Mandela at 85: Democracy, diversity and the building of a nation

If I were pushed to offer a single word that would capture most fully the character of Nelson Mandela, it would be "integrity". His is a life in which things cohere, are dynamically integrated to wholeness and wholesomeness. But that is not to suggest an absence of contradiction, an unchanging uniformity or a unilinear progression.

The achievement of integrity resides exactly in the manner in which a diversity of experiences, modes and means is rendered morally coherent in a life that inspires through the sense of purposeful wholeness that it exudes.

Some of us who worked in Nelson Mandela's personal office during his presidency, with responsibility for his public appearances, at first felt the rhetorician's reservations about his habit of repeating the same stories, anecdotes and themes from one occasion to another. We soon came to realise that the habit in fact represented a narrative manifestation of that integrity of a life of consistent moral purpose. Not for him the studied rhetorical trick of a different story for each occasion; rather, the truthful reliability of the same story.

Nelson Mandela will, of course, be remembered for his monumental role in holding a racially divided society together through his personal efforts at political reconciliation across racial and ethnic divides, his constant advocacy of inclusive unity, his living of a life of forgiveness and a total absence of bitterness.

The world was expecting the South African conflict to escalate into a bloody racial war; that it was averted came to be widely described as a miracle. South Africa symbolises to many people across the world the almost miraculous achievement of racial reconciliation, and Nelson Mandela is the icon representing that national achievement.

Mandela frequently points out also that the achievements for which he receives credit would not have been possible without a broader framework of people, organisations and groups with whom he worked and by whom he was shaped and assisted. This is characteristic humility, but also the wisdom that recognises collective leadership and action as well as the compassion that places human solidarity at the centre of his guiding set of values. In a moving speech at the last opening of Parliament during his presidency, he located himself within these broader social networks: as belonging to that generation of leaders for whom the achievement of democracy was the defining challenge; a product of the people of South Africa, the rural masses, the workers, South Africa's intelligentsia of every colour, South Africa's business entrepreneurs; a product of the people of the world, of Africa; and, in a final invocation, a product of the African National Congress, "the movement for justice, dignity and freedom that produced countless giants in whose shadow we find our glory".

These expanding circles of identification are characteristic of Mandela's world-view. While he has that unwavering and unapologetic allegiance to the ANC, he was also always very attentive to not confusing national or non-party political occasions with party events. He more than once took severe public issue with members of the ANC for displaying symbols of the organisation at public events that he had organised for a wider community audience, believing that national unity did not demand uniformity of political allegiance.

My own experience with him was similar; as his director general and secretary of the Cabinet of the Government of National Unity, I was required by him to abstain from overt ANC activities and to remain equally accessible for the leaders of the other two parties in the government.

He saw the strength of multi-party democracy as crucial for national unity. As he continued to emphasise the importance of a vigilant and critical press, he always extolled the democratic virtues of good, strong political opposition. At times, one had cause to smile at the delightful clash between the deep commitment of a multi-party democrat and the instincts of the eternal party organiser - one who proclaims publicly that his first act after arrival in the next world would be to look for the nearest ANC branch office.

Mandela's approach to matters such as multi-party democracy is informed by his deep-seated appreciation of difference and diversity as the constituent parts of national unity.

At one point, after the attainment of democracy, a discourse surfaced arguing that the concept of nation-building contained a denial of diversity and was therefore democratically flawed.

No more unequivocal refutation of those arguments can be found than in the published thoughts and lived deeds of Nelson Mandela. I had personal and amusing experience of the Mandela notion of diversity-accommodation.

In his very polite manner, typically starting with a reaffirmation of his belief in what a good person I generally am, he more than once expressed to me his difference of opinion about the pace at which the University of the Western Cape under my leadership changed from an institution predominantly attended by coloured students to one with at least an equal number of African students.

For the inauguration of my successor, at which the President was to speak, I helped to write what I thought was a delicately crafted piece that would accommodate the sensitivities of my boss and remain suitably nuanced and politically correct. He obediently read the text up until just before the concluding "thank you", put it down, removed his reading spectacles and declared: "Now, I wish to add personally..." and proceeded to expound on the insensitivity displayed toward minorities, the University of the Western Cape being a case in point!

This concern for what he calls "the minorities" is genuine and consistently present. Even-handed as he is in his concerns for and attention to the various "minorities", the poignancy of his reconciliatory attitude toward Afrikaners could not fail to draw special attention.

In a concrete sense, the Afrikaner people were his jailers and the architects and operators of the racial state against which he struggled and at whose hands he suffered. To be so totally forgiving to members of this group and the group as a whole came to signify the quintessential morality of the man. He genuinely believes, and acts on the belief, that human beings are essentially good-doing beings. When they err, it is a deviation, not the norm. His experience of members of the Afrikaner group - ironically, it might be said - contributed to the validation of this attitude in his view of humankind.

I recall moments of talking about some of the preposterous claims and statements made by apartheid leaders in the past: he would turning his gaze inward to those hidden depths of solitude, and then remark, with pained compassion, that the Afrikaners allowed themselves to be misled to incomprehensible communal craziness. Never the condemnation of people; always the Enlightenment man who takes pity on those in conditions of backwardness, striving to facilitate progress.

Professor Jakes Gerwel was director general in the Office of the President during Mandela's administration. He is chancellor of Rhodes University, chairman of the Human Sciences Research Council and chairman of the Nelson Mandela Foundation