The Tribune

By Rev. Canon S. Sebastian

Campbell

Romans 13:8 reads: “Be under obligation to no one – the only obligation you have is to love one another” or “Owe no man anything, but to love one another”, based on the Good News Bible and the King James Version. This is the Christian ethic lived out by Nelson Mandela. He demonstrated that Christianity can be lived without apology. Too often we justify our short comings with the words, “I’m only human”. Mandela lived, “I am human, made in the image and likeness of God and therefore I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. He reached into the deep springs of his Christian faith to love P. W. Botha, Satan incarnate, and his prosecutors who sent him to jail for life. He accepted every one of God’s children as a brother or a sister. According to our accepted human norms he could have justifiably call for blood and justifiably have cause a blood bath in South Africa in revenge for the inhumane and unjust treatment meted out to him.

We have yet to translate Jesus’ supreme teaching as found in the Sermon on the Mount; we hardly even give it lip service. “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too. If someone takes you to court to sue you for a shirt, let him have your coat as well… Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” (Matt. Ch. 5:32) In Nelson Mandela we have someone who lived this. He was a real man, came up against atrocities we can’t begin to imagine. Life and death decisions he had to make almost daily. And what did he have to rely on? His faith, his Christian faith. He put his God to the test in the fire and God held his hand and brought him from a dehumanized prisoner to an exalted president. God’s hands were at work, to show the millions of us, jelly back Christians, what it means to live the Christian life, through the fire and through the flood. Yes, we, jelly backs who gave up in every storm. We quote scriptures, yet can’t apply what Jesus says, “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and tell all kinds of evil lies against you…” Stand up O Christian man and woman!

In 1962 Mandela was arrested for illegal exiting of the country and incitement to strike. He represented himself in court. He was steering the death penalty clear in the eyes but he stood by his convictions to be honest. He made the famous statement from the dock in 1964, “I have fought against white denomination and I have fought against black denomination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” He justifies why Christians should be referred to in military language, like “we are soldiers of Christ…” or “onward Christian soldiers...” This world needs soldiers, fighters, warriors all motivated by love and girded with love, we have so much for which to fight and not succeeding because: 1) We are weaklings or 2) We are not motivated by love in what we are doing.

All too often we are self-serving, building our own empires, making our own kingdom come on earth. Look again at the scourge of crime on us: can we do more? More can be achieved, but what is our motivation. Where do we start? We must defrock ourselves of any and all agenda, especially the political. We must speak with a clear mind, united as one. 
Mandela was imprisoned for more than a quarter of a century, 27 years on Robben Island. A straw mat was the only furniture he had. Yet he held no animosity against those who had persecuted generations of blacks, including him. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan called him a terrorist, two leaders of super powers. Against this backdrop the Bahamas comes in the picture. In the 1980’s at a meeting of CHOGM, here in the Bahamas, our then Prime Minister Lynden Pindling, is appointed chief negotiator on behalf of Commonwealth countries to lead the charge for the freedom of Mandela. He first had to get through to these two leaders of super powers. Did he succeed? The evidence speaks for itself.

Any wonder, soon after his release Mandela visits the Bahamas on two occasions to say thanks. My precious moment came when on the first occasion I met him briefly as he toured the Princess Margaret Hospital.
The all white National Party came to power in 1948 and began immediately to implement apartheid, maybe a system worse than slavery. It proclaimed white dominance and relegated blacks to less than human status. Mandela, a young lawyer led a national campaign of defiance beginning in the early 1950’s, bombing government facilities all over South Africa. Many blacks were slaughtered in this campaign of freedom. He was convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life.
He was freed on February 11, 1990 and immediately embarked on negotiations to abolish apartheid and establish representative democracy in South Africa.
The powers offered him freedom one week earlier than announced and he objected. A deal is a deal. His people needed time to properly prepare for his great walk to freedom. In fact he was offered release while in prison, long before that, under the condition he renounced violence. He insisted that his freedom must be unconditional and in his words, “prisoners cannot enter into contracts; only free men can negotiate.”

On his release he travels hundreds of miles to eyeball and forgive the lead attorney who prosecuted his case.
He avoided a blood bath by forgiving whites and all the evil they perpetuated against him and his people. He urged them to accept each other as equals and to work together.

He insisted that “Tit for tat”, where you treat your enemies as bad as they treated you must have no place in an emerging new South Africa. He urged forgiveness. As president he appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to lead a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past abuses, only so that forgiveness could be given and be really meaningful. The Archbishop broke down and cried many days while hearing unbelievable testimonies. Mandela gave presidential pardon to these villains of the evil apartheid system.
In his life, it is said, he symbolized the triumph of the human spirit, good over evil. Imagine in 1993 he agreed to accept the Noble Peace Prize along with F. W. deklerk, one of his oppressors, who eventually was pressured to free him and many other political prisoners. But he did it to dramatize unity of spirit needed to build a new South Africa. He accepted it on behalf of all South Africans who suffered and sacrificed so much.

Mandela has left a legacy that must go on inspiring us to be truly Christian, truly human. He showed us how to love each other. In him God and man reconciled. Stepping down from the presidency after one term he showed us great humility. The only agenda he had was nation building. He was married to the course in a country with eleven official languages and therefore the vast complexity in nation building. He owed no man anything, only love. A debt he paid in full. Let us not so much look backward only, but let us use his life to look forward. How much further we have to go in being fully human. Land ownership, flush toilets, potable water, jobs for all are still a long, long way to go Bahamians. We must beat back our own pride and prejudices, our self seeking and self serving agenda. Even in the Bahamas we still have a long way to go in humanizing all our people, where so few have so much and so many have so little. Leadership must unite, in our unions, churches, politics etc. so as to take this country to a new frontier.
Mandela was a gift to the world, can we be a gift to the Bahamas, in whose foot prints others might trod, even generations unborn.