Surfie...I'd say Mandela has accomplished a pretty fair amount, especially considering he was locked up for 27 years..
Tuesday, 28 August, 2001, 12:02 GMT 13:02 UK
Profile: Mandela's magic
touch
Nelson Mandela remains an iconic figure in South Africa
As Nelson Mandela embarks on a new challenge - trying
to persuade world leaders to help the world's
impoverished and abused children - Carolyn Dempster
looks at the achievements of the South African
statesman:
As president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela wooed and
won over a divided nation and charmed the world with a
style that is often referred to as the "Madiba magic".
Madiba is Mandela's traditional clan nickname. The
magic he deploys: compassion, humour, political
shrewdness, and a complete absence of bitterness
about the 27 years he was imprisoned by the apartheid
regime.
And, unlike so many other
African leaders, five years as
president was enough for Mr
Mandela. He knew when it
was time to step aside.
South Africans across the
political and racial divide still
see in him the symbol of
everything they ever hoped
for in an elder statesman, a
man of intellect, sincerity,
humour and immense moral
stature who delivered them
from their darkest hour.
Even today, at the age of
83, and supposedly in
retirement, Madiba
continues his personal quest to promote reconciliation
among the races, to educate the nation, and to provide
succour to children - especially those orphaned or
abandoned in the wake of the Aids pandemic in South
Africa.
That is when he is not stepping in to serve as
peace-broker in Burundi, one of Africa's most intractable
and long-running conflicts.
Hectic schedule
In spite of the fact that he is no longer in government,
his schedule remains frenetic. His close friend, former
Archbishop Desmond Tutu commented recently: "He's
crazy. He gets about as if he were half his age. He
leaves me panting in exhaustion just looking at the
schedule he keeps."
In July this year, Madiba
was diagnosed with
microscopic prostate cancer,
and embarked on a
seven-week radiotherapy
course which initially left
him exhausted, but still
smiling.
"I am going to stay on top
of this little development
(the cancer)" he joked.
"And if cancer wins in this
world, I am going to move
on to the next world. Either
way I have an important
role to play."
Nelson Mandela's single
greatest quality is his ability to reach out and touch the
lives of those around him. He has said that his
experience in prison taught him to respect even the
most ordinary people.
Personal charm
When he was president he used his office and personal
charm to exhort prominent individuals and corporations
to put their hands into their pockets and help redress
the inequalities of the past by building schools and
clinics in rural areas.
He has not stopped. Earlier
this year Mandela received
a letter from the principal of
Thabang Junior School in
Soweto asking him to assist
the school with renovations.
Mr Mandela deployed a
little "Madiba magic" and
persuaded the Industrial
Development Corporation
to grant the school's wish.
He personally visited the
school and told children "
Education is the key for the
future: "I want all of you to
be more educated than
me".
Thabang's principal, Zkile Kosi, spoke for most South
Africans when he replied that Mr Mandela's strides to
educate and uplift his nation would leave "footprints in
the hearts of many people."
Aids campaigner
Mr Mandela also made time this year to visit the
bedside of 12-year-old Nkosi Johnson, a small boy
dying from Aids who commanded the attention of the
world with his brief and brave address to the 13th
international conference on HIV/Aids in Durban.
Shortly after Nkosi's death,
Mr Mandela paid tribute to
him as an "icon of the
struggle for life", and has
since spoken out publicly
about the ravages the
HIV/Aids pandemic is
wreaking on South Africans.
The Nelson Mandela
Children's Foundation is at
the forefront of attempts to
find ways to intervene to
help the population of
800,000 Aids orphans.
When the first democratic
elections were held in 1994,
and the ANC swept to
power, the 75-year-old Mandela initially turned down the
presidency, saying he was "too old" for the post, and it
should be left to a younger person.
In the event, it is doubtful the country could have
progressed as fast, and as far, without him. President
Mandela has been central to the so-called miracle of a
peaceful transition to democratic rule.
'Head above the heart'
His philosophy was always the head above the heart.
"Our talking with the enemy was a domination of the
brain over emotion, without which our country would
have turned into rivers of blood," he once told an
interviewer.
Prior to the 1994 elections,
South Africa teetered on the
edge of civil war.
While white right-wingers
threatened bloody
revolution, continuing
political clashes between
supporters of the ANC and
the Zulu-dominated
Inkatha Freedom Party
threatened to turn parts of
the country into a
wasteland.
The new ANC-led
government inherited a
country in economic decline,
fractured into numerous
administrative
bureaucracies fraught with corruption and racial
divisions. Newly-appointed ministers were untested and
inexperienced in governance.
