Nelson Mandela’s legacy

Nelson Mandela is few of the world’s known personalities who have received critical positive attention from the international media. A closer look at his personal and political life attests to the fame he received worldwide. Nelson Mandela was at the core of a South African national movement that sought to eradicate apartheid from its system. This feat reverberated as a form of democratic transformation that would accord valuable lessons towards fighting human plagues such as racism. Mandela rose to international fame because his struggles indicated that human beings could triumph against any odds. Through the hard decisions he undertook, Nelson Mandela helped create a prominent legacy.

By going to the prison for 27 years, Nelson Mandela proved that he could go extreme lengths to defend his stance against apartheid. When Mandela started gaining internal attention and connections, he could have utilized such opportunities to escape from arrest. Mandela, however, chose to stay in South Africa thereby increasing his chances for arrest by the imperialist authorities. In 1962, the South African authorities arrested Nelson Mandela for having left the country without a valid passport. This was a prelude to his major 1964 trial that led to his sentencing for 27 years in prison (Crompton, 2007). In prison, Mandela learned that common things such as forgiveness united humanity. The story about his grueling days in prison is still a major reason for Mandela’s fame because of the pain that people associated with such an experience.

Mandela’s choice of forgiving his oppressors was an unimaginable undertaking that drew the world’s emotions towards black South Africans’ ordeal in a segregated community. Having experienced a painful time in prison, a conventional mindset would not have expected Mandela to forgive the authorities that sent him to jail. Mandela stated that he went to prison as an angry individual who believed that triumphing against apartheid would only take violence. Mandela stated that his core lesson during his prison time was that human beings have many things uniting them than the issues that differentiate them. On coming out of jail, he visited many countries such as the United Kingdom whereby he preached of peace as more essential than violence in winning negotiations.

Mandela was famous about his pragmatic ways of handling apartheid in South Africa. In his first experiences of segregation, he realized that joining a unified organization was the best way to fight apartheid. Mandela began his revolutionary activities as a radical and a militant person because he believed that was the best way of gaining the attention of the authorities (Boehmer, 2010). As ANC expanded, Mandela sought to invite ordinary individuals into the party. This was responsible for the involvement of movements such as the communists in the ANC’s struggles. In his later days, Mandela discovered that violence created substantial harm on the lives of human beings. In this sense, peaceful negotiations would be the ultimate way of ending apartheid.

Mandela earned his legacy by making difficult decisions. By undergoing difficult experiences in the prison for 27 years, Mandela proved that human beings, sometimes, can experience difficult circumstances towards achieving certain ends in life. Mandela’s decision of forgiving his oppressors united the world in identifying with the experiences of the apartheid system. This stance softened the oppressive system in heeding to the plies of the black South Africans. Mandela is also famous for his pragmatic ways of handling apartheid. He began his activism as a militant person but later chose peaceful negotiation as the best way of ending apartheid.

References

Boehmer, E. (2010). Nelson Mandela: brief insights. New York, NY: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

Crompton, S. E. (2007). Nelson Mandela: ending apartheid in South Africa. New York: Chelsea House.