Mandela, the African symbol of freedom and tolerance

The world is weeping. Nelson Mandela, the doyen of African resistance to the evil policy of apartheid and colonialism is dead; but not gone because his legacy will live forever.

Zimbabweans join South Africans in mourning a great man whose struggle against apartheid and immense contribution to freedom can never be doubted.

Just as the late Joshua Nkomo, Leopold Takawira, Ndabaningi Sithole, Enos Nkala, James Chikerema, George Nyandoro and Zimbabwe's current President, Robert Mugabe, blazed the trail in the fight for majority rule in what was then Rhodesia, so did Mandela with Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo in the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

Affectionately known as Madiba, his Xhosa name, Mandela will be remembered internationally as the man who spent the longest time as a political prisoner.

He spent 27 years of his 95 years on earth as a prisoner, first on Robben Island, then at the Pollsmoor prison and the last two years at the Victor Verster Prison.

When I visited Robben Island after Mandela's release, one black South African journalist told our group that the prison will be remembered as a place that spawned majority rule for their country.

It endorses the fact that Mandela's 27 years in prison were not in vain.

It was in prison that Mandela wrote some of the chapters of his epic, Long Walk to Freedom in which he traces his life as a member of  the Thembu royal family of the Xhosa clan and how he was given the name Nelson by his first teacher, Miss  Mdingane  which replaced  Rolihlahla.

He tells how he once worked as a night watchman at Crown Mines in 1941; how he loved boxing, ballroom dancing and long distance running as a young man.

He wrote about how he befriended Oliver Tambo at Fort Hare University and how  the two were to open the first black law firm in South Africa, Mandela and Tambo in Johannesburg  in 1953.

At Witwatersrand University where he studied law, Mandela says he met liberal and communist European, Jewish and Indian students notable among them Ruth First and Joe Slovo. These were to remain loyal fighters in the long road to free Azania, as South Africa is known.

After his release in February 1990, Mandela reorganised his party, the African National Congress, whose military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe had fought for long years for black majority rule.

In the historical multi-racial elections held in 1994, Mandela became the first black president of a free and independent South Africa after his ANC party registered a resounding win.

Due to age and poor health he served for only one five year term and stepped down in 1999- a rare and magnanimous move by a political leader for which he earned worldwide respect and admiration. He was replaced by the younger Thabo Mbeki.

One of Mandela's biggest achievements in office was fostering racial reconciliation between the whites, led by former president F W de Klerk and the black majority.

Mandela overwhelmed his former oppressors, the whites who had jailed him for demanding his rights and told them blacks and whites should live as equals in a new South Africa.

While it has been argued that Mandela did not dismantle apartheid, at least it must be accepted that he opened the doors to a better South Africa where the black majority, who had for years been downtrodden by the whites now have more say in affairs that affect their well-being than before.

It was perhaps for this that Mandela won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993. In my view, it was unfair that he should have shared that prize with F W de Klerk, the former South African President who did little to deserve that award.

Mandela's portfolio includes dozens of other awards and international accolades among them the US Presidential Medal for Freedom, the Soviet Order of Lenin and the Bharat Ratman Award.

But in spite of Mandela's 27 years in prison and his policy of reconciliation, the effects of long institutionalised racism still remain in South Africa as evidenced by abject poverty in some sections, unemployment and racial inequality at many levels.

But this should never be ascribed to Mandela as he played his liberation part like a gallant fighter. Mandela will for long be held in deep respect not only in South Africa, but the world over.

Unfortunately he has died while there is much more still to be done for black South Africa to fully achieve what he spent those lonely years in prison for.

For the ANC and I am sure the rest of blacks in South Africa, Mandela will be remembered as an astute political leader; a military strategist who in 1961  declared that armed and violent resistance was the only way to end apartheid.

He later paid dearly for that declaration.

What amazes me is that when Mandela fought for an end to apartheid, the world was very silent. None of the countries that are today falling over each other to pay tribute after his death, stood up to support him when he and the millions of blacks needed support most.

The world watched as the Boers tortured him mentally and physically in prison for 27 long years while the blacks slaved in mines, vineyards and factories to line the pockets of multi-nationals owned by the British and Boers who had colonised Azania.

Do the whites now hold Mandela in high regard because he extended a friendly hand after his release from prison and gave them space in a new South Africa or is it because of something else?

Mandela once said, "When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and country, he can rest in peace. I believe I have made that effort and that therefore, is why I will sleep for eternity."

Mandela's name will be etched in Africa's hall of political fame, alongside that of other African great statesmen like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere  of Tanzania, Kenya's  Jomo Kenyatta, Patrice Lumumba  of Congo, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and Samora Machel of Mozambique.

May his larger than life soul rest in eternal peace.