Behind that Nelson Madiba Mandela's Face

Good Bye, Man

At his inauguration, "three among the African Presidents were absent: the Rwandese, the Burundian -as they succumbed in the Kanombe's flight's accident- and the Camerounian -Paul Biya who was in honeymoon with her newly married, Chantal", a friend of mine told me. 19 years after, as Madiba passed away, everyone want to be there. What a ironic mourning! (I get back to this at the end) 

For the first time, in 2009, the rumor ran, “Nelson Mandela can’t see the next year’s daylight.” Already, during the Expo-2005, I realized how the African Icon was getting really old: people from all over the world, me included, were stopping and contemplate that kind of “aging skin” of the portrait of the African Icon.  In 2010, I wanted to know the hidden face of that particular man. The first friend of the African/world icon I was suggested to talk to was Lucie Pagé. “I think that South-Africa suffered because of its human’s diversity, but it is also recovering due to that people’s identities recognition”, she told me. During my studies in America, in “Applied Contextual Leadership; Adaptive Strategies for Multicultural Leadership and Dialogue” class, I tried to recall what I mainly understood from that man’s –and followers/folks’- heritage. 

Audace Machado

         I/we leaned a lot! Of course, we can’t know everything even in that more or less two hours interview –made with different personalities, backgrounds, friends, political companions, etc. - But, if they (Mandela and friends) were on the front line against Apartheid, what the identity and people diversity mean to me, what it logically carries and what about it in our everyday life? This understanding trial is very important as comes the time to promote leadership in the world.

            Nelson Mandela understood that we owe to the life the fact that we are born as human being with ascribed qualities and qualifications. Besides, we chose to be of one identity but, the society contributes to identify us by attributing to us some labels. We adopt some of them and we reject even deny some others. And it seems to me that that concept diversity is the most complex and hardest word to define. Back to my introductory example, not only Lucie became herself an icon in Canada in fighting against the Apartheid –the general policy that divided

Lucie et Jay-son mari-

and destroyed South Africa-, and she is a white woman. She is not originally South-African. She is a journalist. She is a book writer. Moreover, I would say, I talked for hours with the wife of another personality: Jay Naidoo. So, on one hand, I talked about an example fighting of racism and exclusive system with a strange person to me, and on the other hand, who am I to initiate this audience with her? Just a journalist, from a small country almost not known for any reason. A single man discussing with a mother. An African questioning a Canadian. A black guy listening to a white woman married to an Indian man, etc. We both discussed strange and diverse issue being strangers to one another.

           From Mandela and his fighting, though brutal in the 1960’s,

Mediator in the Near East

we learn that people have and still don’t have tolerance to differences. The reason may be the personal or group interests, or fear, or ignorance –“The lack of emphasis to educational achievement” (p.290), says Barack (2006)-, etc. Very important for the American who forwarded the Mandela’s “Conversation with myself”.                                 
That looks our everyday life. Once he became the Burundian Peace Accord’s Mediator, “He surely understood that kind of reality in your country”,

Mediator in Burundi

Jean Guiloineau who translated the book “Nelson Mandela”, told me. In other words, that was the reality, if not even now, in South-Africa, in Rwanda, in Burundi, in United States of America and elsewhere. Since 1974, one of the famous song about racism in America is “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd who brought: “In Birmingham they love the governor. Now we all did what we could do. Now Watergate does not bother me. Does your conscience bother you? Tell the truth.” The identity reality had brought mistrust, hatred even killings between white people and colored, especially black people, in America. On one side, the governor George Corley Wallace is known as one of the leaders to lead this alienation in the society, on another side and as a behavior from the black people, Obama altercates that “African Americans understand that culture matters but that culture is shaped by circumstance.” (P.302-3).

          «46864 Robben Island »: Madiba passed in many shameful « events » - witnessed Massacres, experienced Jail, etc., to and as a symbol of Peace building, justice and Reconciliation. Some “talk about Revolution”, others wanted to meet him:  Hillary Clinton got a breakfast at Madela’s. Pope Jean Paul II shook his hand. “He was a man full of humanity”, my friend Apollinaire Gahungu, told me. December 5th, 2013 is noted world historical day: The 1993 Nobel Prize waved Goodbye!

        What an Ironic Mourning! Till 2008, great democracy such as USA were still considering Mandela as a terrorist. I can't believe Obama absent to this ceremony. Oh, I meant other former ruling people. And I don't mean Americans only. Those French too. Why that hook or by crook rush? A woman from my country wrote : "The hatred will never take the last word" (translated from french). Again, my friend recalled that the kind of Presidential rush at burial ceremonies started with the Hirohito's funerals. At Pope Jean Paul II, everyone were there. From the Pakistan to the English...I witnessed that. Was that by respect, or some want just to show?
Let's think about this : "when South-Soudan got its independence, I saw many 'respected' people who were 'invisible'. Some struggled to be visible", continued my friend. I wonder if they all really need to go there. Let's think about the Burundian Nkurunziza's response to journalists' questions such as, "how do you pay tribute to Mandela with the Arusha Accord? The answer "may be easy". But, as your country jails politicians as Mandela has been, will you visit 46864 before going back to Burundi?