On the 5th of December 2013, at the age of 95, Nelson Mandela left this physical world. He died in his house, surrounded by his family, after spending 27 years in prison. It is a good occasion to review the life of this extraordinary man, and appreciate his message of integrity, justice and forgiveness.
Nelson Mandela’s biography has been the subject of many books, and it will undoubtedly keep being so for years to come. It is the story of a man who fought his entire life to overcome apartheid, a system of racial segregation whose injustice is so evident to anyone that it is difficult to believe it lasted for half a century. As many other men and women, Mandela dedicated his existence to restore one of the most basic principles of any human congregation – that the color of one’s skin should not be a discriminating factor. In a broader sense, he strove to resolve the contradictions of the South African society, which was stuck in the deadlock of a white minority oppressing the remaining ethnic groups majority, and was falling in a vicious circle of increasing resentment, violence and mistrust between the two communities.
Mandela was arrested many times for his anti-apartheid activities, and in February 1964 he was condemned to life imprisonment on the charges of sabotage and organizing an underground communist guerrilla. He would spend the following 26 years in prison, until his liberation in 1990, which marked the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Far from marring his willpower or undermining his optimism, the time spent in captivity would only make Mandela wiser and stronger, to the point of converting him into a worldwide symbol of freedom. But the most astonishing thing, is that he would never seek revenge upon those that condemned, confined and held him captive for more than a quarter of a century.
It is difficult to imagine how life could be, for a black political prisoner, in the maximum security prison of Robben Island, where Mandela spent eighteen years. One illuminating fact, though, is that the totality of the jailers were Afrikaner, white South Africans who belonged to the same ethnicity that Mandela supposedly fought. If a prison must in all case be a difficult environment for the best human qualities to flourish, here all the conditions were set for the worst possible scenario: abuse flowing from the jailers to the prisoners, and suffocated hatred coming back in return. But Mandela and his comrades were no ordinary men, and they decided to break this vicious circle; after all, the prison environment was an almost perfect miniature representation of the South African nation, with a white minority oppressing a mixed majority that in turn hated them back.
With amazing clairvoyance, Mandela decided to study Afrikaans, the language of his captors, and tried to understand their culture, history and psychology. Over time, he built up increasing mutual respect with the jailers, without giving up an ounce of his dignity and constantly fighting to improve the conditions of all the prisoners. However, gifted with a big soul and an open heart, he managed to stay away from hate, and in doing so instilled in those that had to watch over him a sense of awe and deference. There are countless anecdotes of the sincere interest that Mandela showed towards the jail workers, considering them worthy of respect as much as any other human being, to the point of writing letters to their families to express his concerns for the education of these young white boys.
Mandela was freed in February 1990, already more than 70 years old. By that time, apartheid had become unsustainable even for the white Afrikaner minority who should theoretically have benefited from it. The popularity of Mandela was so big, that his organziation, the ANC (African National Congress) almost inevitably won the following elections of 1994. For one of those turns of history, the man that had spent most of his life as a convict and political activist was now the president of his country. It would have been easy, perhaps understandable, for Nelson Mandela to take political revenge on those that had so long oppressed him and his ethnicity. But with the genius and equanimity that he had forged in his long captivity, he realized that the only way to achieve his objectives was by uniting instead of diving.
In a series of symbolic gestures, public speeches, and politic acts, the now president used his privileged place to show the world that forgiveness was not only possible, but the only way forward. He succeeded in winning the hearts of those whites who hated and secretly feared black people by reaching out to them and forgiving them. He managed to set his own personal story as a living example of how hardship and humiliation can do nothing against a strong soul, and how the ultimate liberation for the oppressed is to be able to face his oppressor with determination, but without hate. He uncontroversially asserted his superior moral values by refusing to treat his adversaries in the same way they had treated him. In this sense, Mandela truly shined as a spiritual leader, rather than as a political activist.
It is perhaps not too much of a stretching to assert that Nelson Mandela has been one of the great karma yogis of our times. Moved by a desire to change the existing conditions, he took action without fear and without hate. He endured prosecution, violence, hardship and confinement with good humor and equanimity, ready to offer a smile to his comrades as well as to his jailers, unwavering and optimist in the height of victory as well as in the depths of failure. This is an example for those who wish to follow the path of karma yoga: fully committed, and at the same time amazingly detached, this man went through his journey from prison to universal acclaim with grace, firmness and an ubiquitous sense of humor. But perhaps, the greatest lesson we can learn from Nelson Mandela is that of magnanimity: a big soul, a big heart, always seeks union over division, forgiveness over revenge, love over hate. It is inevitable, because such a soul instinctively perceives that at some deep level we are all interconnected, even with those who can superficially seem our worst enemies; and ultimately, our happiness also depends on theirs. As he himself said:
Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.
Thank you for your example, Nelson Mandela, and may your journey continue in endless joy.