Mandela Day
18th July 2017.
the great plains of Africa echo your name, you live in our souls, a radiant flame.
the notions of racial superiority quake in your shadow, in the teeming cities, in the rural meadow.
you had an ideal for which you were prepared to die, you banished the clouds of oppression, revealing freedom’s unfettered sky.
your courage as you spent twenty-seven years in Apartheid dungeons, was unshakeable, even as you bore the brutality of tyrannical truncheons.
your comrades and you turned Robben Island into a university of freedom, of hope, even as you were shackled by iron and rope.
your indomitable spirit reached far and wide, across the great lands and over the vast seas, infusing freedom-loving people with the strength to fight, against that festering sore, the scourge of Apartheid, with all their collective might.
and when that day came when you walked under the South African sun, tall, proud and free, we ululated, we danced, we cried tears of joy, for at long last the dawn of liberation we could finally see.
and still your battles were far from over, as you steered our teetering country away from the abyss, the violence of Apartheid so brutal in its death throes, your message of forgiveness, of reconciliation spread as far as the wind blows.
those were harsh times indeed, our beloved South Africa on the precipice of civil war, the stench of blood on the breeze, yet you remained firm, urging us to throw our weapons into the waters of our seas.
then dawned the 27th of April in 1994, when all of our peoples queued to vote, democratically and peacefully, to realise the ideals and principles you and your comrades and countless, nameless others, fought, sacrificed, and died for.
and on the 10th day of May a couple of weeks later, you became our President, our Commander-in-Chief, as the yoke of hegemony was cast off, after all the pain, the suffering, the savagery, and the grief.
your principles never wavered, you did not to the powerful bow, you remained steadfast in your dream of a better society for all, you taught us to rise up again, to stand upright, after many a fall.
your humanity, your conscience became a part of the wind, your message, your dedication to the human cause, inspired numberless more, breaking the latches of racism on many a shut door.
you were our Madiba, our father, our beacon of truth, your message imbibed by so many, the aged and the youth.
then came that sorrowful day when you passed away, and to the welcoming arms of our ancestors you made your way.
we cried, we sobbed, our world convulsed, having lost you as you no longer walked amongst us in flesh and in bone, yet your example, your life entire, became a lesson set in stone.
today we fight newer battles, the enemy not so apparent, not so clear, corrupt in words and in deed, we see the scurrying for power and for greed.
we see our beloved rainbow nation fracturing, your dreams of economic and social justice diluted by avarice, and not by need.
but still we cherish and strive and fight on, todays battlefields less easily defined, the enemy often within us, and harder to find.
still your revolutionary spirit, your unwavering belief in equality for all, your principled struggle never expedient, but for what was, for all, true and right,
it is still that undying spirit of yours that compels us to never rest, to never give up the just fight.
Viva Nelson Mandela Viva!
Mayibuye-i-Afrika!
Amandla! ngAwethu!
All Power to the People!
The Struggles Continue …
with President Nelson Mandela. Johannesburg 2008.
__________
http://www.anc.org.za/content/nelson-mandela
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