Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
History, courage and love
Explain Mandela's ideas about history, courage and love.
The generals salute. Jets, helicopters and troop carriers fly over the Union Buildings. The highest generals salute Mandela and pledge their loyalty. He remembers that 'not so many years before they would not have saluted but arrested me'. The army now serves democracy.
Two anthems, swapped. South Africa now had two national anthems:
- 'Die Stem', the old anthem of the white Republic;
- 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika', the song of the black people.
That day whites sang 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika' and blacks sang 'Die Stem'. Neither group knew the words of the song it once despised, but 'they would soon know the words by heart'.
Mandela's reflections (from his autobiography, after the speech). In the first decade of the twentieth century, white South Africans built 'a system of racial domination'. In the last decade, that system was overturned. It came from 'the unimaginable sacrifices of thousands'. He was 'simply the sum of all those African patriots' who went before him. He was pained that he could not thank them, and that they could not see what their sacrifices had won.
Heights of character. Deep oppression produced great people: Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Chief Luthuli, Yusuf Dadoo, Bram Fischer, Robert Sobukwe. 'Perhaps it requires such depths of oppression to create such heights of character.' A country's greatest wealth is its people, 'finer and truer than the purest diamonds'.
Courage and love.
- 'Courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.' The brave man is the one who conquers fear.
- 'No one is born hating another person.' People learn to hate, so they can be taught to love, 'for love comes more naturally to the human heart'.
- Even in prison he saw 'a glimmer of humanity' in a guard. 'Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.'
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