- Nelson Mandela
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa's agonizing past swept over Alex McLaren, who stepped into sunlight with tears in his eyes after a tour of the Apartheid Museum, an unsparing study of white minority rule and the costly fight against it.
Yet South Africa-born McLaren, an American citizen, also found inspiration in the museum's exhibition about Nelson Mandela, former prisoner, South Africa's first black head of state and one of the great, unifying figures of the 20th century.
Mandela, now 94 years old and
ailing, was a special figure in the anti-apartheid struggle because of
"his perseverance, his ability to forgive and to reconcile, and the fact
that he appeared when he did, him and others. But mainly him," said
McLaren, a retired engineer.
"There will be a lot of wailing,
gnashing of teeth, when he goes," he said, anticipating the grief of
South Africa and the world.
The delicate health of Mandela,
now convalescing behind the high walls of his Johannesburg home, came
under scrutiny and speculation during a 19-day stay in a hospital in
December. He was treated for a lung infection and had gallstones
removed. Regardless of when the end comes, his burnished legacy was
written years ago, even if the country he led from the long night of
apartheid still struggles with poverty and other social ills.
Mandela's place as South Africa's
premier hero is so secure that the central bank released new banknotes
in 2012 showing his face, a robust, smiling image of the icon who walked
out of a prison's gates on Feb. 11, 1990 after 27 years in captivity.
He is a Nobel laureate, the recipient of many other international
awards, the subject of books, films and songs and, when he was active, a
magnet for celebrities.
In part, what elevated Mandela was his charisma, his ability to charm
through humor and grace, and an extraordinary capacity to find strength
in adversity.
"People tend to measure
themselves by external accomplishments, but jail allows a person to
focus on internal ones; such as honesty, sincerity, simplicity,
humility, generosity and an absence of variety," Mandela says in one of
the many quotations on display at the Apartheid Museum. "You learn to
look into yourself."
Just four years after being
released from prison, Mandela became South Africa's first black
president in 1994. His successes include the introduction of one of the
world's most progressive constitutions and the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, a panel that heard testimony about apartheid-era violations
of human rights as a kind of national therapy session.
McLaren, the visitor to the
Apartheid Museum, grew up in South Africa and recalled witnessing
injustices of apartheid: blacks being arrested or stopped in the street,
a black woman being pushed off a bus and a view among many whites that
blacks were "somehow inferior."
Now a resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, 66-year-old McLaren said:
"South Africa is such a mixed place now. Some of it is falling apart,
some of it is really good, some of it is really bad. But you know, it's
much better than it was, much better than it was."
An imperfect country, but one
that Mandela, whose clan name, Madiba, means "reconciler," guided
elegantly through a painful transition.
In "Mandela: The Authorized
Portrait," a collection of accounts about Mandela, lawyer and human
rights advocate George Bizos described how Mandela joked about his age
(he was 86 at the time) and said he would join "the nearest branch of
the ANC in heaven."
Bizos related in the book how he
once told Mandela about Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher who was
sentenced to death and said he hoped to meet Homer, Sophocles and other
giants for eternal discussions in the afterlife.
According to Bizos, Mandela replied:
"But assume that there is no such
thing. Have you ever had a night's sleep when you were not disturbed at
all — no dreams, no fears — you just slept throughout the night? Didn't
you feel very much happier? Can you imagine if there is this eternal
sleep it's also all right? So what's there to be afraid of?"
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