This amazing man passed away back in 2013 almost ten years ago. But his memory continues to linger on in the minds of millions of people whose lives he had touched. This man as we all know him by the Name Madiba did something no other person in the world had ever done before, and that is to embrace the people who insulted and tortured him for three decades. Even by non political standards this was cruelty on a totally different level. Yet he managed to shrug it all off and put it behind himself, people thought he would leave prison with plenty of grudges and enact his vengeance on his former tormentors once he was in power, but he was actually the opposite of what everyone expected. He surprised all including his black majority population who had longed for an indigenous leader. South Africa was renamed the rainbow nation during his time, he inspired many plays, songs, books and films. This guy is a man and a half, there has never been an African leader like him before and there has never been another like him after.
To prove how different a leader he was, you just have to look at a neighboring state in southern Africa, a next door state called Zimbabwe has a quite different story. The country’s founding leader was also a freedom fighter, he suffered for his actions, he was locked up and stayed in jail for an entire decade as a political prisoner, that is about a third of the time that Madiba served, but ten years is till a long time though, and Mugabe is not Madiba, he is a different person. He even said this in interviews when he was asked why he didn’t act more like Madiba who was a more respectable leader. ”I am not Nelson Mandela, you should remember that, ” he would always say this to journalists, whom he thought were pestering him with nasty questions. Robert Mugabe always held grievances in his heart, he lashed out on everyone he thought was out there to get him, he sadly took many grudges with him to the grave when he passed on in 2019.
May Madiba continue to linger in our hearts and minds for generations to come.
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