Tribute to Nelson Mandela -- 1918-2013

 

If Mandela Ever Meets My Dad

(The Beauty and Power of Forgiveness)

I was 16-years-old when my family decided to get a swimming pool installed in our back-yard. We lived in Texas where pools were more common than not, but it was still a financial stretch for my parents and I would often hear them arguing late into the night about how to make it work. My mom was the one who really wanted it though and so she was thrilled that day the crane showed up to lift the fiberglass monstrosity over our house and sink it into the ground.

I went outside to watch, but instead of sharing in my mother’s excitement, I felt a strange pang of sadness and unease.  I was at that point in life where I was starting to ask all the ‘big questions’ about the meaning of life and about my purpose in the grand plan; or if there was a grand plan.  I had recently been turned on to the teachings of Jesus – separate from any specific religious affiliation – and I was finding that I liked his simplicity and approach to life: “If you have two coats and your neighbor has none, give him one of yours.” That made perfect sense to my young mind wanting to live in a fair and just world.

As I looked up at the giant tub dangling over my house I couldn’t help but think of those words and how unfair it was that I now had a pool that would waste gallons of water just so that I could splash around for fun while there were children across the globe who didn’t even have enough clean drinking water. I determined right then and there I wanted my life to make a difference somehow.  My father, a political scientist and retired career Army officer scoffed at my emerging humanitarian bent and tried to dissuade me.

But I was eager to start my life helping the poor and needy, and through a series of local connections, I was offered the opportunity to travel with three other young Americans to the Republic of South Africa to volunteer for six months to help teach typing to the Zulu at a small private business school in a tiny town of Empangeni not far from Durban. I was thrilled; my dad was furious.

He went on tirade after tirade about the problems of Africa – and how Apartheid was the only answer for this country to ever survive – he mentioned the “criminal” Mandela and hoped they kept him locked up forever. He warned that South Africa would go the way of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe if the whites ever lost control.

His protestations didn’t stop me though, and I arrived in South Africa in 1980 at the naïve age of 17 and not at all prepared to face the system of Apartheid and its insidious impact on daily life.  I had gone there to work with Indian immigrants and to help in a Zulu school, and so to stand by as my new friends and co-workers were treated as 2^nd and 3^rd class citizens got my blood boiling.  Despite my dad’s political leanings, I was born and raised in an integrated America, and my sensibilities for fairness and justice were outraged on daily basis as I witnessed first-hand the cruelty, the demeaning eye-rolling, the discriminatory bureaucracy, and the maddening disdain from store workers and public servants alike toward entire groups of people based solely on the color of their skin. Couldn’t the white nurse see my Indian friend was one of the dearest and kindest humans on the planet? Was it really beneath her to walk over to the non-white side of the hospital to make sure he wasn’t going into cardiac arrest? Yes, my American revolutionary spirit was quite incensed and I understood the need for radical change and how easy it would be to join violent forces against the oppressors.

My six months were soon up, but for years later, no matter where I was living, my dad would make sure to send me newspaper clippings about the latest happenings in South Africa always accompanied by his dire commentary. He feared a bloody revolution was imminent and foretold of the bleak road ahead for the country I had come to know and love.  

My dad died in January of 1987 before the fall of Apartheid. His predictions about South Africa, thankfully, never did come true.  He could not possibly have foreseen the incredible impact, influence and inspiration of one man released from prison who never gave up on the dream to live in a fair and just society and who proved to the rest of the world the power of another man’s teaching to not repay evil with evil.   


Ngiyabonga, Nelson Mandela, ngiyabonga!  I know you will also extend the hand of forgiveness and grace to my dad should you happen to run into him.