Africa is such a big continent

Mandela, who grew up on the banks of the Mbashe River in eastern Cape Province and who died Thursday at age 95, was a man of extraordinary discipline and strength. Twenty-seven years in prison could destroy a man. It made Mandela stronger.

TIME is releasing a special issue on Nelson Mandela commemorating his life in words and pictures. The cover features a 1990 photo of Mandela taken by Hans Gedda in Sweden during Mandela’s first trip abroad after his release from Robben Island one month before. This is the sixth time that Mandela has appeared on the cover of TIME.  

 

Nelson Mandela, the civil rights leader who rose from a small village in rural, apartheid-era South Africa to become the country's first black President, died on Thursday at age 95. Mandela's election in 1994 ended three centuries of European domination of indigenous African people of the region.

Mandela, pictured here in 2006, had been released from prison in 1990 after serving 27 years for his attempts to overthrow the white minority government in the 1960s. He won the Nobel Peace Prize and other honors for his leadership of the peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa.

When Mandela arrived at the Cape Town City Hall after his release, a crowd of 50,000 supporters had assembled to hear his first words in public in over a quarter century. "Our struggle has reached a decisive moment," he said, in an event broadcast around the world. "Our march to freedom is irreversible."

The lawyer and anti-apartheid activist had been convicted of treason and sabotage in June 1964 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent most of his sentence on Robben Island, off Cape Town, doing hard labor. During the 1980s he refused many offers for early release from the government because of the conditions attached.

But on February 2, 1990, South African President F. W. de Klerk reversed the ban on the African National Congress (ANC) and other anti-apartheid organizations, announcing that Mandela would be released. It was the beginning of the opening up of apartheid-era South Africa, in which blacks faced severe discrimination.

In the first national elections in which blacks had the right to vote, the ANC won and Mandela became President. He remained in that office until 1999.

"I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one's own mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? 
One begins to question everything. Did I make the right decision, was my sacrifice worth it? In solitary, there is no distraction from these haunting questions.
"But the human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one's spirits strong even when one's body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation; your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty."
"I would love to bathe once more in the waters of Umbashe, as I did at the beginning of 1935."

"I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. 

"But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

There are times when my heart almost stops beating, slowed down by heavy loads of longing. 

"I would love to bathe once more in the waters of Umbashe, as I did at the beginning of 1935."

"A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness... The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity."

Describing the day of his release from prison in 1990 (The Long Walk to Freedom, 1994):
"The cameras started clicking like a great herd of metallic beasts. I raised my right fist and there was a roar. I had not been able to do that for 27 years and it gave me a surge of strength and joy."

Message to the Live 8 concert in Edinburgh, July 2005:
"Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times... So much of our common future will depend on the actions and plans of these leaders. They have a historical opportunity to open the door to hope and the possibility of a better future for all... 

"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom. Of course the task will not be easy. But not to do this would be a crime against humanity, against which I ask all humanity now to rise up."

1999-2008
"..Young people must take it upon themselves to ensure that they receive the highest education possible so that they can represent us well in the future as future leaders."

At the opening of the 2010 World Cup:
"The people of Africa learnt the lessons of patience and endurance in their long struggle for freedom. May the rewards brought by the Fifa World Cup prove that the long wait for its arrival on African soil has been worth it. Ke nako [It is time]."

On his public image (from Mandela's second autobiography, Conversations With Myself, 2010):
"One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint. 

"I never was one, even on the basis of an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying."

"I am no longer in politics, I'm just watching from a distance and when people come to me and say, 'What do we do with a situation like this?' I say, "No, go to people in politics, I am no longer in politics, I've retired."

"I had no time to brood. I enjoyed reading and writing letters and that occupied my mind completely..."

"..my experiences in the veld where we worked and played together in groups, introduced me at an early age to the ideas of collective effort."

Nelson Mandela's former prison cell (cell 5 in B-section in the political prisoners area) on Robben Island, off Cape Town. Conditions were spartan in the tiny cell; the bed was a mat on the floor. For years after he was released, even when he was President of South Africa, Mandela continued to make his own bed each morning, as he did in prison.

"As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I know if I didn't have my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison."

"Invictus" is a short Victorian poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). It was first published in 1875 in a book called Book of Verses, where it was number four in several poems called Life and Death (Echoes).

Nelson Mandela loved this poem so much....

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 

नेल्सन मंडेला जिस कविता को बहुत संभालकर रखते थे और बारबार पढ़ते थे, चुनौती और मुश्किल के हर पल में, उसका नाम 'इन्विक्टस' है.

लैटिन शब्द 'इन्विक्टस' का अर्थ अपराजेय है. 'इन्विक्टस' विक्टोरियन युग की 1875 में प्रकाशित कविता है. इसे ब्रिटिश कवि विलियम अर्नेस्ट हेनली ने लिखी थी. 

 'इन्विक्टस' इस फ़िल्म का नाम भी है, जो मंडेला पर बनी थी. इसमें वे राष्ट्रपति बनने के बाद अपने देश की रग्बी टीम को जीतने के लिए प्रेरित करते हैं. इस फ़िल्म के ज्यादातर सदस्य श्वेत हैं. उसका हिंदी अनुवाद कुछ इस तरह है. 

नरक के अंधेरे की तरह घुप काले में

जिस रात ने मुझे लपेट कर रखा है

शुक्रगुज़ार हूं उस जो भी ईश्वर का

अपनी अपराजेय आत्मा के लिए

परिस्थियों के शिकंजे में फंसे होने के

बाद भी मेरे चेहरे पर न शिकन है

और न कोई ज़ोर से कराह

वक़्त के अंधाधुंध प्रहारों से

मेरा सर खून से सना तो है, पर झुका नहीं

क्रूरता और आंसुओं की इस जगह के पार

मौत के गहराते सायों के बाद भी

और साल-दर-साल की यंत्रणाएं

पाती हैं, और पाएंगी मुझे निर्भीक

इससे फ़र्क नहीं कि दरवाज़ा कितना संकरा है

और मेरे खिलाफ़ सज़ाओं की फ़ेहरिस्त कितनी लम्बी

मैं हूं अपनी नियति का मालिक

मैं हूं, अपनी आत्मा का महानायक

pic credit: http://rayelle1gurl.edublogs.org/2011/02/16/invictus-poem/

thankfully shared from:
http://world.time.com/2013/12/05/time-honors-nelson-mandela-with-commemorative-issue/#ixzz2miYZfhA5 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131205-mandela-south-africa-apartheid-appreciation/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20131206news-mendappre&utm_campaign=Content 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10743920

http://archives.nelsonmandela.org/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/pictures/131105-nelson-mandela-pictures-photos-south-africa-apartheid/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20131205news-nelspics&utm_campaign=Content