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On a Reflection

I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days. (Nelson Mandela, statesman)

South Africa never leaves one indifferent. Its history, its population, its landscapes and cultures – all speak to the visitor, to the student, to the friend of Africa. (Tariq Ramadan, writer)

South Africa has all the tools to compete in the new global village – an eager workforce, ready to take on any challenge. (Tom Peters, business leader)

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. (Desmond Tutu, religious leader)

Nelson Mandela will always be the face of South Africa. The traveler passing through the country will see Mandela’s face almost everywhere he looks. Truly, the man is omnipresent. (Henry Rollins, musician)

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness. (Nelson Mandela, statesman)

Enjoy this reflection by a photographer of a man and a place.

20 thoughts on “On a Reflection”

  3. I have always felt something for that country. Tortured, wracked with baggage… a place where evil was perpetrated and still is, but also so different. I think seeing the jail cell in that video just brings something home, directly into the mind where you don’t want to let it go, we forget things so easily. As a race, we are very forgetful, which appears to be one of our biggest problems. Maybe like bees we need a collective hive memory, even if our individual ones is highly temporary, prone to intermittent fits and starts of inspiration and darkness.

    But the country looks so beautiful… and I saw photos of the Mandela statue a couple of days ago I think, a great honour to a man who changed a nation.

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  11. Thanks for the morning uplift. I feel blessed to have spent time in that beautiful country. And I agree wholeheartedly with your reader who said that Harriet Tubman could be America’s Nelson Mandela.

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      • Upon re-reading the Wikipedia biographical entry for Harriet Tubman, I feel even more secure equating Tubman with Nelson Mandela, especially after reading this letter from Frederick Douglass, who worked alongside Tubman for slavery’s abolition, honoring her when an early biography of Tubman was being prepared in 1868. It read in part:

        “You ask for what you do not need when you call upon me for a word of commendation. I need such words from you far more than you can need them from me, especially where your superior labors and devotion to the cause of the lately enslaved of our land are known as I know them. The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day—you in the night. … The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism. Excepting John Brown—of sacred memory—I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have.”

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