31st December, 2013
By Kola Johnson
So the Madiba is gone. The last among the titans. He was even more. The titan among the titans. First among the greats. He was veritably primus inter pares. So he is gone. Gone for aye. Never to be seen again.
Nelson Rohilala Mandela!!! He traversed the vast earthly space, leaving an indelible mark not only unique in its own class, but remarkably so, too.
Rarely in the history of human existence – so vastly as it stretches, in the spatial frame of time, was the wider gamut of humanity, availed of such beacon of illumination, who by sheer dint of his sterling personal qualities had succeeded in registering a salutarily tremendous influence in the affectionate closet of the general mind.
He stood out as the quintessential distillation of the finest of human values; a tower of inspiration, with Solomonic wisdom of a sage and creative statesmanship that remains a model in the annals of exemplary leadership.
His sublime features, chivalry, genial frame, quixotic-temper, dignified deportment, and inspiring noble exudation, was such which cut an almost perfect symmetry with Brutus, in Mark Anthony’s description of him as “the greatest Roman of them all, of whom the element is so made, that nature might stand up and say this was a man”.
In life, the Madiba was great, in death, he sure was – just as he was no less so, in the last phase of his eventful sojourn on earth.
As a young attorney, Mandela gave his all to the struggle at the critical epoch marking the zenith of the segregationist racial order of apartheid South Africa.
As the apartheid against the blacks thrived in South Africa, Mandela as a young practicing Attorney, gave his all, to the struggle.
Today, we remember as if it were yesterday, his historic trial before the apartheid juridical apparatus. In this regard, we remember in particular, his great defence. Its historical exudation and heroism. I refer to his fiery oration on that moment of history.
It was such that evoked the valour of Socrates at the threshold of the apocalypse of the hemlock and the dare-devil bravura of Stephen at the trial by the Sanhedrin. It was an oration that continues to live. An inspiring, lesson in valour, courage and soldiery.
As it turned out, the minions of state, in their overzealous ardour, wasted no time in hounding him into the cauterizing gulag of apartheid authority.
There and then, Mandela was left to waste away, amidst the rapacious monstrosity of the apartheid cocoon. Also in that dungeon, the primeval essence of his youthful phase, and vitality, expired in absolute totality.
The vital force of his prime youth having evanished in the oblivion of apartheid repression, the shifting quicksand of time soon graduated for the Madiba into a foreboding phase of adulthood, still in the lingering oppression of the apartheid gulag.
At this stage, it was as if for him, an entire life span was fated to waste off in prison, as the apartheid Baboon waxed stronger and fatter, and ballooned almost beyond reach in the contextual terms of invincibility.
For Mandela, sequestered in the solipsistic soliloquy of his exclusive Island of thought, cut off as he was, from the enervating cross-current of interaction with the wider world – within the repressive overlay of the Robben Island prison – only him and no one but him, was essentially best put in recalling – especially in detailed particulars, the inner workings of his mind as he contended – as of course would have been expected – with the personal burden of the reciprocal channel of familial affection, from which he was cut off; the burden of the struggle, the future of the struggle and of course the future of the blacks.
“Will I emerge here alive intact or maimed? How are my family, wife, children and extended family? Will I meet them intact? What omen does the struggle portend? Any light at the end of the tunnel? Is the struggle fated to end well? If so, for how long? Is it billed to be an exercise in futility, after all?”
In one breadth, the illuminating light of optimism seems to surge forth. In another breadth, the mood swing gravitates to despair.
“Will my entire existence on earth waste away in this hollow cubicle? Could it come to pass, that an entire span of life could so easily vanish in prison? Supposing I have not stuck my neck, couldn’t I have been at least a shade better off? At least I would be as free as air; my wife and children milling around me, would in itself have been a salutary feature”.
But the rest soon became history. The slow but steady wheel of natural justice soon gravitated to the nullification of the apartheid monster, for the democratic institution of majority rule. An election was held. The popular vote endorsed Mandela.
Even at this stage, the unfolding of events was such that appeared still like a phantom dream not in the least to Mandela himself. Otherwise come to think of it: “an underdog bloody god – damned black”, who a moment ago, had languished under the buffettings of apartheid manacles, harassed and ridiculed in bestial dishonour of the most ignoble hue – towering the next moment, to the most celebrated figure on earth.
