Why is mandela's rest momentary?
Answers
Explanation:
13 December 2013: Nelson Mandela inspired countless people to devote their lives to peace, justice, and reconciliation. Stephen Oola, Insight on Conflict's Local Correspondent for Uganda, shares how Mandela inspired him to become a lawyer working for peace and justice, and why the world needs more leaders like him.
Answer:
r months before Nelson Mandela’s death, the world was fed news of his health in dribs and drabs; it was suggested that we pray for his speedy recovery. On the first day of April, one of the headlines read, “mandela oo soo kabanayaa,” meaning that he was “mending,” as if he had broken a bone and would be getting better. Many people felt that, with his passing, our world would come apart at the seams and expose us to untellable woes.
Mandela was much adored; his entering a room created a stir, and his exit would leave a momentary quiet, as those he left behind took a collective breath to regroup. He had done more than his fair share to pull South Africa from the precipice of war and lead us all to a place of potential peace. Yet inexplicably, when I found myself on occasion sitting close to him, I wouldn’t look into his eyes to try to identify the nature of his thoughts, the thoughts that kept him company in his prison cubicle. He always seemed relaxed, despite the clamor around him, and gave the impression of a man for whom earthly comforts were surplus.
As a child, I was raised on a diet of pan-African nationalism. I first heard of the African National Congress in the context of an apocryphal tale my brother told me: that, in the organization’s effort to articulate its nationalist line, an A.N.C. pamphlet had quoted the 1904 open letter that the Somali poet-warrior Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, otherwise known as the Mad Mullah, sent to the British colonial authorities. Because of this, I couldn’t help comparing Mandela’s speech from the prisoner’s dock at the Rivonia Trial to the Sayyid’s letter, which, as a young child, I had committed to memory. In the letter, the Sayyid writes that he wishes to rule his people and to protect his religion. He concludes, “The sun is very hot here. And all you can get from me is war, nothing else. . . . If you want peace, go from my country, back to your own.” What I loved about both the Sayyid’s letter and Mandela’s statement is the way the arguments in both are laid out in as simple a language as possible.
Mandela was a man apart. He was that rare individual whose time in detention served the useful purpose of solidifying his vision. His years away from the public eye prepared him to cope with the outside world upon his release. In his decades of incarceration, he brought his outward existence and inner life into harmony; the depth of his humility ennobled him.