Our leader of delegation, the distinguished Professor Ms Joyce Befu, MG 66, Most Excellent Grand Achiever (MEGA-1) and most-travelled Woman in Malawi has ordered us to wish all Malawians a merry Christmas 2025 and happy new year 2026.
As Sam Mangwana and Lokassa ya Mbongo sing in their hit, Bonne Année, l’année s’achève” et la vie diminue; mais réjouissons-nous quand même (as the year ends, so does life get reduced; however, let’s celebrate all the same).
Today we reflect on Nelson Mandela’s transition from first commander-in-chief of the violent Umkhontho weSizwe to commander-in-chief of South African defence forces and peacemaker.
When Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, died in December 2013, the world was united in its celebration of the life of a man who had worked and dedicated himself to the building of a multicultural, multiracial and multiethnic South Africa. Mandela is probably one of the most quoted politicians of the 20th century.
But, how did a man the USA and UK once described as a terrorist become so influential in the world that for the first time in a century the Arabs, Jews, Chinese, Cubans, Europeans, Russians, Americans, Brazilians and Africans spoke “one language”? Mandela taught the world something it already knew: reconciliation.
Some people believe that while Mandela went into prison a very angry and radical middle-aged man, he came out of his 27-year incarceration a transformed person because in jail he had had time to reflect on life and politics.
In jail, Nelson Mandela learnt that, in fact, the jailor and the prisoner are not different. Both are in jail. In jail, Mandela learnt that, be they tall or short, black or white, prisoners are the same because their freedoms are limited by their incarceration. In jail, Mandela learnt that men and women are not different except for their biological endowments.
In jail, Mandela learnt that the Zulu, the Xhosa, the English, and the Afrikaners were actually victims of their hatred of one another. In prison, Mandela learnt that South Africa’s problem was the unfair distribution of resources and the apartheid political system rather than race.
So, when he became South Africa’s first black president in 1994, Nelson Mandela preached peace and reconciliation. In his inaugural speech as president, he repeated the words he had uttered almost 30 years earlier. He reminded South Africans that he was still ready to die for his ideal of establishing a country where people of all races lived together, played together, ate together, and worked together peacefully and advanced humanity together.
Had Mandela been full of hatred of his jailors or those black leaders, such as General Bantubonke Holomisa, president of the United Democratic Movement and late Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who had been manipulated and somewhat rewarded by the apartheid system to oppose the ANC, the new rainbow nation that is South Africa today would have been worse than it is now.
Prior to and in the early days of the Mandela presidency, Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC fought a very bitter ‘brotherly war’ for supremacy. To the outside world, this was typical of African ethnic groups fighting each other. The Xhosa were fighting the Zulu. Had Mandela not worked with Buthelezi at this critical time of nation building, the South Africa that we have today would probably not have been there. Had Mandela not worked to convince white supremacists that they were as much part of South Africa as was any other tribe or race, South Africa would not have been the same.
Mandela’s magic lay in the fact that he resorted to and emphasised something basic: forgiveness and reconciliation. It is something every nation, kingdom and state has valued to move forward. Reconciliation builds peace and peace builds stability. Without stability, no nation can prosper. Mandela’s uniqueness came about because he realised that brute vengeance breeds hatred and hatred kills peace and progress.
Reconciliation with ourselves is important knowing that no matter how important we may be society; we will never bury ourselves.
