It happened when I was watching ESPN. I discovered that Madiba had passed.
It was like a punch to the gut, even though I knew it was coming. He had been ill since I was in South Africa in June, July, and August, and yet it came from nowhere.
And so now I have to assess what Mandela means.
And the answer is that words escape me. I have wept, but weeping seems insufficient. I should celebrate his life, but celebration seems callous. I miss him already not because of what he was, exactly, but because of what he means.
And I already miss him especially because I know that what Mandela was will become secondary to how he will be used going forward. He will be used by the ANC to justify the status quo and he will be used by opposition parties for an imagined future they may never have to deliver.
Mandela, who meant so much to so many, will become whatever the beholder wants him to be, and that will somehow both elevate and reduce him. He does not, of course, need us to elevate him. But sadly we do have the capacity to reduce him – to use him for what we want rather than for what he was.
Nelson Mandela believed that his country belonged to all who live within it, but he also believed that his was a country, a beautiful, wonderful country, that belonged to all equally. Mandela did not believe that his country belonged solely to “Africans,” whatever that means, but he believed that Africans – Xhosa and Zulu and Venda and Sotho and so many others, including those whose native tongue was Afrikaans and English – deserved their rightful place in determining South Africa’s future.
The question, then, is how Mandela’s legacy will push forward, beyond the ugliness of the temporal present into a future that we, and he, could only imagine. We miss him already. But I hope that his vision sustains the country that he so loved.
A few months ago, I wrote about the early stages of the conflict in Ukraine through the lens of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. While it appears likely that the war will carry on into the foreseeable future, enough time has passed for us to make an honest assessment of each side’s relative […]
The Ukrainian Army has made dramatic strides in the last few weeks. Ukraine’s tactical commanders have outfoxed their Russian counterparts, and by issuing a feint towards the south the UA has been able to earn substantial gains in the north of their country. The impact of these efforts have been compounded by the steady stream […]
In mid-May the Irish political party, Sinn Féin, won the plurality of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Many American readers might not fully understand the significance of Sinn Féin’s political victory- but rest assured that subjects of the United Kingdom and a wide range of political movements the world over have heard the message […]
The first wave of the Russian offensive in Ukraine has fallen short of Russian autocrat Vladmir Putin’s ambitions. Most analysts deduced that Putin had hoped to achieve a decapitation strike of the Ukrainian government- taking Kiev and replacing Ukrainian President Vladimir Zolinski with a pro-Kremlin voice. Kiev has been threatened repeatedly through the course of […]
On the weekend of March 26th, the notorious MS-13 gang went on a massive killing spree in El Salvador which left more than 70 people dead by Sunday. Even for a country where powerful gangs hold massive sway, this recent tragedy stands out considering that it was the bloodiest day on record since the civil […]
