Top of mind as the Foundation goes into the month of December has to be the tenth anniversary of that moment on 5 December 2013, when Madiba died.
Recently our beloved Mum Machel came to spend time with us at the Foundation, and amongst other things, she led a conversation about confronting the reality that Madiba is dead and reflecting both on what his legacy means now and what needs to live on. It brought back strong memories, and emotions, related to the day in February 2014 when Mum Machel came to the Foundation to thank us for our support through the long period of Madiba’s final illness.
We start the remembrance month with the launch of a new exhibition at our Centre of Memory, entitled Nelson Mandela is Dead, crafted and curated by Kneo Mokgopa. It will be very much about a co-creation with the visitors who engage with the content and leave behind an imprint of their own thoughts and feelings.
It is clear that there can be no one ‘meaning of Mandela’ in the contexts of today. On 22 November I participated in the launch of the Nelson Mandela Cruise Terminal in Durban and used the occasion to reflect on meanings and significances evoked by four moments when Madiba’s life journey intersected with Durban and surrounds. The first was in 1961, when Madiba journeyed to the home of Chief Albert Luthuli to secure endorsement for the beginning of an armed struggle. The question today for me is: what cause, what struggle, are we willing to give our lives to?
The next year Madiba was back in the Durban area to report on his many months receiving training and visiting other countries on the continent. He was very quickly captured by the apartheid state. The question today for me is: how does one hold one’s nerve when things go wrong; when what has been carefully woven is being unravelled? This is the same question arising for me when I consider that moment two weeks after his release from prison in February 1990, when Madiba attended a rally in Durban in the context of a civil war and called on everyone to throw their weapons into the sea. Many in that crowd booed him. A foretaste of what would be another four years of bloody conflict.
And then there was 27 April 1994, when Madiba voted in our first democratic election, at a school in Durban. The key question for the new government then was whether democracy could be made to stick. Thirty years later, I would argue, this remains a critical question. Unless democracy begins to deliver to the great majority of those who call South Africa home, then its very viability is at stake. We should never forget what happened in July 2021.
Sometimes the challenges facing us both locally and globally seem overwhelming. It is then that I draw most deeply on a particular meaning that ‘Mandela’ carries for me – hope is not enough; what we need is a belief that never giving up matters irrespective of what the future will bring. Let’s never give up on continuing struggles for justice. Let’s never give up on Madiba’s dream of a just society. Onward.