Wilhemina Mogale, News24 User
In a world that seems to be getting more fickle and hell bent on acquiring quick gratification and scandalous behaviour, it baffles me how Mr Mandela still manages to emerge as the saint we have painted him to be.
It is a scary realisation that there are not many men of Mandela's calibre in leading positions today, what this means for this generation looks sombre. The truth is that our beloved Madiba is not a saint, he is a human being like myself and yourself and he himself continues to highlight this truth when speaking to people. This then begs the question why global personalities like Desmond Tutu, Kofi Anan and Bono are not gracing our birthday celebrations year after year without fail.
It is a simple truth, Mandela knew what had to be done to rectify an injustice, this makes him human but the fact that he had the courage, patience and wisdom to stand up and risk his everything else in his life including his family and his own life, that is what makes him great.
The colossal wave of admiration and authentic respect for this man across the world is simply born out of the realisation that were we to be in the same position, many of us would have buckled, made excuses or ignored the inner voice of courage to embrace the voice of fear. It is a painful truth.
Perhaps while this man is still alive, the greatest gift we could ever give him is to embrace the spirit of courage to do what should be done with the tact and wisdom that he adopted in the face of adversity. The struggle is no longer against apartheid but a generation that allows itself to cower in the face of a rising crime rate and lives only for instant gratification in sex and drugs.
This is a gift I would like to honour Madiba with; to dream big and actually have the courage and patience to work towards those dreams, to favour the foresight in sacrifice in the place of instant gratification. The acts of sacrifice undertaken by Madiba and those who laid down their lives and freedom for the struggle are admirable yet greater than the actions, the world should embrace the integrity thereof, because this is what makes a man great.
We can not repeat these actions to become great but in order to follow Mandela's advice to write our own destinies, we can only copy the principles of humility, wisdom and courage and hopefully pass them on to the next generation so that they too can "write (their) own destiny".
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