I feel the need to express my feelings about the passing of one of my heroes - Nelson Mandela. I don't have direct memories of the Kennedy's or Martin Luther King but the issues of apartheid and Nelson Mandela were ones I directly participated in.
It is amazing to me that apartheid was put into place in 1948. Just three years after the Allied forces had fought WWII and defeated the Axis forces, the National Party of South Africa put forth the same disgusting ideas of the Nazi's - white superiority and a political and social separation of races. Apartheid means "Apart-hood" or the state of being apart. The separated the nation into groups based on color - the lighter your color, the more rights you had. Black people were made to carry paper documents on them at all times, like the Nazis made the Jews carry in Germany. No papers meant jail or worse. This caste system or hierarchy existed even among the prisoners. For example, prisoners of Indian decent were given long pants but Black prisoners were given shorts, usually only worn by children. Protests were met by massacres. I don't understand why the world stood by for so long when WWII was fought to overcome these types of ideas.
I attended the University of California, Santa Cruz in the 1980's. The UC student movement was at the forefront of putting pressure on both the UC Regents and the State of California to divest billions of dollars of their retirement systems holdings in South Africa in an attempt to pressure the South African government to end apartheid. The city of Berkeley was one of the first to pass a divestment ordinance.
Our schools' and our region played such a significant role in the divestment movement, Mandela came to the Bay Area and spoke at the Oakland Coliseum on June 30, 1990. This was only a few months after his release from 27 years in an Alcatraz-like prison on Robben Island. He acknowledged the help the divestiture movement had on ending apartheid and gaining his freedom. He particularly thanked the region and the UC students for standing with him when he was in prison. UC Berkeley had some of the biggest protests (natch) but UCSC was also very active and involved.
I remember watching the elections in 1994 with amazement and delight that Madiba had gone from prisoner to President. Because of the high illiteracy rates in South Africa, the ballots had pictures of each candidate and the brightly colored symbols of the political parties so voters could recognize who to vote for. It didn't even have the names of the candidates, only the party's name. I wanted to have a piece of that history, like having a piece of the Berlin Wall after it came down, and thought others would too. I thought of selling them as souvenirs and even made calls to South Africa to see if I could purchase and import the cancelled ballots but it never worked out.
After the election, Mandiba kept the country from falling into what could have turned into a bloodbath of revenge or reprisal killings. He maintained there must be reconciliation for the country to move forward. He oversaw the formation of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission whereby victims could confront their former oppressors and learn first-hand what happened to their disappeared relatives. Think of that - it would be like Jews from concentration camps confronting Nazis! Too few of the former regime came forward but it did help heal the country's wounds and to move on.
Mandela was as important to South Africa as Gandhi was to India. He had the same ability to work with his former enemies with little to no outward bitterness or hate. His vision for the country and his political and oratory skills, even the timbre and tone of his voice had a way of uniting a country that could easily have slid into civil war. We will not see another person like him in my lifetime, if ever.
