He belongs to us all

Nelson Mandela has departed to join the ranks of many warriors, men and women, who never surrendered their principles, moral values and ethics. He never chose the false comfort of Judas Iscariot or auctioned his soul to the demon of corruption. A member of the league with Chief Albert Luthuli, Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, Augostinoh Neto, Fidel Castro, Eloef Palmer, Julius Nyerere, Martin Luther King and Lenin.
While it is important to sing songs to this hero, to write poems and create slogans around his services to the people, we must never portray him as a saint, a caution that Dennis Goldberg, Ahmed Kathrada and George Bizos always remind us of. A co-chief midwife of our emancipation with Oliver Tambo has to be immortalised. Chief Luthuli demanded “let my people go” and Mandela said the “long walk to freedom” was difficult and rough but necessary.
Blessed are the peace makers.
As we immortalise Madiba we must understand him in the context of the collective leadership and as an ordinary human being who is fallible like me and you. He passed on at a time when society battles with many challenges, including attacks on our moral values. For the past four weeks and on the day he passed on, some in the ANC were throwing stones at the Public Protector like sinners who stoned Stephen in the Bible. They want to create a state of thieves which services their greed.
Some have turned Madiba into a political and economical commodity. Mandela, a member of the ANC, belongs to all of us, especially South Africans who are against corruption, sexism, racism and xenophobia.
Poet Beriot Brecht penned these words:
“There are those who struggle for a day, it is good. There are those who struggle for a year, it is better. There are those who struggle for twenty years, it is better still. There are those who struggle all their lives, these are the ones we cannot do without.”
We shall continue obeying your command as a leader who never stole from a public purse for your family to live on the state coffers like a tick on a dog. His biography, in our hearts and minds, will speak of an honest man and an embodiment of ethics that we lack today.
SIYANDA MHLONGO
KwaDukuza
(Letter shortened)