Jesus Creed

Jesus Creed

South Africa #3

posted by Scot McKnight | 2:50pm Wednesday May 27, 2009

Americans of my vintage read Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country
 in our school days. That book’s protest was particularly important during the 1960s and 70s in the days of the civil rights movement. At the heart of Paton’s novel is Soweto (South West Township), the famous settlement of Africans who worked in the mines of Johannesburg. During the years of apartheid Africans lived in homelands, where they had the rights for self-government, needed a card to be outside their “country” and in South Africa, and many of the men lived in the settlement of Soweto — leaving wife and kids much of the time without husband and father. The situation has been described by others better than I can do here.

One young passionate lawyer in Soweto was a man named Nelson Mandela, and he has told his own story from a homeland to Soweto and then to imprisonment on Robben Island (off Cape Town) and then freedom in this famous autobiography: Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
.

Marius Nel wanted us to see Soweto and we wanted to see it. What we didn’t know much about is that Mandela’s house is now a museum. Here’s a picture on the back porch, and as we sat across the street (from the other side of the house), drank a coffee and chatted about South Africa, my mind wandered to how folks born in poverty and nurtured in the crucible of potential violence can become leaders of peace.

Mandela*.jpg



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Comments read comments(4)
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Pat

posted May 27, 2009 at 7:45 pm


I think people born in poverty and violence can be leaders of peace because they speak from the unique perspective of being denied that which others take for granted.



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Tony Stiff

posted May 27, 2009 at 11:14 pm


Thanks for sharing the journey and reminding all of us the value of not forgetting what freedom from dehumanization costs (and is costing).



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Randy

posted May 28, 2009 at 12:24 pm


To add to Pat’s comment.
I will never forget watching Nelson Mandela emerge from prison.
My wife and I are finding a new “normal” as we mix with underprivileged people. It is quite an adventure for us, sometimes painful, always educational. I suspect that people who come from poverty and violence do not know our “normal” as “normal,” and so have little trouble seeing (to crib a word from Shane Claiborne) that Another World is Possible.
Peace,
Randy Gabrielse



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attie

posted May 30, 2009 at 2:45 am


Nelson Mandela became an ICON in the lives of 90% of South Africans living today and within the next 10-15 years it will be 100%. (There are still those who think apartheid was the best)I
There are several reasons I think contributed to Nelson Mandela becoming a leader of peace in South Africa and the world. Nelson Mandela held no grudges. He appointed his divorced wife in his cabinet. He was honest, he fired his divorced wife when she did not deliver.
Nelson Mandela became a leader of peace because he had the abbility to befriend his enemies. Up to this day Mandela and FW de Klerk are close friends. When his personal guard on Robbin Island was dying in hospital, Nelson Mandela went to see him in hospital.
I could continue, but the vast majority of South Africans see it as ‘n privilege to live in a country under a leader like Nelson Mandela.



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