Although the ANC is a party with a long tradition of
consensual collective decision-making, President
Mandela frequently took matters into his own hands as
the quickest means to an end, demonstrating an
authoritarian, disciplinary streak which stands in stark
contrast to his public persona.
Determination
The steel which lies beneath the fatherly image of the
genial and benign leader is seldom unsheathed, but
there are many politicians and ANC members who have
felt its sharp edge.
Former president and and
fellow Nobel peace prize
winner FW de Klerk
experienced the steel in
public when Mr Mandela
tongue-lashed him during a
televised debate during the
tense negotiations leading
up to the 1994 elections.
In the early years as head
of state, President Mandela
became so closely identified with the fortunes of South
Africa that an ill-advised utterance could send the rand
spiralling into a decline - which it did, on several
occasions.
In his dealings in the international arena, President
Mandela has often demonstrated a naivete in his belief
that by taking a firm moral stance on issues, one is
assured of support.
In his handling of the Burundi conflict, Mr Mandela, as
intermediary between the warring factions, has been
all-too-quick to announce imminent breakthroughs.
Yet the two main Hutu rebel groups who oppose the
Tutsi-dominated military regime have yet to subscribe
to Mr Mandela's peace plan, and there is, as yet, no
cease-fire.
International statesman
A frequent criticism is that Mandela believes that the
South African approach to conflict resolution is the
panacea.
His energetic attempts to
play the role of
international statesman
and broker peace in the
Middle East were roundly
rebuffed by the Israelis.
Nonetheless, when it came
to brokering a
breakthrough in the
Lockerbie saga, Mandela
persuaded Libya's leader
Colonel Muammar Gadaffi
to hand over the two men
alleged to have planted the
bomb on the Pan Am flight
which blew up over the
Scottish town of Lockerbie,
to stand trial in an
international court.
It was a diplomatic coup which put Nelson Mandela on
the map as a world-class mediator.
Personal troubles
Nelson Mandela's personal life can be summed up in
one word, turbulent.
His commitment to his
second wife Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela was
sorely tested during her
trial for involvement in the
abduction and murder of a
young teenage activist,
Stompie Moeketsi Seipei,
during the height of the
anti-apartheid struggle.
Mr Mandela stayed loyal to
his controversial wife then,
but the marriage could not
sustain the strain of
political pressures and the
long years of separation.
Mr Mandela told a divorce
court in 1995 that while he had no wish to "wash dirty
linen in public", he had been the "loneliest man" in the
time he spent with Winnie after his release from prison.
The pain was clearly evident when he revealed details of
his ex-wife's brazenly adulterous affair with a young
lawyer, which Winnie continued after Mr Mandela moved
back into the family home. He left in 1992.
The president cut a lonely figure on the world stage for
several years, until, during an official banquet in France
in 1996, he spoke long and glowingly about the
sunshine along the Champs-Elysees.
New love
The cause was a new-found love, Graca Machel, the
widow of former Mozambican president Samora Machel.
In subsequent interviews the president confessed that
he never thought it possible he could "fall in love and
feel like this" ever again.
Although Graca had
proclaimed she would never
re-marry, the couple came
under considerable
pressure to tie the knot,
from, among others, former
Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In July 1998 the president
sprung a surprise on the
nation, and some members
of his own family, when he
celebrated his 80th birthday
by getting married, for the
third time. He has been
radiating happiness ever
since then.
When he stepped down
from office and paved the way for Thabo Mbeki to take
over as president in June 1999, Mandela told
journalists: "I welcome the possibility of revelling in
obscurity" - to much amused laughter.
Ideally he wanted to spend more time in his home
village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape, but the call of his
duties as a husband and father not only to his children,
but the nation, has been stronger.
He frequently appears at Graca's side these days as
she goes about her duties, and he continues to pop up
in remote parts of South Africa opening schools,
bestowing cheques and engaging with his people.
He has said on more than one occasion that he would
prefer to be remembered as Mandela the man, not
Mandela the myth.
'A unique man'
This year he became the first recipient of the King
Shaka Award, in honour of the king who founded the
Zulu nation.
The current Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini paid tribute to
Mr Mandela, who is a royal member of the Thembu clan
in the Xhosa nation, with these words:
"Mandela's contribution to this nation cannot be
measured or repeated. It is an achievement that could
only have been brought about by a unique man, at a
unique point in history."
"Our debt of gratitude knows no boundaries, and our
love and honour to him knows no limits." |
