Bloomberg News When I heard about Nelson Mandela’s passing last night, it brought a flood of thoughts about him and how his shadow had loomed and shaped so many of our lives in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.
Growing up in Southern Africa, Nelson Mandela’s name was always a catalyst to an argument. He was feared and demonized by the ruling (all white) parties in South Africa and Rhodesia. He was labeled a terrorist and the open discussion at dinner tables was that he could not be freed because if he were, he would encourage the native Africans to take arms and chase all of the Caucasians out of Africa.
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When I was a teenager, his imprisonment was an endless source of debate about fairness and race. While he lay holed up quietly in a desolate cell on Robben Island, in the shark-filled frigid cold waters off the coast of Cape Town, the rest of the world clamored for his freedom. But safety and security was the overwhelming concern for the white Africans who had been there for generations.
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