The power of Mr Mandela

I once met a man when I was working in a bookstore who wanted me to show him the biography section. In 18 years of working in retail I only remember a few individual customers and he was one of them. The reason I remember him was because he was so rude and aggressive. He was an older South African man. As he scanned the titles he pulled out the biography of Nelson Mandela, 'that man is a terrorist, a %$#@*()&% terrorist, he ruined our country' and on and on he went. I was taken back, I didn't know what to say in the face of such obvious hatred, so I said 'and here is the history section'.

In retrospect I can understand why the man was so full of aggression. He grew up in an era where he was taught and believed certain things and that all took a radical change. The world that he grew up in was no longer in existence and he couldn't bring himself to change with it, so he felt forced to leave to his country, although he probably didn't want to. His response to these changes was hurt, bitterness and profound anger. It poisoned the air around him. I was only with him for 15 minutes and he was a total stranger but his presence sucked any positivity out of me. I felt sorry for anyone who had to live with him.

Nelson Mandela was the total opposite of this man. He was not even part of the privileged majority, like the man I served in the bookshop. He spent 27 years in prison. Hard manual labour, beatings, torture, degradation, separation from loved ones, never knowing if he would get out. And yet out of that came a totally different attitude than my angry customer. One of reconciliation, one of forgiveness, one of humility. Someone who sang the national anthem of his oppressors, who set up reconciliation committees rather than sending his captors to deserved punishment. Who surely saved hundreds of lives by managing to avoid civil war and changing to a type of democracy that was the total opposite of the previous kind, that is a modern day miracle.

In the face of this type of forgiveness the world is stunned. We don't know what do with this type of person except to revere them, because we know that if it was us in that prison and we were let out we do not have the inner reserves to be like Nelson Mandela. That is what made him such an unusual person, he actually had the character so many of us would like to have. That is why we will miss him so much, we know there are so few like him, someone who brought a glimpse of divine compassion to earth.