Document
Geneva, 8 December 2023
I am honoured to join you this evening in remembering and celebrating the legacy of President Nelson Mandela as a peacemaker now, 10 years after his death, 30 years after his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. I was invited to the funeral service of Nelson Mandela and a given the special honour to be present at the graveside when we laid him to rest. I stood in silence and awe as I gave thanks to God for such a gift to South Africa and to the world. It was, indeed, a moving, sad and yet joyful moment for me as I celebrated the life and service of such a great man.
The Mandela’s Legacy
Of course we know Nelson Mandela as a freedom fighter, a political prisoner, an agent of Apartheid’s fall, and midwife to the birth of a new South Africa. He is, by all measures, a giant in the peacemaking pantheon and a major force for good in the postwar world’s strides toward freedom and justice.
Nelson Mandela’s record as a peacemaker includes his 27 years persevering as a prisoner on Robben Island, his leadership of the liberation struggle and the African National Congress, his skillful navigation of politics to negotiate an end to Apartheid, his rise to the presidency and alliance with F. W. de Klerk in creating a national unity government, his setting up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, his signing a new constitution, and his work as president to expand majority access to education and improve the common good.
In his presidency, 1994-1998, he continued to labour for the betterment of his people, based on democratic values and the ideal of social justice. His role as peacemaker and reconciler is what brought South Africans together. I remember how he sported on the South African Rugby shirt and encouraged the team at the 1995 Rugby World Cup. He used sport to reconcile a very divided nation. Mandela is sometimes criticised by especially young black South Africans who say that he made too much of comprises but they often don`t understand the context at that time and the efforts to make peace, which averted what could have been a bloody revolution.
In all this work, without question, Nelson Mandela was one of the most consequential figures in the last century. For Mandela, “Peace is not just the absence of conflict; peace is the creation of an environment where all can flourish, regardless of race, colour, creed, religion, gender, class, caste, or any other social markers of difference.” Mandela said, “What matters in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others.”
Today, Nelson Mandela remains, for so many of us, a genuine hero, even an icon, a symbol of human freedom and the possibility for real social change and social justice. We can see his legacy in the continued struggles for liberation around the world, in the ongoing confrontation of racism and its effects, and in the aspirations of this generation for justice and peace.
Ecumenical Accompaniment on That Long Walk
I am proud to say that the World Council of Churches stood with Nelson Mandela in that long road to freedom. At its 4th Assembly, held in Uppsala in 1968, the WCC committed itself fully to the worldwide struggle for civil rights, liberation from Apartheid, and freedom from other forms of oppression. In ensuing years and despite enormous controversy, the council and its members, through its Programme to Combat Racism, took concrete steps against racism in Southern Africa and in support of the African National Congress. Small wonder, then, that after his release Mandela journeyed to Geneva to express his personal gratitude for those two decades of solidarity.
Later, in 1998, as South Africa's president, Mandela addressed the 8th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Harare, Zimbabwe. In his address, he praised the effort of churches in South Africa to end Apartheid and paid tribute to missionaries for bringing high standards of education to Africa from which he benefitted as a child.
Nelson Mandela was very private about his faith, but he was also deeply influenced by it, from his childhood through his public life. As he said in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, “The Church was as concerned with this world as the next: I saw that virtually all of the achievements of Africans seemed to have come about through the missionary work of the Church.”
Mandela and Our Present Context: Today’s Long Walk
As a South African, I recognise that our transformation remains unfinished. Despite the massive change in South Africa, we experience enormous and persistent inequality, unacceptable levels of unemployment, shocking levels of violence, endemic corruption, and a younger generation hungry for opportunity, a life, and a future. Genuine freedom, in its fullest sense, still eludes us as we build our new nation.
Likewise, in so many ways, around the world we today face a different and more difficult landscape for the cause of just peace. We see a receding horizon for human rights, human dignity, real legal and economic equality, basic provision for human needs, and justice for women, for children, and for the earth itself.
Our present, altered context includes converging crises around the world, exacerbated by ethnic and religious conflict, more (and more lethal) wars, extremist violence, and terrorism—all further fuelled by widening economic inequality, climate change, persistent social injustice, and challenges to truth-telling in media and governance. Today we see disrespect for International Humanitarian Law and the protected interest of the poor, vulnerable and voiceless. Mandela was constant in his plea for just peace and he stood as an avid supporter of Palestine in this regard. I wonder what he would have said and done in the context of the current wars and conflicts all over the world.
One thing is clear, Mandela would have spoken against wars and encouraged the powers that be to travel on the road of dialogues for peace. In a world of violence we need to realise that violence can never lead to justice and peace. In supporting peace, Mandela would have promoted the need for education. He once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
What We Learn from Mandela about Peacemaking
I believe that, when we consider Nelson Mandela’s legacy as a peacemaker, we must recognize some nonnegotiable principles: That reconciliation is at the heart of peacemaking. That there can be no peace without justice. That human rights, the bedrock of the UN’s Universal Declaration, are not a cultural bias or personal preference but a foundational element in the preservation of human life and well-being on Earth. That provision for basic human needs (best expressed in the Sustainable Development Goals) is a necessary precondition of peace.
I think, too, we can identify other key elements in Mandela’s approach to peacemaking that remain vital today. We learn from him that there is an indispensable element of personal witness—personal courage and wholesale dedication to moral truth—that provides the credibility and basis for deep dialogue and identifying core values that will make for conflict resolution, peace, and reconciliation.
We can think of another Mandela principle as honest truth-telling regardless of the political consequences. We cannot make peace if we can’t be fully honest with ourselves and each other, or if we are constantly hedging what we will say for fear of the reactions of our enemies or allies.
I also believe that, in our search for peace, exemplified in Mandela’s life and work, faith is indispensable. By this I mean, not a particular religious tradition or denomination, however vital. By faith I mean our trust that God and history will welcome and support our efforts toward peace, justice, and the well-being of all humankind. It is a faith shared with all persons of good will. We must have faith in our future!
As Mandela told the WCC in Harare, “Whenever the noble ideals and values of religion have been joined with practical action to realise them, it has strengthened us, and at the same time, nurtured those ideals within the liberation movement.”
That self-critical faith is today best and most effectively exemplified and practiced in nonviolence, I believe. As in Mandela’s day, nonviolence remains the moral basis for peacemaking. As a philosophy, as a commitment, as a lifestyle, it has been the single most successful catalyst for social change in our lifetimes. Our work for reconciliation begins with a deep commitment to nonviolence as a means for social change.
I know that Nelson Mandela’s larger than life reputation and influence will justly ensure his ongoing visibility. But it is his deep commitment to human dignity, his practice of reconciliation through nonviolence, and his sturdy faith in humanity’s eventual triumph that will ensure his continued, even growing relevance for our new context.
In a world riddled by violence and war we need to hear afresh what it means to live in peace and harmony. Each of us has a role to play in this. Mandela said, “It is in your hands, to make a better world for all who live in it.” Instead of leaving a legacy, Mandela spoke more about living the legacy. May we live, encourage and work for peace in the world with the same determination and passion that was found in Nelson Mandela. Its live the legacy of peace, justice and love in the world.
Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay
General Secretary
World Council of Churches