Nelson Mandela raises his fist while addressing a crowd in Thokoza, in what is now Ekurhuleni in Gauteng, on 5 September 1990. (Photo: AFP) 
Every year we celebrate Mandela Day on 18 July. It’s a global campaign to honour the remarkable life and legacy of the founding father of our democracy, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation turned Madiba’s birthday into a call to action for individuals, communities and organisations, urging them to take time to reflect on Mandela’s values and principles and make a positive impact in their own communities.
I will never forget the warm, fuzzy feeling I felt when I stood shoulder to shoulder with thousands of people on the Grand Parade in Cape Town in 1990 as Mandela stepped on to the balcony of City Hall and said to all of us: “I come to you as your servant.”
It was the humility and dignity of this stately yet grandfatherly man; it was hearing a voice that had been banned for 27 years speak to our hearts; it was the realisation and the sense of relief that the years of campaigning against apartheid and inequality, risking jail and police batons and death, might just have been worth it. That we may have succeeded in toppling the evil empire of racism, exclusion and violence. And that maybe, just maybe, we could live in freedom.
There are many of Mandela’s heirs in the ANC and its political party offshoots like the MK party, formed as comrades turned on each other for their time to “eat”, and who have done nothing to build on the tremendous goodwill that we, the South African people, have granted them.
The recent allegations by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi that a drug cartel based in Gauteng was controlling a high-level criminal syndicate that has the Police Ministry, politicians, prosecutors and judges in its pockets, came as no surprise. Because ever since 1994, more and more comrades have been in cahoots with criminals and gangsters, buying favours and seats at the table.
Rot and Cancer
We had former police commissioner Jackie Selebi’s dalliance with his drug dealer friend, “finish and klaar” Glenn Agliotti. And the rot and cancer has spread far and wide. The Guptas landed with their bums in bucket-loads of ghee when Jacob Zuma led his family, friends and the ANC into Saxonwold. Judge Raymond Zondo’s State Capture chronicles feature a long list of ANC comrades whose fingers were in the trough.
Criminality has stretched its tentacles all over the ANC at every centre of government, from local, provincial and national level to parastatals across the country. And when the ANC gets voted out, the criminals find politicians in other parties to cosy up to.
It has come to the point where it is hard to trust any politician. We do not know which lobbyist or foreign agency or wealthy person is behind them. Our democracy is a marketplace where favours and influence are sold to the highest bidder. And global druglords who peddle poison to our youth have found ripe pickings in this country that gave Mandela to us and the world.
Mandela was a human born of a different era. Our son of the South African soil arrived on 18 July 1918, deep in the era of the colonial conquest that saw the land of indigenous people taken by the minions of the Dutch East India Company and footsoldiers of the British Empire who distributed it to white settler populations.
Mandela was a freedom fighter, a leader of the ANC who started the armed struggle and Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) when peaceful protest against apartheid was met with violence. He and his fellow Rivonia triallists’ incarceration in the 1960s did not silence their resistance to the apartheid state.
Nor could it silence generation after generation of South Africans, from Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness movement to the trade union movement, United Democratic Front, Mass Democratic Movement, Black Sash, Lawyers for Human Rights, Detainees’ Parents Support Committee... and ordinary South Africans who stood up, fists clenched against what was wrong.
Biko was a proponent of the Black Consciousness philosophy that emphasised the importance of black people freeing ourselves psychologically from the internalised effects of oppression. He urged us to embrace our own identity and take control of our own liberation. For his promotion of self-reliance and resistance to the notion that black people are inferior to white people, he was arrested and murdered in detention.
There were others. Millions of others. They belonged to women’s groups, churches, temples, artist groups. There were resistance organisations like the New Unity Movement, the Azanian People’s Organisation and the Pan-Africanist Congress.
Not just the ANC. Not just Mandela.
Global icon
What drew the world to Mandela and turned him into a global icon was that even though he was a freedom fighter who started MK, he didn’t leave Robben Island to sing “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer” at every opportunity, as ANC protégé and EFF leader Julius Malema does. Nor did he take to every political rally singing Umshini Wami (Bring Me My Machine Gun), as Jacob Zuma does.
Mandela was a lover and a fighter, a symbol of struggle against oppression and a champion of peace and forgiveness. His long imprisonment created a powerful narrative of personal sacrifice that humanised the anti-apartheid struggle.
On 18 July, and every day, many South Africans give 67 minutes of their time and more to do good — helping others, cleaning cities, caring for neglected children, raising funds for charitable causes in memory of the spirit of Mandela.
We are a nation of generous, kind, warm-hearted, freedom-loving people. It is our spirit of resilience and generosity that created Mandela.
His bravery in standing up against the evil empire is our bravery. His hope and humour and humanity are ours. It’s in us and up to us to stand up against those in Mandela’s party, and indeed any political party, who choose to rob us blind. There are no saviours coming to rescue us.
In us resides the ability to build the kind of country we deserve.
We stand on the shoulders of generations of giants who fought for freedom. It’s our turn now. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
