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Nelson Mandela

                  

 Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that
Other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; its in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
Give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear
our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela - Inaugural Speech 1994

 


Long live Nelson Mandela - December 2013

Many voices can be heard, many comments are being made following the death of Mandela at the age of 95. He stated in an interview that he does not regret how he had lived and what he had done in and outside of jail. There he spend 27 years. The song 'we shall survive' can be heard when thinking how mad his wardens got with him. It is said that Mandela took ten minutes to lift the pick and then hitting the stone during that time when he had to do hard labour. The aim of the guards was to break him but Mandela knew that one has to take stand from day one onwards to prevent that they, the wardens or prison guards, abuse him.

In the end, there is the story that when two wardens took him by car somewhere and when hungry, they left him sitting unattended in the car while they went into a shop to fetch something to eat. So much trust had developed in the meantime, that they knew he would not try to escape. Mandela also hired one of his former guards to undertake security in parliament after he had been elected to be president of South Africa.

When later an English painter was asked to make a portrait of Mandela - the idea behind it was to sell the portrait to collect money for the charity Mandela was setting up - he said in an interview to the BBC that he had done research about this person by now the most famous one on the globe and was well prepared but for one thing: his quiet presence. It conveyed so much human dignity without Mandela having to say a word. Literally, it commanded respect.

When Mandela tried to persuade those who were opposed to reconciliation and wanted to take up a fight, he was at first not listened to. He said then either they listen to him since he is the leader or else he will step down. He knew how to bargain by giving the other side space but he knew as well what it means to negotiate under conditions relating to something which is unconditional, namely the need to be free before one could agree to make a further going commitment. Hence when Klerk offered him release for the first time but under the condition he recants from any use of violence, he refused. His daughter conveyed this message that Mandela considers it to be a precondition and therefore it is unconditional that all Africans are free and have the Right to vote before such negotiation could begin. When he was finally released, Mandela had not agreed to any precondition. He had the key, as the saying goes, to the future of South Africa.

Hatto Fischer

Athens 9.12.2013

 

WEEP NOT FOR MADIBA

 

There will come a time

When history turns

When new heroes are birthed

And made more giant by fading memory

Of him who has now passed

 

Not yet interred

The time has already come

For those without sin

To cast their first

Second

Third

Stones

He should have done

He did not do

He could have done

They hurl

 

Empty vessel revolutionaries grown fat on

Revolutionary speak

Unexercised by revolutionary acts

Already vulture his legacy

 

Lesser mortals see fit

To remind us of his fallibility

Devils mock his un-saintly moments

Short poppies lust for growth

By taking aim at his celebrity

 

The time has already been

When the claims to his legacy

Are rendered hollow by the deeds of those

Who most make such claims

 

There will be a time

For anger against them

Who pirate his name

Who for thirty pieces of silver

Betray his life

Who in selling him out

Have sold us short

 

He needs no defending

His defence is written

In his people’s hearts

In statues strewn across the globe

In reams of tributes from high and low

For a life well-lived

 

It is we who must make our destiny

Who must constantly free ourselves from tyrannies old

From tyrants new

 

Yet when we weep

We weep not for him

We weep for ourselves

For having had too little of him

For what has come after him

For the likes of him who are not on our horizon

We mourn what has become of us

So soon after his light burned a path of hope

 

Trite exhortations call on us to keep him alive

Yet if we have become

More unequal

More divided

More inhumane

While he lived among us

 

What shall become of us now?

What shall we become now?

What becomes us now?

 

Mike van Graan

December 2013

 

Musikalische Widmung / musical tribute by Leonard Dulay-Winkler
https://soundcloud.com/lwnhrz/we-love-you

 

 

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