When we hear the emotional anger generated by a handful of Bahamians who give lip service to the One Bahamas concept, but breath fire and brimstone at the thought of it entering the political arena; we think of the words of South Africa’s General Jan Smuts on apartheid.
“It was,” he said, “a crazy concept born of prejudice and fear.”
It is this same “prejudice and fear” that today motivates the irrational statements by certain members of the PLP.
When the Afrikaner’s Nationalist Party, which believed God had given South Africa to the white man – just another version of former PLP cabinet minister Philip Bethel’s declaration from a public platform years ago that God had given the Bahamas to the PLP – took over the government of South Africa, a young African lawyer was justified in feeling – although “not prepared to hurl the white man into the sea” – “perfectly happy if he climbed aboard his steamships and left the continent of his own volition.”
The racism talked of by today’s PLP is a racism, not personally experienced, but passed on from parents who themselves lived it more than half a century ago. Many of their children and grandchildren, trapped in the time warp of a past generation, have not moved forward emotionally from this period.
By contrast, Nelson Mandela, who not only lived under a far worse form of racism than the Bahamas ever knew, but spent 25 years in an Afrikaner’s prison, deprived of his freedom, his family and friends, refused to allow hate to destroy his soul and retard his growth as a Christian gentleman: At the end of 25 years of terrible deprivation and humiliation, he came out of prison firmly of the belief in One South Africa – a South Africa equally for the whites, the Blacks, the Coloureds and the Indians. In prison he discovered that there were whites of goodwill who treated Africans as equals, and who were prepared to suffer by the side of their African brothers to assure that they too enjoyed that equality.
Mr Mandela, the lawyer, put his hand to the drafting of the Freedom Charter, which declared:
“We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:
“That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people;
“That our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality;
“That our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities.”
The Charter further declared that “the rights of the people shall be the same regard
less of race, colour or sex.” Also that “the preaching and practice of national, race or colour discrimination and contempt shall be a punishable crime.”
Nelson Mandela, both in and out of prison, tenaciously fought for a nation in which all people were equal. Although not a Communist, he felt that a South African communist who was fighting against apartheid had every right to belong to his party by the very fact, not only that he was South African, but that he also had something constructive to offer to a country made up of a “rainbow gathering of different colours.”
Mr Mandela’s terrible experiences did not hold him down, did not suffocate his emotions. He rose above it all and in the end, it was_ he who triumphed.
“At every opportunity,” he wrote in his book, Long Walk to Freedom, “I said all South Africa must now unite and join hands and say we are one country, one nation, one people, marching together into the future.”
How can the Bahamas ever say this when wherever we turn there are men and women intent on anchoring our youth’s bright future to a past of evil memories?
“I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity,” wrote Mr Mandela. “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate; and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of ï¾ humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going. Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.”
Here is a man who suffered, but would not let suffering destroy him. Rather he built on that suffering. His life and example should make the racist among us feel like insignificant pygmies. It should certainly encourage an examination of conscience and a reassessment of personal values.
As Mr Mandela wrote: “A man who takes another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”
And, in the context of the Bahamas, these words can be applied to those who say that Montagu MP Brent Symonette, a white man, has no right to be deputy prime minister of this country should his party win the next election.
Editorial from The Tribune – Nassau, Bahamas
