Mandela is held up as an example of resilience.

Danilo Macedo
Special correspondent in South Africa

Pretoria - Resilience is the property that some materials have of returning to their original shape after the stress to which they were subjected ceases. In people, it represents the ability to adapt, or even evolve after adversity. This was one of the words most used by those who spoke during the funeral of the greatest leader of Black Africa, as a way to describe him in his fight against apartheid and inequalities. Mandela said that the struggle was his life, and he fought, above all, for a better world.

In 1944, at the age of 26, he and other friends created the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANC), the party through which he would become president of the country five decades later. They launched the manifesto "One Man, One Vote," in which they showed that 2 million whites dominated 8 million blacks. In a regime that considered blacks a sub-race, without rights and to be repressed, Mandela opened a law office in 1952, in partnership with Oliver Tambo.

Already considered a leader, Mandela and the ANC guided their struggle with the principle of non-violence until March 21, 1960, now recognized by the UN as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, when the Sharpeville Massacre occurred. Around 5 black people were peacefully protesting against the Pass Laws, which required them to carry a booklet indicating the places they were allowed to go.

Suddenly, as they approached a police station where about 70 officers were present, before any warning from the authorities, they began to be hit by machine gun fire. More than 60 died, most from shots in the back, while trying to escape, and at least 200 were injured, including women and children. From then on, Mandela and the party decided that peaceful means alone would not be enough to change the serious situation of segregation in the country and sought military training.

Despite having been imprisoned before for his activism, Mandela's change of stance led to his being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. In his own defense, he spoke for four hours during the trial. His conclusion is used as one of the former president's main messages: "Throughout my life I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a free and democratic society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

From then on, Mandela spent 27 years in prison, many of them in a cell measuring 2,5 meters by 2,1 meters with a small window 30 centimeters wide, in Robben Island prison. During his imprisonment, he realized that it would be important to learn Afrikaans, the language of the white people. Even in prison, he became internationally known as a symbol of the fight against the apartheid regime.

In the mid-1980s, the regime sought dialogue with Mandela, who refused freedom conditioned on exile. With increasing international pressure, and with the regime's own leadership seeing Mandela as an interlocutor in negotiations with the ANC, the man who would later become, in the opinion of several experts, the greatest leader of the 20th century, was finally released on February 11, 1990.

Despite having been deprived of 27 years of contact with his family and his country, Mandela's speeches upon leaving prison were more conciliatory and less inflammatory. Although initially disappointing the more radical sectors of the ANC, the change was fundamental to the refounding of the country when he was elected president in 1993, without white domination over blacks, nor vice versa. "Our march to freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way," he said after his release.

Mandela, who was bothered by the saintly image people tried to portray him with, taught his people the gift of resilience, fundamental to a consistent democracy in South Africa. His government sought to reconcile the oppressed and the oppressors. As he himself said, "No one is born hating another person because of the color of their skin, or their background, or their religion. People learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."

Despite the vast life experiences he had in 95 years, which ended on December 5th, Mandela cannot be considered a saint. Some call him a "hero in flesh and blood." His birthday, July 18th, was declared Nelson Mandela International Day by the UN in 2009, with the aim of honoring his struggle for freedom, justice, and democracy.