By Professor Daizal Samad
The passing of Nelson Mandela makes the world a poorer place. South Africa is poorer, Africa is poorer, and every citizen of this planet is poorer.
But if we begin in our own individual lives to live as he lived, then we will begin again to enrich ourselves and the countries and the world in which we live. This is the way to keep Mandela alive. We need not go through decades in prison to learn.
We do not need to assist in the dismantling of a system as cruel as apartheid to do this. We need not be president or prime minister of our respective countries.
We simply need to look at, and emulate, the simple decency of the man. That decency was shown in several ways. His gentle manner of talking. The passion of his belief was such that he did not need to be strident nor loud nor aggressive.
When we lack substance, we run to adjectives and we make noise.
Mandela had substance. His calmness under pressure never failed. He was intense in his belief in justice, but that intensity never boiled over as poisonous anger. Mandela never exaggerated.
The decency came out in the grace of the man! He gave to all people with grace, and he accepted their adoration with a kind of bashful grace. He spoke with grace and listened with grace.
Mandela was loath to speak ill of anyone, even his political adversaries. Men like F W De Klerk.
He disagreed with Thabo Mbeki who succeeded him, but nary an ill word in public. He showed that one may disagree with another without resorting to crudeness. And Mandela laughed.
He smiled. He joked and had others laughing. And the laughter had that element of youthful innocence and bashfulness that is always to be found in the wise and the humble. But most of all, the humour was turned on himself.
This great gift at being able to laugh at oneself. Mandela’s lesson: take the work seriously; take yourself much less so. Like all the greats before him, Mandela taught without seeming to teach.
Mandela did not need a classroom. He did not proclaim his degrees. Much like the poet, Wong Phui Nam, Mandela corroded ego to a papery frailty.
One just never really knew how much the man knew, did not know the depth of the gentleness nor wisdom through his proclamation of these things. One felt it though.
Dr Walter Sisulu, Mandela’s late good old friend who spent a little longer in jail than did Mandela, said to a small group of three of us: “Mandela is humble. He never felt comfortable in ceremonies, nor in boardrooms. He is honourable.”
The things we can learn from this great man! Grace, respect, humility, humour, intensity without loudness, correctness without rancour, and honour! The great Chinese Philosopher Lao Tzu (about 320BC; formal name: Taishang Laojun; mentor of Confucius) said thus: “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
The Nazarene knew this. Thus, he had both strength and courage.
Henry David Theroux knew this. Mahatma Ghandi knew this from both. Mandela learned, as did Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Mohamed Ali. Mother Theresa and Mary Woolstonecraft knew. A long lineage of goodness and honour, strength and courage.
We do not need microphones and pre-recorded music to know what they knew; we need not classroom walls to learn what they teach. We need not jump and scream for the heavens to hear us. The heavens themselves hear us in the pulses of our hearts. It is up to us to listen to our own heart beating, behold our own goodness.
In the end, I may tell my Beloved that I need and wish to be needed, to love and be loved.
I pray that Mandela is taken up and warmed in the cool blue flame of the Lord himself. Surely, he sits on the right hand of God with that smile of his.
And all the children of this Republic of Guyana should shed a gentle and quiet tear upon our cheeks.
Such tears will surely bring good things upon us all. The world is poorer for the passing of Mandela.
The world would be replenished if we followed his example.
