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FinalCall.com News
World News
Nelson Mandela convalesces, legacy secure
By Christopher Torchia
Updated Jan 14, 2013 - 11:15:36 AM
JOHANNESBURG (AP) - South Africa’s agonizing past swept over Alex McLaren, who stepped into sunlight with tears in his eyes after a tour of the Apartheid Museum, an unsparing study of White minority rule and the costly fight against it.
Yet South Africa-born McLaren, an American citizen, also found inspiration in the museum’s exhibition about Nelson Mandela, former prisoner, South Africa’s first Black head of state and one of the great, unifying figures of the 20th century.
Mandela, now 94 years old and ailing, was a special figure in the anti-apartheid struggle because of “his perseverance, his ability to forgive and to reconcile, and the fact that he appeared when he did, him and others. But mainly him,” said McLaren, a retired engineer.
“There will be a lot of wailing, gnashing of teeth, when he goes,” he said, anticipating the grief of South Africa and the world.
The delicate health of Mandela, now convalescing behind the high walls of his Johannesburg home, came under scrutiny and speculation during a 19-day stay in a hospital in December. He was treated for a lung infection and had gallstones removed. Regardless of when the end comes, his burnished legacy was written years ago, even if the country he led from the long night of apartheid still struggles with poverty and other social ills.
Mandela’s place as South Africa’s premier hero is so secure that the central bank released new banknotes in 2012 showing his face, a robust, smiling image of the icon who walked out of a prison’s gates on Feb. 11, 1990 after 27 years in captivity. He is a Nobel laureate, the recipient of many other international awards, the subject of books, films and songs and, when he was active, a magnet for celebrities.
In part, what elevated Mandela was his charisma, his ability to charm through humor and grace, and an extraordinary capacity to find strength in adversity.
“People tend to measure themselves by external accomplishments, but jail allows a person to focus on internal ones; such as honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, generosity and an absence of variety,” Mandela says in one of the many quotations on display at the Apartheid Museum. “You learn to look into yourself.”
Just four years after being released from prison, Mandela became South Africa’s first Black president in 1994. His successes include the introduction of one of the world’s most progressive constitutions and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a panel that heard testimony about apartheid-era violations of human rights as a kind of national therapy session for the country. An imperfect country, but one that Mandela, whose clan name, Madiba, means “reconciler,” guided elegantly through a painful transition.
