As I write, 99 Presidents are already Cape Town preparinf for the burial of the former South African President, Nelson Mandela. This could be the greatest gathering of international head-of-states outside the UN and could be more than gatherings at the burial of Pope John Paul II. The illustrious President Obama and his wife arrived at South Africa from a 16-hour flight alongside the Clintons and the Bushes. This journey has been described by the US Press as the “Airforce One Awkward”.
Many have presumed this will give them the opportunity to discuss the impact of this man together, which might probably lead to new discourse in political and racial parlance. Remember, George is white, Obama is Black, George is Republican, and Clinton is Democrat. The principles of Madiba have influenced this possibility of confluence of the colour-mix in both political and economic fronts around the world. He gave the world a bright direction of a greater dimension of understanding justice and love. His new definition of Justice was not to give people what they deserve, but what they really want. It is a harder definition, but it worked.
I must confess that it was really hard to amass the extent of reference that the Old Man received after his death. I couldn’t imagine if there would ever be another man in history who will be so much honoured like Mandela until after a very very long time. He filled up the spaces in major newspapers all over the world. Webcast and air programs on Television keeps bootstrapping every memorable moments of the prodigious man. Like the biblical prophet, he had more honor abroad than in the African continent. I am sure Africans alone wouldn’t have celebrated Mandela nobly enough. His tributes flood all major broadcast around the world. No man has had much positive influence in the world especially in Africa in recent times than Mandela. I grew to learn about him, and the touching stories of his 27-year prison stay as the most deadly story of heroism ever feasible to me. Notably, his influence on me and many others who never knew him personally was simple – being a Prisoner doesn’t make you a slave forever. You can always rise above your limitations and come out victorious no matter how lengthy. One inordinate reason many hasn’t given up yet.
Madiba didn’t travel to Europe and America looking for money and fame like many would do these days. He didn’t see comfort where most of us think we can find them. He received military training in Algeria and Morocco and with the political platform of ANC, he fought. His mission was not to become President of his country; he was only driven by his quest for freedom. The few whites who were angered by the way they had hitherto been treated transferred the aggression on the blacks. The whites controlled everything, from money to women. Madiba and his co-freedom fighters couldn’t afford to be mere groaners and writers of the despair, took to the street to defend the first basic right of everyman, which is freedom.
I am seriously pained these days as I surround my thoughts with nitpicks when the solutions is staring at me at the face. I moan at my comfort not willing to stand out for my rights in discomfort. I am tamed so also are many. We are repressed by the inability not to thinkor to only think with a ceiling. This is not even about acting out for our rights; it is that many people’s thoughts and beliefs have been arrested.
What is freedom? Freedom is not in sitting in your room watching African Magic and whacking a lump of heated Turkey, saying life is good. If you have to dredge up what you went through to get that done and what you will do to continue to enjoy this and more, then you wouldn’t finish that meal with the requisite comfort. Your mind encapsulates like a controlled moron but outward, you look free and happy. You drive a car, and you smile as you outrun your friend on the express lane and you humbly bounce out as you park at the middle of an event. Good things at the cost of a bad weave. You live in a house you just completed after making so much procurement injustices and so many people spend the rest of their life sadly in the house of their own.
There is no freedom for an average Nigerian yet. You will need another job soon. You will need more money. You will have to attend these moribund hospitals when you are older and sick; you would need to steal plentiful money so you wouldn’t jeopardize your health in Nigeria-made health centers. Silent Generator costs about a million naira or more except you will keep settling for the pollution at the back of your room which will ruin your life stealthily. These generators run on expensive diesel, and there have to be stock of this to finish up your favourite program or feel the good fauna of the conditioned air. Your mind as a Nigerian keeps wondering like an oscillating windmill having no bearing for freedom.
It is good for you; at least you are still living and surviving even though I can bet this will only be short-lived unless your slave up to the ugly dictates of greed and immorality.
This poor story gets me wounded for the many unemployed graduates in the country. I have been trying to chat with one of the most brilliant Sociologist Nigeria’ brightest school has produced recently. She has complained that she has been shying away from public discussion after many years of no work; a typical tier of slavery. I thought a friend was doing well in the capital city, but lately, he was honest enough to confess to me he doesn’t know what tomorrow will look like and he had always assumed hope for survival. He is very near to where the monies his fathers’ fought for are siphoned, yet, he lacks the courage to claim it. He doesn’t want to die, yet he is dead.
So many and so many youth are half dead covering up with glorious clothes lifted around from friends and folks. Those ahead are not ready to mentor or listen. It takes extra-ordinary people or perhaps lucky people to get their way around this bound. I know too many graduates who run from pillar to pole aiming to survive under terrible trends called entrepreneurship. It is not as easy as I write it. Too many people hide in shame and slavery waiting for a tomorrow that doesn’t seem to come. Some take up jobs that change the direction of their life forever. These they do to survive in a land where the wealth required is as clear as the light, but fear has led many away from true freedom.
For us in this country, We need to be like Madiba. We should walk the long road to freedom. What Mandela is honoured for today was not only what he did before he went to prison but what he did while he was there and after he left. In prison, he learned true freedom. I am weary of this world that seems free, but we are bounded by the juggernaut of poverty and hopelessness. We should strive to be free of the lies of promises in a better life of modern assets and goods when people whom we are supposed to live together die to shameful pleas for aggrandizement, penurious super structures and monumental shame. Like Mandela said, the worst way to deprive people of freedom is through poverty. We shouldnt scared of poverty, we should be scared we live with it and they call it wealth.
Madiba and his co-fighters have found it hard to describe their prison experience in a bad light. As Mac Maharaj (his co-prisoner) narrated, in Prison, they enjoyed the free food, the free light, how they played together and sport together. They considered the Prison as a free university.
We mustn’t be cocooned by the media and lies of friends and family. We should be closer to life and death; power and powerlessness; love and bitterness. We should understand the inert nature of man and live a life of our own volition. We might be beaten and stabbed, fucked and disgraced, yet Like Mandela said, I was scared but the will of freedom can’t be compromised. He was once given amnesty and freed but with a condition not to fight. He refuted the so called “freedom” that the outside world gives with conditions; conditions not to fight; conditions of poverty, silent pains, destitution and fear.
Mandela describes to us that courage is not the absence of fear but the conquering of it. I am afraid of these woven lives where many move around as slaves thinking they are free. I am courageous enough to find the path of freedom, and I wouldn’t settle for less. I hope you join me in this soon. We pay too much money watching foreigners and diffusing others people’s culture. From media, city people,razzle-dazzle, schools to magazines.
RIP NELSON MANDELA
