July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013
Less than a month before Nelson Mandela died, Harris-Stowe State University Board Chair Thelma Cook visited the museum called the Mandela House, the home where Mandela lived in Johannesburg before he was imprisoned. She and a group from St. Louis also walked outside the walls of the home where he passed away on December 5, 2013 at 95.
“We knew Mr. Mandela was terminally ill,” Cook said. “It was important for us to experience his museum with the reflections of his families, the correspondence he sent and received. The more you learn about him, the more he helps us refocus the importance of our freedom and our ability to love one another.”
Now the walls of the Mandela House and his current home are stacked high with shrines, flowers, candles and messages. On Sunday night, the streets of his home in Houghton, an affluent district of Johannesburg, were closed off and packed with people who came to mourn his death and celebrate his life.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama spoke at his memorial, along with many world leaders. He reflected on the life of a man who was born during World War I, “far from the corridors of power.” As a boy, Mandela raised herding cattle and was tutored by the elders of his Thembu tribe, Obama said.
“Madiba would emerge as the last great liberator of the 20th century,” Obama said. “Like Gandhi, he would lead a resistance movement – a movement that at its start had little prospect for success. Like Dr. King, he would give potent voice to the claims of the oppressed and the moral necessity of racial justice.”
Though enduring a brutal imprisonment from 1962 to 1990, Mandela emerged from prison without the “force of arms,” Obama said.
“He would – like Abraham Lincoln – hold his country together when it threatened to break apart. And like America’s Founding Fathers, he would erect a constitutional order to preserve freedom for future generations – a commitment to democracy and rule of law ratified not only by his election, but by his willingness to step down from power after only one term.”
Mandela served as president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, making him the first black South African to hold the office and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. Under his leadership, he dismantled the legacy of apartheid.
For many in St. Louis, Mandela’s fight to end apartheid inspired them to support his brave effort.
“My understanding of social justice and honor for humanity was born on the campus of the University of Michigan with the fight against apartheid,” said Lannis Hall, M.D., director of radiation oncology at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes–Jewish Saint Peters Hospital. “We protested and fought the university on their continued investment in South Africa.”
Hall said the collective effort of millions across the world and within South Africa helped propel President F. W. De Klerk’s regime to end Mandela’s incarceration after 27 years. Hall was overwhelmed with how Mandela handled his release from the Robben Island prison.
“His truth and reconciliation averted mass bloodshed and set the tone for the rest of the world in the correct way to deliver leadership and manage power after years of a violent segregated past,” she said, “not with a hateful heart and mind but a forgiving and just spirit.”
Jamala Rogers, longtime local activist and St. Louis American columnist, remembers when the U.S.’s anti-apartheid movement really started “heating up” in the mid-1980s. On the day Mandela was freed from prison, activists who had worked together for nearly a decade gathered at a community center, she said.
“It was electric!” said Rogers, then a member of the Congress of African People. “The anti-apartheid struggle was a great model for how a global struggle could result in a strategic coordination on multiple levels – from divestment of corporations propping up the racist South African regime to the cultural boycott of artists performing in Sun City.”
‘Strongest gentle giant’
In June 1990, Fred Sweets, then an assistant picture editor at the Washington Post, had the honor of meeting Mandela when he visited the newspaper. Mandela had just been released from prison.
“Nelson Mandela had a way of making everyone in the room feel like a million dollars,” Sweets said. “I will never forget the firm handshake, the eye to eye contact, and the sincerity of the small talk about the value of daily exercise.”
Sweets, now a contributing editor at The American, knew that Mandela had gone out for an early morning stroll in D.C. Mandela told Sweets that his exercise program was left over from his boxing days in prison. In his autobiography The Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela writes, “Boxing is egalitarian. In the ring, rank, age, color and wealth are irrelevant.”
Mandela told Sweets that the boxing workouts he used as a stress reliever in prison remained extremely important to his health.
“Not only was I chatting it up with the world’s greatest freedom fighter ever to wield a moral compass, but he cared enough to tell me to get daily exercise to stay strong,” Sweets said. “I’ll never forget that brief exchange with the strongest gentle giant of my generation.”
On Oct. 7 1994, St. Louis native Wayman F. Smith III, then board chair at Howard University, bestowed on Mandela an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Smith’s daughter, Kymberly Smith Jackson, remembers talking with her father about his experience.
“The opportunity to give a tribute to such an icon was something that my father took very seriously,” Jackson said, especially given his personal experience growing up in racial segregation as part of a black family in North St. Louis.
Smith deeply admired how Mandela never let his experience of racism get the best of him, she said. Jackson, who also met Mandela that day, said that Mandela’s presence was infectious.
“His presence was so positive and so large, you could feel the energy of all the things he stood for,” she said. “Mr. Mandela came across as such as humble person. He was genuinely as glad to meet us as we were to meet him.”
‘Depth of his empathy’
In his memorial speech, Obama said Mandela understood the ties that bind the human spirit. Mandela’s greatest gift was his recognition that we are all bound together, Obama said, and Mandela showed that in many unexpected ways.
A year after Mandela’s election, South Africa hosted the Rugby World Cup. At the time, the nation’s black majority loathed the Afrikaner’s beloved Springbok rugby team. Rather than dismantling a team that represented apartheid for many, Mandela asked the country to unite and rally behind the players. Before the final game where the Springboks won the championship, Mandela went out onto the field, before a 95-percent white crowd, wearing the green Springbok jersey – widely known as a symbol of oppression. The white crowd showed their new acceptance for his leadership by chanting, “Nelson, Nelson!”
“We remember the gestures, large and small – introducing his jailers as honored guests at his inauguration; taking a pitch in a Springbok uniform; turning his family’s heartbreak into a call to confront HIV/AIDS – that revealed the depth of his empathy and his understanding,” Obama said.
Obama also referred to Mandela by his familiar nickname, Madiba, in bidding him farewell.
“It took a man like Madiba to free not just the prisoner, but the jailer as well,” Obama said, earning a loud applause. “Madiba’s passing is rightly a time of mourning, and a time to celebrate a heroic life. But I believe it should also prompt in each of us a time for self-reflection.”
