What fills me with sadness isn't his passing (that was going to happen), it is the knowledge that a person of such high calibre exists, in the public profile, so rarely that the world has to wait such a very long time before we should see such an inspirational person once again. I sincerely hope his message isn't easily, or soon, forgotten: and the generations to come fully appreciate the "times" of his life.
Very sad indeed, although not entirely unexpected. One nice thing to see is so many people in South Africa and other parts of the world, celebrating his life rather than being all forlorn and gloomy. There can be no doubt about he brought peace, understanding to so many and was a shining light in doing so - nice to see that his light is being carried on.
There is a show on ITV 4 in his honour right now. Its a concert from around the time he was released from jail I think. Lots of cracking tunes. One bit suddenly reminded me of something I'd forgotten until now. I remember a bizarre lesson at school in Religious Education class. We'd been learning about apartheid, and we had a guest speaker came in. That was while the apartheid system was still on, but on the verge of collapse. Some chap, I don't think he was high profile in any way, came in to tell us about it. He'd lived there. I remember him explaining calmly why apartheid was a good thing because "the black people, god bless their souls, are simply not ready to integrate with civilised society". We listen to what he had to say, but even as young teenagers I think we were all shocked by him. It seems to me that Mandela's resolve is an inspiration, and it was not just lucky but essential that someone like him stood his ground to change something that really should have ended much longer ago than any time in my life. Its bizarre to think back now to what was accepted as normal just a few years ago. Well done Nelson Mandela for fighting so hard to change that view. And now I'm going to raise my glass to a true legend.
When I was working out there, during Apartheid, it was a shock to the system to come across all the restrictions. Things that we wouldn't think twice about (particularly coming from the multiracial East End of London) had to be thought about carefully. Otherwise you could easily fall foul of the law - not something you would want to do in those days! We all know about segregated parts of the busses, and there were labelled benches in the parks 'Whites' and 'Non-Whites' etc, but, in Cape Town, I got pulled up by the police for asking a black woman for directions because I was lost! They were going to throw her in jail for talking to me!
What on earth!! What was the school thinking? Like Donald Woods did - one of the "forgotten" heroes of the struggle against apartheid.
I don't think the school expected this chap to take the strange hard line that he did. I seem to remember my teacher being quite embarrassed when she spoke to us all about it after he'd left, but fair play to the teacher though. She could have asked him to leave immediately, which would have made us kids think we were being indoctrinated to think just the way the teacher wants us to, but she let him carry on so we could make our own minds up about what he said. In the class discussion that followed, it quickly became obvious that none of us agreed with his stance. We also need to remember the political landscape at the time. It was right at the tipping point of change or not change, and both sides were struggling to get their way. This chap probably saw his invite to the school as an opportunity to indoctrinate the youth (us) but I guess what he didn't bargain on was that with fresh minds, who had not experienced much at all in life yet, would see things in far more simple terms that the various political factions would. To them, this was a lifetimes worth of one thing or an other. To us, it was (excuse the pun) a black and white case of people being judged based on their skin colour alone. It probably didn't help his argument one bit that one of our class mates was a black South African lad, who we all liked, so when this chap was telling us that black South Africans are not clever enough to be trusted with anything, and that they are a violent aggressive bunch, and our only point of reference was a clever, likeable lad who'd never even been in a playground fight, it wasn't going to go well for this strange chap.
A wonderful man. A special moment when we were traveling home from London last night we pulled up at traffic lights right by the Nelson Mandela monument, there were dozens of people holding vigil and masses of flowers surrounded it.........Special.