And the subsequent inauguration? Ah! That in itself was something else. Simply out of this world – ranking as the most significant world event in the century – apart from the historic wedding of Prince Charles and the inauguration of Barack Obama of America – not only in its monumental epoch-making import, but its regal conjuration, pomp, grandeur and pageantry. Time stood still. Even the heavens, in ecstatic empathy.
Still of that moment, its inspirational exudation was talismanic, enrapturing and grippingly escatatic. Its irresistible liquor-grip was all it took to drive the billionaire business mogul, Chief M.K.O. Abiola to the frenzied remonstrance of the Epetedo Declaration.
“If Mandela, a persona non grata only yesterday, could the next moment balloon to the commanding height of world reckoning, then the big contemporary event with my political situation, should be instructive enough in its prophetic import”, so Abiola, the acclaimed June 12 hero, sure must have exercised in his inner cogitation.
Unfortunately, it did not work out exactly that way for the acclaimed June 12 hero, who fell in sacrificial martyrdom through the repressive machine of the power cabal of the moment. Such was the magic of that moment of nascent Mandelamania. But that was just by the way.
The curtain thus unfurls in earnest for the Mandela presidency. A single term span of just four years. But even at that, it conjured a transcendental magic of eternity. Yes, a four-year term of eternity!
Footprints indelibly etched in the sand of history. Roaring legacies that echo and reverberate in their inspirational grip and power. Mandela ballooned larger than life. He became the toast of the moment. Wined and dined with the world’s high and mighty – he was sought by the crème-de-la-crème of super-power figures and nations. And not just that: with eager fervency too.
He carried an aura. Indeed lots of it, he inspired light. Wherever he traversed, universal love went with him. Fraternity and brotherhood too. With his cherubic saintliness; disarming innocence, he inspired a diplomatic legacy on the vast global scene which put the textbooks to shame, in terms of its pragmatism for world peace, unity and brotherliness.
His glorious passage was all it took to release the magic endemic with the metaphysical spell of omnipotence that saw two octopus opposed antagonistic and antithetic ideological strain, Raul Castro of Communist Cuba on one hand, and Barack Obama of America, the primeval fountain of world capitalism, unite for the first time in symbolic handshake, perceived by observers, across the global community, as holding a salutary symbolism for peaceful ideological co-existence, fraternity and brotherhood.
The Mandela alchemy for World peace and armistice is such that commends itself in particularly specific terms, to diverse shades of players in the Middle – East Crisis. It might well be the elixir they needed to realise that that conflagration of age-old continuum, raging in that notorious troubled-spot, is essentially not devoid of an amicable resolution, after all.
Now coming back home, we are essentially compelled to refer to the Obasanjos and IBBs of this world. In this regard, it need be noted that the teeming mass of Nigerians were witnesses to their crocodile tears during the post-death mourning of Gani Fawehinmi.
Like the proverbial leopard that refuses to change its spot, the two were again at their dramatic best of crying more than the bereaved, as exemplified in their outpouring of crocodile tribute and eulogy on the departed legend who in life, was exactly the noble antithesis of the reprehensible negativism epitomized in his Nigerian counterparts, just aforementioned.
For these two Nigerian leaders, and their likes acclaimed on the universal canvass for their untrammelled penchant for sitting tight, it might well be noted that it took the departed African legend only a single four-year tenure to inscribe himself not only in the emotional closet of global humanity, but also within the pantheon of world immortals.
Also to be noted on an instructively poignant relief is the salutary demystification of the notion which hitherto holds, and to a pervasively noxious extent too, to the effect that an ex-this or ex-that, ceases to be relevant, secured and diminishes in gravitas, the very moment he leaves office. The Madiba has proved that this is not necessarily so.
And for that perverted wave of consciousness, so dominantly extant in the peculiar clime of the Nigerian Society, politics and culture – that you essentially need to burst at your seams with filthy lucre stashed in foreign vaults in order to remain relevant, it is now apparent at least from the illuminating template of Mandela’s legacy that this is not so. Not only is this not so, the reverse is indeed the case.
The Madiba is gone. Nelson Rohilala Mandela. Whence cometh another.
•Johnson, a writer and journalist wrote from Lagos.