From want, poverty, ignorance, intolerance, HIV/Aids and war

It is a sign of the closeness that South Africans feel towards Nelson Mandela that so many call him Madiba, his affectionate nickname. For in South Africa Madiba is still seen as the warm and wise father of a transformed nation as well as a truly global statesman.

He was born in 1918, son of a member of the royal house of the Thembu tribe. The schools Mandela attended were modelled on the British system; he later said he was taught to be a “black Englishman.” As a black South African, however, his freedoms were strictly limited. The young lawyer joined the African National Congress (ANC), dedicated to ending, via peaceful means, the apartheid system of racially-based division and discrimination. But faced with the regime’s increasingly brutal repression, Mandela was charged with organizing an armed wing of the ANC. After months of living and working underground, he was arrested in 1962. Tried for treason two years later, he was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Confined at first to the maximum security prison of Robben Island, Mandela refused to let his spirit be broken. “Free Mandela” became a rallying cry throughout the world, and in 1990 he walked out of prison after 27 years. Soon he was representing the ANC in negotiations with the government that led to the first elections open to all South Africans; these in turn led to his election as President in 1994. 

South Africans of all colours take pride in their country’s peaceful transition from white minority rule to multi-racial democracy—and give Nelson Mandela credit for leading that transition. Having left office after a single five-year term, Mandela, now aged 89, still maintains a punishing schedule that would exhaust a man half his age. 
Reader’s Digest sat down with the man called Madiba in the office of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation in Cape Town.

Reader’s Digest: When you finally achieved political freedom, you chose the path of reconciliation. Are you surprised at how powerful a force it has been?
Mandela: Well, people respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that’s how they’ll react. But if you say we want peace, we want stability, we can then do a lot of things which will contribute towards the progress of our society.

RD: As President, sometimes you referred to characters in Reader’s Digest stories, particularly those who, like yourself, have triumphed in the face of adversity. On Robben Island, you used to read the magazine?
Mandela: Yes, that’s true. It has very interesting stories! One of them was about a young man in Canada who had cancer of the right leg and then they advised to amputate it. They did, but he did not want to sit down in a corner and weep. He was on the Atlantic coast, he decided to run with one leg to the Pacific. 
So in this way Digest stories encourage people. Even if you have a terminal disease, you don’t have to sit down and mope. Enjoy life and challenge the illness that you have. And that goes a long way in encouraging many people with similar problems.

RD: You have described HIV/Aids as the greatest public-health crisis of all time and you seem to have made a personal crusade out of Aids because you believe that more needs to be done about it. Is that fair?
Mandela: Yes. One of the things we have to deal with is that of stigma, of avoiding people altogether who suffer from Aids. In 2000 I went for the opening of a rural school. I was conversing with the locals and they said to me that in a home nearby both parents were dead, leaving children, the eldest of whom was eight. I said, “Can we see them?” Oh, they were happy about that and as we were going there they were singing some songs about me. Then I went inside. When I came out after 25 minutes, the same crowd that had been singing about me, ran away from me. At first I didn’t recognize that they were moving away. I quickened my pace and they also quickened theirs to get away. When I realized that they were running from me, I just went back to my car.

RD: So leaders like yourself and others should help get rid of the ignorance that leads to this stigma.
Mandela: Absolutely. There was a lady who was suffering from HIV. She was courageous: she came to a meeting I attended and admitted that she suffered from HIV. I embraced her and I told the crowd: “Don’t isolate people who are suffering from terminal diseases, because that alone kills people far more than the disease itself.” When somebody discovers that they are no longer regarded as a human being, he or she loses the will to fight, whereas if they are supported, especially by friends and people they rely upon, they fight back. 

I know a number of people who are suffering from Aids but because we visit them and talk with them, this has given them a lot of courage. We tell them, “Don’t isolate yourself, you don’t have to hide that you are suffering from HIV.” 

And I tell them about my own example when I had tuberculosis in jail. When I was told this by the hospital, I went and told my friend Walter Sisulu. He called me aside and said, “Madiba, you must not tell us about this—it’s personal.” I said, “What is personal? The whole hospital knows about it!” Years later when I had cancer of the prostate I called a press conference and I made light about it. People like that type of thing—not to be too serious when discussing this question.

RD: Beyond Aids, what is the single greatest problem facing the world right now?
Mandela: The question of poverty and lack of education, those two combined. It’s important for us to ensure that education reaches everybody.

RD: Over the years you’ve devoted a lot of time to children. What do you think are the most important lessons that parents should keep in mind when bringing up children?
Mandela: Without education your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it’s very important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country. I often do that for my own children and grandchildren but I notice that my grandchildren know more now than I do!

RD: You became leader of the military wing of the ANC after you and other ANC leaders decided that non-violent struggle alone would not end oppression in South Africa. Are there places in the world today where armed struggles are justified?
Mandela: We had to create a military wing of the ANC because of the obduracy of the apartheid government who were not prepared to have any discussions with us. They were not prepared to accommodate our feelings and so we had to adopt methods to force them to do so and we succeeded. So a decision that you take depends on the actual circumstances facing you.

RD: Where would you draw the line between terrorism and legitimate freedom fighting?
Mandela: I am committed to the principle—and have confidence in the capacity of human beings—of finding rational solutions to situations of conflict.

RD: Are there any international figures you haven’t met but would like to?
Mandela: There are so many men and woman who hold no distinctive positions but whose contribution towards the development of society has been enormous. Some of them are not known even in their own countries, but when you come across them you are very impressed. Those are heroes or heroines we must never forget. Because of their service to society, you can’t really help but admire them.

RD: So it’s the message, not the particular notoriety of who’s saying it, that makes the difference?
Mandela: Yes, that’s true. It’s the contribution which a person, irrespective of his or her background, has made towards the development of society.

RD: When you were in prison all those long years on Robben Island and elsewhere, was there something that came back to you, something you had either in your mind, a message or passage from a book, a song, something that helped sustain you and keep up your spirits?
Mandela: There was a poem by an English poet, W.E. Henley, called “Invictus.” The last lines go:
It matters not how straight the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

RD: Some observers feel you would have made a good professional boxer if there were not a liberation struggle to be fought. What other jobs do you think you might have enjoyed?
Mandela: I would have liked to have been an ordinary labourer digging trenches. Boxing is something I enjoyed very much, too, but it may have been difficult [as a career]. One of the fighters I greatly admired was Muhammad Ali. As a boxer he took all this punishment without fighting back—taking it, taking it, taking it. During his fight with George Foreman [in Zaire in 1974] he said after a number of rounds, “We’ve been doing all this fighting and I haven’t even started yet!” You see, you can’t just take it. You can only take so much before you fight back.

RD: How would you like to be remembered in history?
Mandela: I do not want to be presented as some deity. I would like to be remembered as an ordinary human being with virtues and vices.