Nelson Mandela - A tribute

Nelson Mandela is a man I truly admire for all the suffering he has been through and for all the good he has brought about not only in South Africa and Africa in general but throughout the whole world. Today marks the 20th anniversary of his release from prison and following are a few interesting facts about this great and humble person.


1. Mandela got the name Nelson from a schoolteacher who gave all her pupils English names - Mandela guesses that his might have been in honour of Lord Nelson.

2. His links with British heroes didn't end there - the head of Healdtown, the college he attended at 19, was descended from the Duke of Wellington.

3. His real first name, Rolihlahla, means "troublemaker".

4. He was the first person in his family to go to school.

5. The Junior Certificate qualification at his school normally took three years to complete - but Mandela did it in two.

6. When he was on the run from the authorities, Mandela adopted the disguise of a chauffeur - complete with cap - as this allowed him to move around under pretext of driving his "employer's" car.

7. His prison number was 46664 - he was the 466th prisoner admitted to the jail on Robben Island in 1964.

8. While on Robben Island he was allowed only one visitor a year, for 30 minutes.

9. He was allowed to send and receive one letter every six months. The prison censors often delayed his letters and rendered them unreadable.

10. In the latter years of his sentence he completed a correspondence course with the University of London. In 1981 he was nominated as the university's Chancellor but was beaten in the election by Princess Anne.

11. Mandela doesn't allow flash photography anywhere near him, as his eyes were damaged during his time in prison.

12. He spent the last few years of his sentence in Victor Verster prison. Here, he was given a chef and learned to swim in a private pool but still insisted on doing his own washing up.

13. On the day of his release the plan had been for him to be driven to the prison gates. But SABC, the South African TV company, said it would have more impact if Mandela walked the final quarter of a mile. He agreed to do this.

14. When a long, furry object was thrust at him at the gates, he recoiled, thinking it might be a weapon. His wife Winnie explained that it was a type of microphone that had been invented while he had been in prison.

15. Mandela is known in South Africa as Madiba, a name used by elders of his clan.

16. In his 1995 autobiography Long Walk To Freedom, Mandela wrote: "Any man that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose."

17. The American news station CNN accidentally 'killed him off' in 2003, when a password fault led to their website accidentally showing his pre-written obituary.

18. His famous colourful tops are known as Batik shirts - and someone else who loved and collected them was Barack Obama's late mother.

19. In 2004, when he retired from public life, Mandela impressed on people how final his decision was by saying: "Don't call me, I'll call you."

20. Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu both own homes on Soweto's Vilakazi Street, making it the only street in the world to house two Nobel Peace Prize winners.

(Source: The Sun Online)

Some truly inspirational words of this great man are from his 1994 Inaugural Speech:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who I am to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.