Nelson Mandela, a great democrat and unifier
Nelson Mandela, the great South African freedom fighter who led his country from racial apartheid to inclusive democracy, has died at the age of 95. A democrat and humanist by conviction, he was forced to resort to armed struggle after the white racist regime banned the African National Congress in 1960 and shot dead 69 peaceful black protestors at the Sharpeville massacre, which was condemned all over the world. He was arrested and sent to jail which he entered at the age of 40 and left when he was 67. From various jails that he was lodged in, he guided the struggle which remained by and large peaceful. A lung infection that he contracted in the unhygienic conditions of South African jails, and which continued to pester him for the rest of his life finally, caused his death.
Mandela, who has been aptly described as one of history’s last great statesmen, unified a South Africa badly fractured on racial lines. The black people in South Africa who comprised about 80 percent of the population had suffered long from a system of racial segregation called apartheid under which they were denied citizenship while there was segregation in education, medical care, and public services. But for Mandela, South Africa could have slipped into a civil war. As a first step to forge unity Mandela set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was to act as a model for similar bodies constituted afterwards in various countries. Thanks to Mandela, South Africa is now a multiethnic pluralistic society at peace with itself.
Unlike other African liberation leaders who preferred to cling to power Mandela who was elected as South Africa’s first democratically elected President voluntarily stepped down after one term. Till 2004 when he retired from public life Mandela acted as a roving elder statesman and leading AIDS campaigner. Again unlike most African liberation leaders he was a dyed-in-the wool democrat. At his trial in 1964, he said: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Mandela stood by his words when he came to power. He was among a handful of iconic figures who elicited admiration and respect from the East as well as West.