Nelson Mandela’s legacy

It takes place on this Sunday, as it was widely advertised, the burial of the body used by an extraordinary personality who left the plane on which we live, in-demand to spiritual homeland, on 5th of December. We refer to Nelson Mandela, who passed away at the age 95.

Mandela was born in 1918, at 44 was arrested and, sometime later sentenced to life imprisonment. He remained in prison for 27 years and to freedom him - certainly contrary to the general expectation - to promote a revolution without weapons and without bloodshed, in the country of apartheid.

The best definition of Mandela’s legacy was given to us by the Nigerian writer Chinedu Okafor, author of The Red Scorpions, a novel which focuses on the recent history of Africa:

"The legacy of Nelson Mandela should be seen more as a legacy of love and forgiveness than nationalism. Nelson Mandela is a man who chose to love, even when he had every reason to hate.

I see Nelson Mandela as an incarnation of forgiving than as a freedom fighter for which many recognize him.

We can prove this with the fact that there were many freedom fighters in Africa, before and after Mandela, who persecuted those seen as enemies after coming to power, but as President of South Africa, he organized the famous Commission of Truth and Reconciliation, in which the truth about the events of the apartheid was revealed, and the needed forgiveness was applied." (Gazeta do Povo, Special Mandela 12.06.2013, p. 5.)

Once the news of Mandela’s death was released, it was found worldwide a wave of demonstrations of reverence and gratitude to the great South African leader by the role he played in the peaceful transition from one regime to all deplored - apartheid - for the freedom in which whites and blacks could then hang out and enjoy the same rights.

As it is known, since the continent became independent, only two leaders who came to the presidency of that country that have not been charged or indicted for corruption. One is Julius Nyerere Kambarage (Butiama, April 13, 1922 - London, October 14, 1999), Tanzania. The other one is Nelson Mandela.

Moreover, both voluntarily relinquished power, refusing the efforts they have made to keeping in power, no set term, a fact of life in Africa and Asia, where dictatorships were installed and perpetuated, resulting in seizures, conflicts and often disorganization of the economy, with all its attendant of difficulties and misery.

Freedom, equality and honesty, we can add the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation, these are the ideals that can be associated with Nelson Mandela, who was able to prove that it is indeed possible to take in the world we live in the same principles that Jesus in bequeathed two thousand years ago, although difficult the task is being performed. Turning the other cheek, be reconciled with the opponent, forgive not only seven times but seventy, here's what we saw in South Africa under the leadership of Mandela.

A thought, for sure, must have come to everyone's mind when we reported the death of the great leader: - If the life of a man summarize the few years we spent here, that would be a wasteful death of people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, all legitimate champions of the fight for peace and freedom!

It happens that no one's life is not just a single existence, and therefore all of them as free spirits who are, can join - and certainly it is what it happens - the efforts of Jesus, the Governor of our spiritual orb so that the planet on which we live is one day a fraternal world where peace, freedom and equality reign sovereign everywhere.