Waking to a World Without Mandela

Nelson Mandela “Hero” is a word which has been cheapened in our world for several decades. The man who bought that word back from Hollywood and tabloids – with the compounded interest it deserves – was Nelson Mandela. My time zone woke to the news this morning that our world has lost that hero. Mandela was imprisoned before I was born, and the quiet, conservative enclave where I was raised wasn’t a place where such things were discussed. Still, Mandela’s plight leaked into my burgeoning political consciousness via word of student protests against apartheid at local universities. By the time the news in my corner of the world began to report on the dealings of P.W. Botha, I was becoming aware that an apathetic, blind eye was the greatest weapon of injustice. I can trace my current stance on many social issues to my youthful understandings based on reading (at the library of all things, kids) about the man his Xhosa clan called Madiba. If ever there was a man in my time who had a claim of ‘moral high ground’ upon which to stand, it was Madiba when he was released from nearly three decades in prison. No other person of which I am aware has used that vantage the way Nelson Mandela did. He saw those left in the valley of despair and spent the remainder of his life working to raise a people, a nation and the world up to a place of moral justice and equality. The list of awards that Mandela won – from the Nobel Peace Prize to the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee M...
Source: Life with MS - Category: Other Conditions Authors: Tags: MS multiple sclerosis community Source Type: blogs