The meaning of Mandela, explained by a mother

Darling Daughter, dearest Son,

Earlier this week, I joined a group of moms in a preschool courtyard in our comfortable suburb of northern Johannesburg. We were there to help the 120-odd energetic, giggling kids scoop cups of lentils, rice, and soy mince into plastic bags that would then be handed out to families in need.

Across South Africa this week, thousands of schools, communities, businesses, and ordinary citizens carried out similar acts of charity in the name of Mandela Day, celebrating the legacy of democratic South Africa’s first Black president. Nelson Mandela saw his birthday as an opportunity for public service, hoping to inspire the next generation to take up the baton of social justice. “It’s in your hands now,” he famously said.

On television this week, we have seen South Africans of every age and race (and others – you know your mom is Nigerian and your dad is a white South African) carrying out these small acts of kindness that together are far bigger than the sum of their parts. We could almost believe that the whole nation had galvanized, even if just for one day, into living out the promise of its dream. We could almost forget the clouds of prejudice and hatred that are once again brewing over the land.

Yet it’s telling that ordinary people, not politicians, are behind this mass movement every year. And I hope you will be able to see through the folderol of politicians who use this day simply for photo opportunities.

The official Mandela Day website suggests, among other ideas, hosting a dinner where the meal budget is 5 rand ($0.3 cents) per person “as a way of identifying with the millions who live below the poverty line.” In South Africa, around 13 million people go to bed hungry every night.

Some people don’t have as much as we do, I explained to you, so we try to share with them. I told you this as we walked through a glitzy supermarket, pushing a laden trolley through gleaming rows. My explanation felt inadequate, and not just because you, my precocious girl, are only 3 years old. Afterward you were pensive, and I thought how upside down this world must seem through the eyes of an innately kind child.  

Later, I bought a book for you, my easy-going son, for your first birthday. I flinched at the cost – 275 rand ($16) – but I bought it anyway because I wanted to treat you with a pop-up book you so love. That evening, I read about how a Mandela Day donation from a hydraulics firm enabled a rural school to open up its first-ever library. The school was in Marikana, where rich veins of platinum and diamonds thread the earth, but where the constitution’s promise of quality education for every child means little.

One day, your father and I will tell you as best as we can, the story of how things got this way in this country we have made our home.

But I would like to give you hope, too. The fire of freedom and justice still gleams through this broken world. 

So I will also tell you about how, when Mr. Mandela died in December 2013, your father and I attended memorial services in Cape Town at which South Africans from every walk of life gathered to send Madiba to the ancestors. I wept as I listened to soaring songs of freedom.

In Grand Parade, the square where Mr. Mandela gave his first speech after 27 years of imprisonment, there unfurled a sea of tributes and flags.

We laid our own flowers. We took a photo of ourselves, smiling in the December sun and spirit of togetherness.

Sometime in the noise of that week, I went to visit a man called Ahmed Kathrada. Outside of South Africa, Mr. Kathrada isn’t as well known as Mr. Mandela, though we plan to make sure he is a household name as you grow up. Kathy, as he was known, was also a titan of the anti-apartheid movement who spent 26 years wrongly imprisoned. Yet he made time for me that December week.

He told me something that I’d like to pass on to you: “The ANC wasn’t only Nelson Mandela,” he said, of the African National Congress. 

There was no rancor or judgment in his voice – days later he would struggle to compose himself as he spoke at the funeral of his former cell neighbor. 

It was a passing comment but I think about it often.

Mr. Kathrada and Mr. Mandela understood that we are all part of a community and true progress comes from building a dream, a movement, or an ideal, brick by brick.

Mr. Mandela was neither the saint some people make him out to be, nor the sellout that others have painted him. He was simply a man who worked to be a vital part of a movement he realized was far bigger than he was. But he did not let bitterness destroy him, and if you draw anything from his story I hope it will be that it is possible to have so much grace for yourself that you have enough left over to extend even to those who grievously wrong you.

Mandela Day as a single day of the year or as a call to charity does not do justice to Mr. Mandela’s spirit. It is a value that must be lived as fully as possible each day. A vision that must be striven for until a wall is knocked down, an endangered being is safe, a promise is fulfilled.

As journalists, your father and I interview many people whose actions belie the grim headlines: the imam whose mosque gives out soup every day, not just on Mandela Day; the local electrician working in freezing conditions to get the lights back on; the woman who worked tirelessly to set up a world-class school in a township with no running water. 

These unsung heroes provide true inspiration. There is much to be angry about, and I hope you will harness your anger so it propels you to change what you can.

As you both grow older, mixed-race children of South African, British, and Nigerian heritage, I know you will start to understand the nuances of South Africa’s story, and of your own stories.

I hope we will have provided you with enough love, enough nurture, and enough wisdom that you will be able to go out into the world and live every day as Mandela Day.