In light of what happened in the last week what does this
remind you of?
This was the pattern one student had drawn to represent the color-coded
pH scale from 0-14 that was part of their classwork for the day.
Some said a ladder, others a piano, others DNA untwisted and
others a gridiron or football field. I pushed further and asked what the big
event in the world was for the last week. Finally some remembered, “Nelson Mandela
died or others that man from Africa died.”
Now what does it remind you, I asked.
Some got it – “Prison bars!”
Yes, these are like the prison bars that held him for 27
years. Yes, 27 long years without his freedom. He was in there because he stood
up the oppressive practice of apartheid.
I shared my own journey. In 1972 I was in then Rhodesia that
also practiced apartheid.
I told my students that they could not find it on a map. It
now has a freedom name, Zimbabwe. When I was there on a youth study travel
seminar sponsored by the United Methodist Church Board of Global Ministries, I
saw a site that is emblazoned in my brain forever. We were touring one of the
cities there and passed the usual businesses much like any America city. We passed
homes like many homes in the US. Then we pulled up into the black section of
town. Right in the middle of town was a dirt road with mud stick homes for over
500 residents. At the end of the entrance road was one lone water tap on a
metal pipe about three feet from the ground. It was the only source of water
for the entire settlement. Sadly, tragically, there was no sanitation, no
health care, and no education for these indigenous people.
I told my students that Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for
trying to overthrow a similar dehumanizing system in his country of South
Africa. Some of his means were not peaceful. After 27 years in a small cell, Nelson
Mandela was freed by President de Klerk, an Afrikaner (white).
Remarkably he did not try to plot to kill him or to beat him
up; rather, he shook his hand. A short time later apartheid was abolished. A
few years later Nelson Mandela was the new president of South Africa.
Nelson’s witness through his imprisonment and release and
presidency shook the world and helped remove apartheid forever.
My wife remembers watching his release from prison with our
young kids. I remember being only a few hundred miles from where the read and
wrote letters for 27 years. Many of us have memories of his life. Now my
students have some as well.
What will the world do without him? There is a mirror in my
room to remind us.
