Thursday, December 12, 2013

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013

~ In Memoriam ~

...my father...reserved his own faith for the great spirit of the Xhosas, Qamata, the God of his fathers. My father was an unofficial priest.... He did not need to be ordained, for the traditional religion of the Xhosas is characterized by a cosmic wholeness, so that there is little distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the natural and the supernatural. ...my mother...became a Christian... I  myself was baptized into the Methodist, or Wesleyan Church as it was then known...
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p.12
I was born in the Eastern Cape. It is a very beautiful part of our land. It is rich in vegetation and folklore. As a small child I stood on the outer edges of the evening camp-fire. I listened many times to the stories of the tribal leaders. There would be long silences in-between. They spoke of our ancestors. As I listened to them, images of colour were conjured up in my mind. As I looked up into the clear, crisp, night sky I saw millions of stars. I wondered how they shone?
-Nelson Mandela, On Colour, 2003 (Also see Twinkle Little Star)

"6th February 1998: We took the Makana ferry to that dismal island, Robben Island, where lepers and political prisoners were kept. It was a depressing pilgrimage into the dark shadow of our past. Featureless, desolate, drab, tragic. This was also the island where my tenth great grandmother, Eva Krotoa, was born and often banished." -CG Garvie, Journal, 6th February 1998

 "Then came the wasted prison years. A great hood descended over my eyes. Grey became the primary and paramount colour. The paint on the interior walls and the gates and the side doors were grey. The outside walls have grey slate. The watchtowers were grey. Even the roads which were built with a mixture of lime and crushed seashells were grey in colour. White appeared as a relief. The prison clothing was a dull khaki. Even the prison guards wore khaki. Even Table Mountain, a symbol of freedom for us, was grey in the distance." -Nelson Mandela, On Colour, 2003
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
oOo

 Inimba - Empathy and Connectedness

I never met Nelson Mandela though I was once in his presence. His life affected all of us. We are all different because of Madiba. My walk had very modest beginnings. Many have testified to a feeling of connectedness, a sense of loving rapport or resonance, with this man.  I was also changed. Mandela was a catalyst. Can we explain this awe inspiring synergy?

A close friend, mentor, and colleague, the Rev. Vivian Harris, would often share a lovely Xhosa insight. It illustrates Madiba's Charisma and Compassion. It is the Xhosa idea of Inimba. Harris wrote about Inimba in the February 1994 edition of Living & Loving. It was shortly before the historic elections of that year. He wrote:

In our part of Africa we have a wide variety of people, languages, cultures and customs. It is easy for one group to feel that it can learn nothing from the others. 

 The truth is that we have heaps to learn from each other. Each culture is rich in traditions which could be of great blessing to others. Let me share with you something I learnt recently. 

 Any mother knows that when her infant cries the sound of that cry does something to her. She immediately responds - without having to think about it. Her response is not only an inner feeling of love and concern for her baby; she finds that her body also responds to the cry. 

 Without hesitation, and almost without being able to resist it, she responds to her child's need. 

 Now the truth I learnt is that the Xhosa people regard this response as a 'thing' that lives inside a mother. To them it is so real that they have given it a name. It is called Inimba. 

 Inimba is like an extra part of the body that lives in a mother, or it is a special spirit that works within a mother. 

 Pause awhile and think about this thing that is so strange to some of us, while it is so well-known to others. 

 Babies can be very wearying when they are ill. A stranger might become irritated by their constant crying. A stranger might reckon that a baby that keeps crying, when there is apparently nothing wrong, does not deserve to be loved or helped. But the mother loves her baby and goes to its rescue instinctively. 

 To Inimba there is no question about deserving; Inimba simply moves a mother to help. Inimba does not ask whether the baby needs to be helped. Inimba does not say, I have helped you enough times already today and now I will help you no more. Maybe I will help you again tomorrow. 

Startling as this may seem, I believe, Madiba had this amazing attribute. I seldom hear Mandela being described as anything but as a man, a towering giant of a man, sometimes even  an uncompromising, principled patriarch, a stern father figure. However, Madiba had Inimba. It comes to the fore especially in his love for the vulnerable and downtrodden, for little children and his passion for his country.
Madiba with the Children
(Photo: Source Unknown)
Harris continued:

This is a profound truth not only about a mother but also about our heavenly Father - God. 

