Anger's End

"Nelson Mandela can rot in prison until he dies or I die, whichever takes longer."  

~ P. W. Botha Prime Minister of South Africa 

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While president of South Africa, Mandela met with President Bill Clinton who, years earlier, had awakened his own family at three o’clock in the morning to watch Mandela being released from prison.  As the television cameras had pressed in, Clinton observed the sheer anger and hatred on Mandela’s face as he walked from his cell block to the front of the prison.  Then in a heartbeat, Mandela’s rage seemed to vanish.  When Clinton asked the South African president about it, Mandela replied,

    "I’m surprised that you saw that, and I regret that the cameras caught my anger. Yes, you are right.
    When I was in prison the son of a guard started a Bible study and I attended.  That day when I stepped out of prison and looked at the people observing, a flush of anger hit me with the thought that they had robbed me of 27 years. Then the Spirit of Jesus said to me, ‘Nelson, while you were in prison you were free, now that you are free don’t become a prisoner.’"

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If there were a silver lining to his years of imprisonment, Mandela said it was to look in the mirror and create within himself that which he most wanted for South Africa: peace, reconciliation, equality, harmony and freedom.  Perhaps his most profound impact and greatest legacy was to teach us, through vivid, living, personal example, to be human before anything else.

On his 93rd birthday, with family

Mandela understood that if he was going to lead his nation out of racial discrimination and into a peaceful democracy he would have to be the change.  (From Madiba Leadership: 5 Lessons Nelson Mandela Taught The World About Change)

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"Where in the whole wide world today can you find a more just society than South Africa has?" ~ Prime Minister Botha at the height of apartheid. Many lack understanding of the reality others endure, I guess. Botha died at age 90 without ever acknowledging the horror he had led for so long.

"I never have the nagging doubt of wondering whether perhaps I am wrong."  

In 2006, the year he died, he told interviewers that he had no regrets about how he had run the country.  “I don’t care what they remember about me. I led South Africa on the right path."  There are perhaps some among us today who similarly won't understand.  

Mandela's response is instructive.