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july 2008 Tony BurnhamIf anyone deserved a 90th birthday party, it's Nelson Mandela.
Locked up when he was 44, he spent what he has described as 27 “long, lonely, wasted years” as a political prisoner. When he was eventually released in 1990, it seemed as if the prime of his life had passed, yet the man went on to become South Africa’s first black president and then to dedicate himself to the struggle against HIV and AIDS.
In fact Mandela’s greatest hour came just before his release when he negotiated on behalf of the ANC with FW de Klerk to dismantle the Nationalist Party’s policy of apartheid. Only with the promise of an end to racial segregation, did he leave his cell as a free man. Mandela’s lack of bitterness coupled with his deep desire for unity not only gave his country a new birth but was a sign of hope to the whole world. Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of Cape Town, described Mandela as “a world icon of reconciliation”. And it reminded me that Mandela had also praised Tutu as “the conscience of the anti-apartheid struggle”.
This article is continued in the July 08 edition of Reform.
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