Insight: Creating a ‘Mandela-like’ world, the biggest tribute

THE repeated hospitalisation of global icon Nelson Mandela is of concern not only to South Africans but to the whole world.

But his illness has had an unintended effect that we hardly talk about – it has exposed our inability to imagine a Mandela-like world without him.

It is an ideal world we should all strive for, one that Mandela himself did not necessarily and entirely achieve, but he helped us to see it as a genuine possibility.

We are failing to realise that there are two Mandelas: the first and the potential Mandela.

The first Mandela is alive and real, though illness and age will in future conspire to snatch him from us, leaving a ga ping void.

We are not in control of the life of the first Mandela.

However, we continue to pray for his well-being and we hope to have him for as long as it is practically possible.

His life is not up to him, though he has pulled through many difficulties, seeing some of his old comrades die, leaving him a lonely figure in the shrinking planet of genuine leaders.

It is not up to his family, who despite their own understandable challenges, have been at his side under difficult circumstances.

It is also not entirely up to the medical team that has so far done a sterling job, providing him with the best medical care he deserves.

A combination of all these efforts by people all over the world, his family, medical personnel and drawing from his own internal resources of resilience and, more importantly, the one who breathed life into us all, have kept the first Mandela alive.

But there is a sense of anguish when we consider the real possibility that we will one day be unable to hold onto him. That is when age and ill health will have overpowered human efforts.

We will be left helpless and poorer. Well, that’s what some would like us to believe.

But we can hold onto the potential Mandela, who ought to live in our minds regardless of whether the first is alive or not.

Unlike the first one whose life we can only attempt to keep – albeit up to a certain point, potential Mandela has endless possibilities. Though the second is derived from the first, he can nevertheless be a very powerful force.

While the world may have begun to plan fitting tributes to the first Mandela for the day he is whisked away from us, we have to begin to imagine a Mandela- like world without him.

What would such a world entail?

It has to be a world that resonates with the things he stands for, including that which he set out to achieve, but did not.

Of the many good things that Mandela stands for, some are immediately prominent. Freedom, selflessness, dignity, justice, moral leadership, state craftsmanship, tolerance and the ability to forgive.

Though these values have always been an integral part of his political organisation, there is almost consensus within the ANC that other values counter to those mentioned above are threatening to reign supreme if not already within the party.

The ANC has to reinvent itself and groom the kind of leaders who will take Mandela’s values further beyond the rhetorical claims by those who have become traitors to what he stands for.

Such leaders don’t come as easy as instant coffee, to borrow a phrase from ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe.

Fortunately, the Mandela values go beyond narrow party-political considerations. They can be appropriate for much bigger purposes – domestically and globally.

They are the kind that could help avoid economic hardships and wars. Take selflessness and justice, for example.

Had the world been governed under these kinds of values, the global capitalist system would not have run amok to the point of breeding crudely selfish entrepreneurs who would stop at nothing to plunge the world economy into near- depression.

Had these values been internalised, we would not be seeing the wide-scale corruption that has succeeded phenomenally in inducing a sense of sedation among citizens, denuding us of our natural capacity to be shocked.

Had the values of freedom and dignity been uppermost in our minds, we would not have the violent violation of women and children that has almost become like a favourite sporting code for heartless perpetrators.

Had there been justice and moral leadership in the emerging global society, we would not have the kinds of wars we have seen, which continue to displace, kill and maim hundreds of thousands of people, including children and women. Citizens would not run around looking for elusive exemplary leaders who have clearly become an endangered species.

Had there been state craftsmanship guided by the constitution, we would not have highly politicised decision-making that threatens to tear apart the functioning of the state itself.

Mandela’s example provides endless positive possibilities.

The point is that it is up to us to keep “potential Mandela” alive beyond the limit of what medical science, prayers, well-wishes and all other human efforts can do to keep “first Mandela” alive.

Beginning to think and act in this way could be the best way to wish Mandela well.