Monday 15 February, 2010

World

The central area of Cape Town and the Waterfront Harbour as seen from Table Mountain. The Island on the left is Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was kept imprisoned for so many years.

The twentieth anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela also aptly marks 50 years since the prophetic speech to the Cape Town Parliament by then British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, warning that the “winds of change are blowing across Africa”. Charles Gardner reports.

The sight of Nelson Mandela walking out of prison with his head held high in Cape Town 20 years ago is one of those incredibly uplifting, heart-warming moments of history many will never forget.

I remember watching it live on TV from the front room of my little home in Yorkshire, 6,000 miles from the city of my birth where all this was taking place. But I wasn’t that far removed from all that had led up to that amazing event, which saw the release of the ANC leader after 27 years of incarceration, for much of which time he was isolated with other political prisoners on nearby Robben Island.

For decades his name had divided South Africans because he represented the call – and need – for the stench of apartheid to be expelled from our beloved country. Many people had ‘benefited’ from apartheid, for example in the way certain unskilled jobs were reserved for whites, who also had better residential and educational facilities.

But I grew up in a family, and among friends, who found everything about apartheid abhorrent and ugly, and so it wasn’t surprising that I became something of an anti-apartheid political activist in my youth.

Mandela’s imprisonment was totally cruel and unjust, separating him from his family for so long, but he walked tall out of Pollsmoor Prison that day on February 11 1990 – not out of arrogance or defiance, but because he had persevered under great trial and come out shining as gold refined in the fire at the age of 71. And I’m sure no-one expected – certainly after all he’d been through – that he would still be politically active and indeed a respected world leader two decades on.

Key to his success was that he held no bitterness or resentment for the regime that had treated him so badly. In fact he had reached out to them and won them over with his charm, warmth and wisdom.

And along with Archbishop Tutu and other churchmen, he inspired the reconciliation process that was to prove such a healing balm for the divided country soon to become a rainbow nation offering hope and promise of a better future to all its population.

Within a few years South Africa was to host – and win – the Rugby World Cup with Mandela and Springbok captain Francois Pienaar joining together in jubilation at the dawn of a new era – the subject of must-see newly released movie Invictus. They also staged the Cricket World Cup and should have won the bid to host the 2004 Olympics which went instead to an ill-prepared and overheated Athens. And now they are preparing for football’s World Cup.

South Africa has enjoyed a renaissance and become a much sought after tourist destination despite its distance from Europe. Not everything is hunky-dory, but if you’re looking for perfect rule, you’ll have to wait for the promised one thousand year reign of the returning Christ. And that brings me to my main point, which is that the new South Africa has drawn on its rich Christian heritage, without with reconciliation and relative peace would not have been possible.

Mandela and many of his leading colleagues in the fight for freedom were brought up and educated by Methodists and other Christian missionaries. True, there were several Communists among the ANC leadership, but it was the conciliatory and pragmatic voice of those who had been schooled in a biblical ethos that provided the driving force – and oiled the engine – of the new political machine.

Even some who do not own Christianity have a godly heritage that has left its mark and profoundly influenced their way of life. I think of a colleague who claims to be atheist, but who is kind, considerate, thoughtful, courteous and conscientious; but such virtues did not emanate from nowhere, for it turns out that his father is a committed Methodist.

Part of South Africa’s rich Christian heritage can be traced back to the influence on the entire nation – and particularly on the Afrikaners – of the Rev Andrew Murray, the world-renowned revivalist and devotional writer whose works are prominently featured in a new collection of daily readings called Living the Christ Life, published by CLC and edited by Rebecca English. And his father, also Andrew, in whose Eastern Cape parsonage my orphaned great-grandfather grew up, is regarded as a founding father of the Dutch Reformed Church who left a legacy of biblically-based family and community life models that served as an inspiration for generations to come. And while it was out of the DRC that the policy of apartheid eventually emerged in 1948, the principle of measuring all doctrine in the light of the Scriptures that underpinned the Murray ministry became the salvation of the nation in the end. This was because the denomination that so influenced the policies of the ruling National Party from over four decades was able to acknowledge its sin and repent. The whole edifice of apartheid collapsed within two years of the revocation of support for the policy by DRC leaders, which paved the way for Mandela’s release and a magnificent new dawn.

Yes, it was a ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ (the title of his autobiography) for Nelson, but it was a nation’s Christian heritage that made it possible, as he was able to draw on the qualities of patience, endurance and forgiveness he had learnt under his Methodist benefactors as he grew up in the Eastern Cape.

The gospel is all about freedom – being freed from slavery to sin and selfishness in order to serve, love and enjoy the abundant life of the living God. It was, after all, in addressing a seduction by wrong teaching that had brought them into bondage that the Apostle Paul scolded the Galatian Christians: “It was for freedom that Christ has set us free.”

Photo: Wikipedia under GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2