MOURNING A GREAT LEADER: South Africans light candles outside the Johannesburg home of South Africa's former President Nelson Mandela on December 6, who passed away at the age of 95 after a prolonged lung infection (XINHUA)

Face of the struggle

As the 1990s dragged on, if a foreigner asked you that nerve-wrecking question, "What is wrong with African leaders?" one could easily quip, "Well, at least we have Mandela and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere." This is the same Mandela of whom the then South African Prime Minister said in 1975, "Anyone who wants to talk to me on the basis that Mandela is the leader of black South Africa can forget it."

No amount of brutality could silence Mandela's loud statement across Africa, a quest for freedom from racial bigotry and liberty from the suffocating ills of colonization and neo-colonization. His struggle became one with the struggle of millions of Africans oppressed by a festering legacy of slavery and colonialism.

Mandela's plight galvanized Africans across the globe. In his book, Dreams of My Father, President Barack Obama says it is in Mandela's incarceration and the immorality of Apartheid South Africa that he found the motivation for his first public oration while in university.

The Palestinians have adopted the South African experience in framing their struggle against what they see as an Israeli occupation driven by segregation and discrimination, just apartheid by another name.

Africans across the continent who grew up during Mandela's detention were inspired by his courage; he became the symbol of the pains of South African blacks and the indifference with which the world handled African issues. Mandela's detention was a springboard for a strong sense of Black Power among African nations and leaders.

As far north as Tanzania and the Maghreb, the malevolence visited on Mandela and his comrades drove the countries to support Mandela's cause, offering asylum to South African fugitives and arms and support for fighters.

Art of forgiveness

His release from prison and ascendancy to president of South Africa offered the whole continent an immense sense of triumph and victory. Someone who had gone into jail angry and spoiling for war came out after 27 years with a Lincolnian touch: "With malice toward none, with charity for all."

He learned that succumbing to vengeful passions brought fleeting joys at the cost of lasting benefits. It is with this Solomonic that as president of South Africa, he sought to end relentless wars, bloodletting and conflict in the great lakes region, Rwanda, DR Congo, Ivory Coast and the then Sudan.

He embraced his jailers, and dined with the iron-fisted apartheid leader P. W. Botha, providing a lesson in virtue for warring African leaders.

Ultimately he left power, which he had almost died for, to others. He walked off the stage with honor and dignity. His magnanimity shook the corners of Africa. It turned the knife in the hearts of those leaders who cling to power for life, while setting aside and oppressing opponents. He set the bar high for the rest of Africa.

Yet even as he will tower over his contemporaries like a colossus, it is in what he thought of himself that we find a winner with humbling humility, "I don't think there is much history can say about me. I just want to be remembered as part of that collective."

Beyond South Africa, Mandela was created for Africa.

Whence cometh another?

"During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination."

"If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner."

—Nelson Mandela

The author is a Media Editor and Lecturer in International Affairs at Kenya's Moi University