 Possibly Inimba is one of the activities of God the Holy Spirit. I don't wish to be blasphemous so I must not make any detailed suggestions about God's nature. But this I do know: as a mother responds to the cry of her baby, so God responds to the need of His people. 

 One might go so far as to say that this response in love, care and rescue is part of the very make-up of God - part of His nature - so that it is not possible for Him to ignore our cry. 
....
A baby's life depends on the Inimba in its mother. The life of this strife-torn part of the world depends on the Inimba in ordinary people like you and me. 

This wonderful thought is developed further in Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela's evocative article “Forgiveness and the Maternal Body, An African Ethics of Interconnectedness” and concludes that this awesome maternal instinct can be experienced and irresistibly expressed by men of compassion too.

Having “birthed” this infant democracy, the "New South Africa", Mandela responded to the needs of his people as a mother would reach out to her child. It was the most natural, spontaneous thing for him to do because he had Inimba.
oOo

My earliest recollection of Nelson Mandela was as a 16 year old boarding school boy in 1962. This was in connection with news of the Rivonia Trial.  I was then only just beginning to become politically aware. Gandhi and Tolstoy were my teenage heroes.  In my naivete I didn't much appreciate Mandela. He was portrayed as a villain and a rogue, a Communist and a remorseless terrorist. The African National Congress was demonized in our young minds. When Mandela reluctantly adopted the Umkhonto we Sizwe military option I thought this stance was not in harmony with the satyagraha or "passive resistance" of Gandhi and non-violence of Tolstoy. Gandhi and Tolstoy were more in accord with my own intuitive feelings of reverence for life, all life, loving your enemies, and turning the other cheek. Had I only but read Mandela's defence more carefully!

It was only once I had left school and moved to Johannesburg that I was exposed to the broader South African reality. The terror on our streets and the unrest in the townships had increased. It took me a long time to understand the work of the likes of Beyers Naudé, The Christian Institute, and the SACC.

The scales gradually fell from my eyes. I knew nothing of the South African Liberation Movements and very little of my own colonial mentality. The terror and fear evoked by the ANC and PAC bombings were in conflict with my understanding of justice. I was oblivious to my own innate unconscious fears and prejudices. My conscience could not justify limpet mines, bombings, and the awful, sometimes indiscriminate, casualties. It militated against my Christian and Gandhian values of reverence for all life that I had embraced as teenager. A thick veil had been drawn over my eyes. Indoctrination and propaganda had blinded us. Mandela was vilified. I never knew that I even shared a common faith with this remarkable man.
oOo

"20th April 2003, Easter Sunday: This year’s Easter was somewhat different. We fetched Mom Adam to visit Liliesleaf Farm. There, son-in-law, Steve, gave us a tour of the Liliesleaf Farm Hotel that he managed. Mavis Adam, though a year older, shared a birthday with Madiba. This was the place where several of the accused in the historic Rivonia Trial were arrested in the early 60s. The museum included historic photographic displays of the arrest and trial together with biographies written by the accused.... Steve presented me with a biography of Sisulu. Liliesleaf Farm was a fitting monument to Resurrection." -CG Garvie, Journal,20th April 2003
oOo

Gradually, very gradually there came a metamorphosis and change in my own political perceptions. This was largely due to three influences.

"Jack" Cook
Arthur John Thornhill Cook
(Photo: CG Garvie)
My minister, the Rev "Jack" Cook of the Clifton Methodist Church in Johannesburg regularly exposed us to Soweto and the dreadful circumstances of fellow Christians living there. Jack was a former Warden and Tutor at the historic Lovedale Theological College (Minutes of Conference 1981, p.12) where Govan Mbeki among others studied. Increasingly the grim oppression and monstrous evil of racial prejudice and "Apartheid" came to my attention. It was during this time as a Wesley Guild leader that I first came across and read some writings of Mandela which, at that time, had been banned and was even a criminal offence to possess. Jack's influence was enormous extending even to an appreciation of African music once taking us to meet Hugh Tracey, an authority in African music, music that Madiba so loved. It was only then that I really began to think about the Christian values of justice, freedom, liberation, and redemption. Jack Cook struck a new chord for me.

