Editorial: December 6, 2013 :
Nelson Mandela has died good time, after he has been in and out of hospital. Each time within the past year, the rest of his life seemed to shorten as it did. However, here is a man who simply put, it is a dare not to agree that he fought the ‘good’ fight. From a Christian perspective, one might even put him in the realms of sainthood. “
As the world as far as we could gather or keep up with, have all said the good things about him, and one of the things the commentators would always remember to say, is that he, Mandela always said that he is not perfect. What that says simply he is human. Only he was a very different one from those who always seem to think it is an excuse when they do terrible things to others, to say, “Oh, its human,” or, “I’m only human.”
While some will say he has done much ‘especially for black people’, it doesn’t take away, to say, he did more than that. He worked for humanity. Indeed one the first words mentioned in reporting his death, the writer said: “Mandela was an international symbol of reconciliation and human rights.”
So Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed while on the same path as Mandela. In addition, even though apartheid was not commonly mentioned, it is commented on how little was done on this side of the world, when Mandela was jailed for a similar struggle.
It is said that apartheid institutionalised racism, but sadly ‘racism’ is still with us, and if there is anything one can say ugly about social media, it is how it is used freely to express and show racism in so many people.
So, what can anyone learn now that Mandela is dead? He has shown for one thing that violence does not necessarily bring harmony or a better life. Look eastward in the world. Will our leaders right here around us, now listen and change? There is much to learn from the life of Mandela and what his spirit has brought to his country and the rest of the world. Oh yes, there are those whose one side of their brain cannot, or maybe more correctly, will not allow them to do good. The road of the devil is too rosy! But will they learn? Mandela died at 95 and his brain was all good.
One of the words associated with him is RESPECT. It is obvious that there are those who see any attempt to show contempt for their wrong-doings, see it as dis-respect. But as we prepare for elections due by next year, we urge our politicians to begin to respect the people and stop the bribery and the low form of trying appeal to people’s desire to satisfy their hunger, if only for a few months, making them forget that they allowed them to starve for four years plus. And the starvation here is not just for food! Just even a kind word.
The word respect appears many times whenever the subject of human rights come up. Mandela’s president, Jacob Zuma called on his people as they mourn and even celebrate Mandela one more time, to do so with “the dignity and respect that Mandela personified.”
See how those words go together, “dignity and respect.”
Someone said, “I hope what he has fought for doesn’t die with him. This is a sad day for mankind.”
Let us not mistake ‘respect’. Mandela it is said, respected everyone and sought to set the wheel in motion for a nation built on shared respect by all, for all. Therefore, no one is perfect, but look what that dignified thinking and actions have done for the world, the fact that not everyone, especially those in authority cannot understand the joy that it can bring to them and those near and far. How can anyone glow in causing unease to people, because they have the power to do so, whether unconsciously because they are to dead in their minds, or deliberately because they are just evil?
Here, we hope that his memory can stir in those called on now, to step aside if they can be a little conscionable, having shown and expressed their inability to do otherwise.
