Mandela, The Man

Editor’s note: The following Global Diary is excerpted from a recent essay in The Globalist by South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool. We are reprinting this section following the passing of Nelson Mandela.

Words, compromise and dialogue used to be seen as something weak people do.

What we need to do is to invest those concepts with strength. We have seen the power of those three things in South Africa at work to make the transition from apartheid to democracy.

Wherever I go, people admire that transition, but they don’t just admire it they call it “a miracle.” They don’t just love Nelson Mandela, they call him a saint.

I challenge them: No, we don’t want you to see South Africa as a miracle and Nelson Mandela as a saint, because, if you do, you are in effect copping out. You are supplanting human agency with divinity. When you make something divine, you put it out of reach for yourself.

They then say, “Nelson Mandela was so great, he fomented a miracle.” What does that mean? It means, “I can’t do that.” It means that I cannot forgive my neighbor who has angered me.

If Nelson Mandela could forgive those who put him in jail for 27 years, what’s the problem between you and your neighbor? When you sanctify human actions, you abrogate your responsibility to do the same thing.

We made fundamental compromises in South Africa and we still live with the aftermath of our history. We manage it every day.