Last week, a series of gatherings across South Africa celebrated the centenary of the birth of Nelson Mandela, a man who almost single-handedly wrestled his nation from its darkest days of apartheid to a rainbow land of equality, democracy and diversity. While Mandela passed away in December, 2013, the celebrations of his birth show that the ideals he promoted resonate even today and, given the rise of authoritarianism, intolerance and racism, those ideals are needed as never before around the world.
Former United States president Barack Obama spoke to 14,000 at a cricket stadium in Johannesburg to urge people around the world to respect human rights and other values under threat — a speech that never mentioned Obama’s successor by name, but which was widely interpreted as a castigation of the current US administration’s divisive policies.
For 27 years, Mandela was jailed for his support and activities for the African National Congress (ANC). Throughout, he never lost his faith in being able to create a new beginning for all South Africans, one where people from all ethnicities and beliefs were equal before the law and represented by a democratic government.
Indeed, given South Africa’s recent turbulent experience with the ANC leadership, its diversion from the principles of equality and social justice as propagated by Mandela, and its decline down a slippery slope of corruption and graft, the Mandela centenary celebrations too should serve as a timely reminder of the potential that rainbow nation had, but now is seemingly forgotten by a party riven by divisions. For those in search of a direction, look no further than the moral compass used by Mandela throughout his life.
