Mandela. Ke Nako.

As the news about Nelson Mandela's death sank in, I was moved to write something about his extraordinary life. Only I don't know exactly what to write. It's almost impossible to write anything that anyone doesn't already know. We've all taken him for granted. If you've read one of the one hundred or more books about him, you're already one up on me. I've not read any.

The day Mandela was released from prison, I was in Japan attending a technical course and visiting Taoist temples in Kyoto. Almost all major Japanese TV stations carried this momentous event (Mandela's release, not my temple tour). It's in high-tempo Japanese, so I couldn't understand a thing. Even Mandela, after 26 years in prison, spoke in Japanese. To make it worse, the telecast was continuously broken by slapstick detergent commercials. But his famous walk of freedom with his wife and supporters would never need any language. I could see that Mandela was just plain, old-fashioned happy to be free after so many years incommunicado. No defiance and no bitterness lurking.

I flew back home the next day. My eldest greeted me, his right hand raised: "Mandela". We hugged and laughed. He did what he'd seen, and repeated a thousand times, on TV. It's easy for his mother to drill him to say Malay-friendly names like Mahathir and Mandela. Next time she should try the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

I think Mandela is one of the most quoted and studied statesmen in modern times. I'd agree that apartheid wasn't exactly modern, but I'd always consider anything after the Second World War as technically modern because that would conveniently include me. Unlike Arsene Wenger, Mandela was never a philosopher. He spoke in clear and regular language. Facebook pages are now flooded with quotes from his famous speeches and writings. For me, the one that stands out was an inspiring foreword he wrote in a book celebrating the life of Diana, his good friend. I don't know which of my two boys had a crush on the late Princess of Wales and bought this book. It's heavier and more expensive than the coffee table, with loads of glitzy and grainy photos of all sizes and shapes. Neither of them would own up. I only read the foreword, all of one page. Mandela wrote simply:

"We can not all be a famous British princess. We can, however, all try to do what we can to insist that every human being is precious and unique."

Well, that's flowing and flawless. I could almost picture the great man at his desk pondering and penning those thoughts.           

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