I’ve never met Nelson Mandela, nor have I been to South Africa. But like many who care about Africa or human rights or history, I am thinking of him a lot these days. And I can’t help but remember February 1990, when he was released from prison.
Back then I was ten and living in Lexington, Massachusetts. Each month my class would hold a discussion of current events. The idea was to stimulate our interest in the wider world by getting us all to present an article. That February it just happened to fall on the 12th, the day after the great man’s release. I don’t remember what story I, or anyone else, wanted to discuss. But I remember what my classmate Shomari chose.
Shomari was one of the handful of African-American kids in my grade. All of them were brought from deprived parts of Boston to our leafy suburb each morning on what we called the “Boston Bus”. Shomari had picked the Mandela story and I remember seeing her clutching her newspaper clipping, hardly able to contain the excitement. Then, just before she could speak, disaster struck. One of the white kids got up and told us that Nelson Mandela, a hero of civil rights in Africa, had been released from prison. He showed us a picture of Nelson and Winnie hand-in-hand, raising their fists in victory.
Shomari burst into tears. There was never any coordination about who would tell which story but this one was hers. It took some time for Mr Carlton to calm her down and my article, perhaps about ‘Buster’ Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson, got lost in the commotion.
I have mixed-race parents and until that year I’d been growing up in the UAE, a melting-pot of a country. I didn’t know what apartheid was, let alone understand that people might judge me on the basis of my colour or my name. I suspect Shomari knew that only too well. In fact, though I loved the place, it was in Lexington that I first realised that people might make those assumptions. Once during after-school basketball a classmate ran over to tell me that they’d just announced the Boston Bus was leaving and I had better hurry to catch it. I looked at him uncomprehendingly.
I think now of all the things I didn’t understand. That the horrors of apartheid had been allowed to go on for so long. That your chances of being of an ethnic minority and leader of the free world were almost zero. That gay relationships were second class. Nor did I understand what it meant to be a man imprisoned for decades, who on release called not for revenge but reconciliation. A man who could put anger and divisive identities behind him to become an icon of tolerance and understanding.
And now that man lies critically ill. Have we truly heard his message? We have come a long way in two decades but our species still seems fixated on the little differences. Race, religion, clan, the list is endless. We need to follow Nelson’s example: to put those things aside and think of the greater good.
I don’t know where Shomari is now but I hope she’s been able to forgive that little white boy who stole her moment 23 years ago.