Senator Charles Diggs
Charles Coles Diggs, Jr.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Senator Charles Diggs was a vocal American Baptist Senator who visited South Africa and more especially the iconic NASA Deep Space Tracking Facility at Hartebeesthoek in August 1971 where I was employed. "He was a committed publicist for the liberation cause in South Africa. His 'Action Manifesto' (1972) displayed his support for the armed struggle against Apartheid and criticised the United States government for decrying the use of such violence when it failed to condemn measures used by the South African government to subjugate the majority of its own people" (Wikipedia). Diggs was cause for further consideration and reflection. Though unpopular he got me to thinking. I could no longer ignore the township and prison tears.

Recently, American Vice-President Joe Biden, remembered, "When I tried to enter Soweto township with Congressmen Andrew Young of Atlanta and Charles Diggs of Detroit, I remember their tears of anger and sadness." Charles Diggs' visit contributed eventually to my decision to enter the Methodist Ministry at the end of 1971. NASA withdrew shortly thereafter and the Tracking Station was closed for "diplomatic reasons" (DJ Mudgway, Uplink-Downlink, p.77).

Douglas Thompson
Douglas Chadwick Thompson
The Rev. Douglas Thompson was a Methodist Minister who had been detained and was served banning orders in the 1960s. I first met Douglas when I was appointed to the Springs-Nigel Circuit of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa in 1978. Anthony Egan records in his, "Detention without trial: the experience of the Reverend Douglas Thompson in the South African state of emergency", how Joe Slovo urged Douglas to serve as their chaplain and to conduct an Easter Sunday Service for them on the 17th April 1960.

Joe Slovo had put him up to it. Noting that other prisoners at the Fort had access to Sunday services, Slovo and the others decided that this was unfair and needed rectifying. Since the prison authorities would not provide them with chaplains, the detainees should − and could − produce a chaplain from within their own ranks. 
...
For his text that Easter Sunday, Thompson chose 1 Corinthians 13, the famous Pauline discourse on love. Aware that most of his “flock” were agnostics, he produced a powerful sermon on three Greek New Testament notions of love − the love of God, the love of another person, and the love of community, with its emphasis on sharing. His homiletic intention was clear: the detainees should stick together, support each other in their time of crisis. Though the source of this exhortation to solidarity lay squarely in the Gospel tradition, its content dovetailed neatly with Liberal values of generosity of spirit and Marxist notions of solidarity. Years later, former detainees would remind him of that sermon and in an interview in 1982 Thompson recalled it with delight.

Egan notes, "This would seem to echo the thinking of a famous Lutheran theologian, Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros: a study of the Christian idea of love."  I rather think Douglas took his Easter Sermon from another source.

Douglas gave me his copy of Alfred Ernest Garvie's The Christian Doctrine of the Godhead. Garvie's (no direct relation) chapter on "The Christian Life" speaks of "The Energy of Love" (p.417):

i.Love to God as Motive and Pattern;
ii.Love to Man as Forgiveness and Sacrifice;
iii.Love as the Moral Principle; and,
iv.Love as the Social Bond.

Garvie concludes, "The Christian truth that in one body the members suffer or rejoice together is affecting political theory, if it has not yet adequately influenced political practice. Even in citizenship love needs to be exercised."

Learning to appreciate Madiba was no easy walk for me. I was slowly and painfully being conscientised, step by step along the way, by a Providence that I will ever be grateful for. I was beginning to realise that Wesleyan "Perfect Love" could not be divorced from "Social Holiness". It was evident that Madiba exemplified this love of which Alfred Ernest Garvie wrote.

Whether Madiba was steeped in the writings of John Wesley I do not but few have come this close to Wesley's portrait of a Christian...

He is full  of love to his neighbour, of universal love, not confined to one sect or party, not restrained to those who agree with him in opinions or in outward modes of worship, or to those who are allied to him by blood or recommended by nearness of place. Neither does he  love those only that love him or that are endeared to him by intimacy or acquaintance. But his love resembles that of Him whose mercy is over all His works. It soars above all these scanty bounds, embracing neighbours and strangers, friends and enemies - yea, not only the good and gentle, but also the froward, the evil, and unthankful... This is the  plain, naked portraiture of a Christian. (John Wesley, Letters, II, 376-802)

oOo

During the 1980s South Africa was plunged into a dark night of boycotts, anger, chaos, and confusion. It was when Dan Heymann composed the South African hit, "Weeping", questioning the injustices of the ruling order...

