In an era when national leaders, elected or armed, were preoccupied, slyly or crudely, with antics which certified them as sworn Enemies of the People, Nelson R. Mandela showed over and over again in word and deed and demeanor that he was the people's truest friend -- South African people, African people, all of the world's peoples.
His simple greatness touched four generations and spanned, uniquely, two centuries; and it moved two millennia. He was father-figure to millions -- who were fatherless. He was partial to an electrifying kind of dance. And only Madiba could dance that Mandela Dance, In the only way it could possibly be danced.
Mandela is dead but the legend lives. His legacy stays in our hearts and in our minds.
We wanted him to live forever. And so will he.
Showing posts with label Madiba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Madiba. Show all posts
Friday, December 06, 2013
Monday, June 30, 2008
Mandela at 90
This past weekend, Nelson Mandela was in London to attend a music concert organized to celebrate his 90th birthday and raise funds for his South African aids charity. For many around he world, Mandela at 90 is certainly an occasion for pause and reflection.
Watching him on TV as he walked haltingly and with much help across the concert stage and across the screen – there to be seen rather than to see, and to give a dutiful speech – one thing stood out among all else: Madiba has become just too frail for this kind of thing – and for the visual and psychic comfort of those whose inner wish is to remember him as a father-figure who was forever strong and all-enduring and in full command of the only resource they could not take away during all those terrible and terribly long years he stood alone – his spirit.
It is no wonder that he himself saw it fit to use the occasion to declare, with touching finality and mindful of the struggle that must surely continue and yet of which he would no longer have the strength to be a real part: “It is your hands now.” Seeing Will Smith behind him there on stage as he spoke, looking at once attentive and happy to be there and yet perplexed in the presence – the very presence – of the great man, whom he had introduced as the “Birthday Boy” but who probably didn’t, couldn’t, return the attention; seeing Will Smith there like that,
his own youthful energy just below the surface, I wondered what he was thinking – and thought that he wondered how he would, in his turn, carry himself at Six Score and Six.
Seeing Mandela thus, one couldn’t help but remember how it had been one afternoon in ’90, when, at 72, he had walked at last out of prison and out of a 27-year banishment from, to all intents and purposes, the world as we knew it – and even as had known him. He who walked out of that prison that day into our waiting, suspenseful, and in the end quizzical gaze was another man – a man from another world – whom we, utterly surprised, felt we had never seen. And if he was the man, as surely he was – all the people and institutions that mattered told us so – we had not been sufficiently conditioned to see him as he had become. He was, then, an alien who did not match our mental image of the man in prison whose release we had long clamoured for, in our different ways, and had awaited with bated breath when it at last became clear that he would be free.
Even then his walk, in Winnie’s arm, had not been quite steady, as I recall. Now, eighteen years later, it had, unmistakably, a foreboding aura about it – which, it seemed, enveloped everyone whom he left on that stage with Will.
Yet the Mandela we first encountered that afternoon in ’90 was the physical Mandela, while the one we had been waiting for was in fact a transcendent Mandela – a man whose true value ran deeper and wider and farther, and was in the end borderless and timeless; whose entire life was the story of all that is good in good men – good in the few men who are truly good. It is that latter Mandela who, a colossus, has strode the globe these past two decades or so with so much ease and charm (easy charm) and class – such infectious human warmth and kindness. It is that same Mandela who so quickly became the father-figure to so many, mighty and “low”, around the world who had no fathers, or no fathers to talk of (or to talk to) – and even those who (themselves fathers or mothers, sons or daughters) had fathers but wanted something intangibly, reachably more.
To flip the imagery: what we didn’t realize, what we forgot, in that instant of shock and disabuse in ‘90, was that Time idealizes – Time and absence. Time and absence may prepare us for the watts, but not the warts, attendant upon the hero – upon his return. What we didn’t realize, too, was that the picture into which we wanted to re-frame him – as a one-sided act of reacquaintance – as he walked out was itself another kind of prison, another kind of confinement, out of which he must also walk if we were to know him as he had become, out of view, and as we were subsequently to know him.
As we worry that we will see less and less of Madiba in the coming months and years, there are those who worry that the artist’s unfettered hand may with the passage of time leave us with a lasting image (akin to Guevara’s or Mona Lisa’s) over which they will not have had the last word. All I can say to that lesser worry is: if it happens, so be it!
Watching him on TV as he walked haltingly and with much help across the concert stage and across the screen – there to be seen rather than to see, and to give a dutiful speech – one thing stood out among all else: Madiba has become just too frail for this kind of thing – and for the visual and psychic comfort of those whose inner wish is to remember him as a father-figure who was forever strong and all-enduring and in full command of the only resource they could not take away during all those terrible and terribly long years he stood alone – his spirit.
It is no wonder that he himself saw it fit to use the occasion to declare, with touching finality and mindful of the struggle that must surely continue and yet of which he would no longer have the strength to be a real part: “It is your hands now.” Seeing Will Smith behind him there on stage as he spoke, looking at once attentive and happy to be there and yet perplexed in the presence – the very presence – of the great man, whom he had introduced as the “Birthday Boy” but who probably didn’t, couldn’t, return the attention; seeing Will Smith there like that,
his own youthful energy just below the surface, I wondered what he was thinking – and thought that he wondered how he would, in his turn, carry himself at Six Score and Six.
Seeing Mandela thus, one couldn’t help but remember how it had been one afternoon in ’90, when, at 72, he had walked at last out of prison and out of a 27-year banishment from, to all intents and purposes, the world as we knew it – and even as had known him. He who walked out of that prison that day into our waiting, suspenseful, and in the end quizzical gaze was another man – a man from another world – whom we, utterly surprised, felt we had never seen. And if he was the man, as surely he was – all the people and institutions that mattered told us so – we had not been sufficiently conditioned to see him as he had become. He was, then, an alien who did not match our mental image of the man in prison whose release we had long clamoured for, in our different ways, and had awaited with bated breath when it at last became clear that he would be free.
Even then his walk, in Winnie’s arm, had not been quite steady, as I recall. Now, eighteen years later, it had, unmistakably, a foreboding aura about it – which, it seemed, enveloped everyone whom he left on that stage with Will.
Yet the Mandela we first encountered that afternoon in ’90 was the physical Mandela, while the one we had been waiting for was in fact a transcendent Mandela – a man whose true value ran deeper and wider and farther, and was in the end borderless and timeless; whose entire life was the story of all that is good in good men – good in the few men who are truly good. It is that latter Mandela who, a colossus, has strode the globe these past two decades or so with so much ease and charm (easy charm) and class – such infectious human warmth and kindness. It is that same Mandela who so quickly became the father-figure to so many, mighty and “low”, around the world who had no fathers, or no fathers to talk of (or to talk to) – and even those who (themselves fathers or mothers, sons or daughters) had fathers but wanted something intangibly, reachably more.
To flip the imagery: what we didn’t realize, what we forgot, in that instant of shock and disabuse in ‘90, was that Time idealizes – Time and absence. Time and absence may prepare us for the watts, but not the warts, attendant upon the hero – upon his return. What we didn’t realize, too, was that the picture into which we wanted to re-frame him – as a one-sided act of reacquaintance – as he walked out was itself another kind of prison, another kind of confinement, out of which he must also walk if we were to know him as he had become, out of view, and as we were subsequently to know him.
As we worry that we will see less and less of Madiba in the coming months and years, there are those who worry that the artist’s unfettered hand may with the passage of time leave us with a lasting image (akin to Guevara’s or Mona Lisa’s) over which they will not have had the last word. All I can say to that lesser worry is: if it happens, so be it!
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