Learning about Nelson Mandela

I was 12 years old when Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

I first heard about Nelson Mandela at church and what I heard made me actually pay attention that Sunday morning.

Up until that point in my formal education I had been untaught about the realties of the world around me and left unaware that such inequalities existed in the world in 1990 (this is a type of ignorance I do not afford my students). In school I learned only about the Civil Rights Movement of the past, not of the fights for civil rights occurring in the present. I was raised to believe that I could be anything that I wanted to be and that all people were really created equal, but I quickly learned that not everybody in the world was actually treated equal. That realization of what apartheid meant and how it treated people popped some sort of protective childhood bubble and wakened the political and social advocate you might know me to be today.

So, the Sunday after Nelson Mandela was released from prison we celebrated at church...I sang "Free Nelson Mandela, Free free, Free free free Nelson Mandela" as loud at I could and danced around with the other 1000 smiling people. After 27 year of prison, much of which included labor on Robben Island, South Africa had finally been forced to listen to the global community and Nelson Mandela was released.

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for treason, due to his role as an anti-apartheid activist and leader within the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC did not always approach change with non-violence, since the enforcers of apartheid were often violent, and for this reason may of the members of the ANC (including Mandela) remain of the U.S. governments watch list and are not allowed to enter the U.S. which permission from the State Department....just in case you thought the problem was only South Africa's.

I was in 9th grade when the first free elections took place in South Africa and I actually cried when I saw the lines of people waiting to vote. I clearly remember a political cartoon that I saw in a magazine that week. There was a picture of a long line of people when a sign that said "poll station" pointing in the direction the people were facing. A white man was saying "I've been waiting almost 2 days to vote!" and a black man was saying "I've been waiting almost 50 years."

From 1994-99 Nelson Mandela served as president of South Africa. In his inaugural address he said:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

There is something powerfully optimistic about these words, particularly coming from a person who spent so many of his years unfairly imprisoned. This quote was pinned above my desk during college, to remind me of the obligations I had to myself to do my best.

This summer, while I am in South Africa, Nelson Mandela will celebrate his 90th birthday.