It doesn’t matter now 
It’s over anyhow 
He tells the world that it’s sleeping 
But as the night came round 
I heard its lonely sound 
It wasn’t roaring, it was weeping

Original video of "Weeping" by Bright Blue
(Directed by Nic Hofmeyr. Dan Heymann on keyboards)

Then came the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 at a time of escalating civil unrest. The rest is history.
oOo
Methodist Conference, Umtata, 18th September 1994
In the picture: Revs, Vivian Seethal, Viv Harris (Secretary of Conference), Colin Garvie, and Presiding Bishop Stan Mogoba (former Robben Island prisoner), Inset: Madiba. Photos: Dimension
"My joy at being in this conference is multiplied many-fold by the fact that this is for me  also a personal home-coming, both in the physical and spiritual sense. The environs of  Umtata are not only my humble origins. It is here that my spiritual association with this  great Church started. And I cannot over-emphasise the role that the Methodist Church  has played in my own life." -Nelson Mandela, Address to Conference

"18th September 1994: When Dr Mandela arrived, which he described as a "spiritual homecoming", the people exploded in a crescendo of Methodist song. Here was the prisoner who had become a prince, come home. When the choir rendered the anthem, the President spontaneously stood up and started dancing. This was the dancing President. Tears flowed from my eyes. There I was, the weeping Preacher! It was a moving and deeply touching moment." -CG Garvie, Journal
oOo

The "Mandela" Particle

Qamata, omnipresent and obscure, the supreme God of Madiba's father, was the most prominent deity in Xhosa religion and folklore. Qamata was the child of the sun god, Thixo, and the earth goddess, Jobela. Madiba has given us a glimpse of Qamata.

Madiba also defies definition. During the Apartheid years he acquired the nickname, "the Black Pimpernel" from "the novel by Baroness Emma Orczy set during the Reign of Terror" about a "hero with a secret identity", The Scarlet Pimpernel. Many places, institutions, plants, and discoveries have been named after Nelson Mandela but the most elusive was a theoretical nuclear particle, called the "Mandela Particle" which like the hero of the story has refused to be pinned down....

What was it: The 'Mandela' particle was (at that time) a new sub-nuclear particle from cosmic ray interactions in experiments. The scientists observed a bump in the 'hadron energy spectrum in cosmic rays' which was detected by an 'innovative hadron calorimeter'. This could have been due to a new particle, which the researchers dubbed the Mandela. Sadly, the bump was eventually found to be due to a burned-out connection in the detector's custom-built computer. (CERN Courier 2006)

 Why it was named 'Mandela': Dr John Baruch says in a Bradford University staff profile that he was interested in politics at the time and suggested that the particle be named after Nelson and Winnie Mandela. Nelson Mandela was in jail at the time but says Baruch 'I thought their time would come and so would this new nuclear particle. As with many things scientific, the data improved the particle went away, but not before we had hit the world headlines and had two TV programmes made. Mandela did rather better and Apartheid was pushed into the dustbin of History.'

There is a parable in there for us. Madiba - now you see him, now you don't - constantly deflected attention away from himself.

Asimbonanga (we have not seen him)
Asimbonang' umandela thina (we have not seen mandela) 
Laph'ekhon (in the place where he is) 
Laph'ehleli khona in the place where he is kept)
                                                - Johnny Clegg & Savuka

Madiba had Inimba! He epitomised what we call agape-love, a love that asks for no reward. As a shepherd boy Madiba learned to tend his father's flock and to look to the stars. As President of the "Rainbow Nation" Madiba taught and showed us to forgive, to love, to hope, and to live with integrity reaching beyond our own limited selves and "look to the stars"! The walk must continue!
oOo

“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended” ~ Nelson Mandela from Long Walk to Freedom, 1994

 Mooi loop, Madiba!

oOo
©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za
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