A few months ago I got sick to death of HBO. I ordered it on a special half-price deal for the sake of The Larry Sanders Show and Tracey Takes On.... But Shandling ended the first show, and the second one never seemed to be on. I soon tired of the same horrible movies over and over, and the late-night soft straight porn--even though it was riotously (unintentionally) funny.
So I switched to the Sundance Channel as a pay-per-view Sunday. I feel 400% smarter for the decision. A while back I cried all afternoon watching The Long Way Home. Today, I watched Mandela, a 1996 documentary about one of this century's greatest men. Maybe one of this millenium's greatest men.
I will let Roger Ebert tell the story more fully, if you wish to read more. (Click here for the full text from the Chicago Sun Times). I will just give you my own meandering take on it.
I find myself very drawn to the story of South Africa, even though I must confess I have not read as much as I could on that country, considering the fascination. I always have been.
As a teenager I was fascinated by the idea of British and Dutch cultures so firmly entrenches at the tip of Africa. I was also repelled by Apartheid. I had a penpal there, briefly. He lived in Potchefstroom. Everything was innocent, until I asked a question or two about politics. I received a propaganda-laden four-color booklet about "Africa's bone of contention." It justified racist policies by stating how much better off South African blacks were living than their northern brothers. But they were also enslaved by a racist minority. I soon soured on the correspondence, and it ended. Actually, I never wrote back after receiving that.
Around the same time, 1979, a lot of Jewish families from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa started showing up in my home town of Great Neck. I was fascinated by my new classmates. British accents, slightly off with some Afrikaans, and very differently mannered. So much more interesting than the JAPs in my school. That's for sure.
It was in the mid 1980s that divestiture was a big buzzword. I never quite got over my friend Marwaan's gigantic poster, by Keith Haring, depicting the small white figure dominating the large black one. Marwaan was the editor of our school paper after I graduated. He wrote on the topic and wrote well. Meanwhile, the editor of our rival paper printed a big block of black ink. That was his idea of a "protest." I think he's either a PR hack now, or selling insurance out of an outfit in Altoona.
South Africa, and Nelson Mandela, also came to a global consciousness as songs like "Free Nelson Mandela" and UB40's "Sing Our Own Song" worked their magic over the airwaves. The word "free" resonated over and over and over in my head those years and has ever since.
It was in 1994 that a minor miracle happened. Despite the white man's man-written covenant with God, declaring themselves the rightful owners of South Africa, the entire country was allowed to vote. If there is one photo from a New York Times front page I will never forget, it's Election Day in South Africa. All those people, especially the old black women, waiting in line to vote, as the sun was coming up. I waited to cry though, when I saw the South African team at the closing ceremonies of the Gay Games at Yankee Stadium. I cannot be sure, but it seemed to me that when that team entered the field, with their new flag unfurled, everyone clapped that much louder. It was possibly one of the most stirring moments in my life, where I found myself completely happy for someone else. For a whole country of someone else. It had little to do with me, beyond the idea of possibility, and what could be possible here, if we let it.
The man responsible for this is Nelson Mandela. A simple man who came from the Veld, he spend more than two decades in prison, waiting. And rather than open the files, like the Stasi did in East Germany, he called for Truth and Reconciliation, so criminals could come forward and confess, rather than be discovered and suffer the repurcussions on their own. Mandela understood that freedom had to go hand-in-hand with foregiveness, and confession.
Is South Africa a wonderland? No. There are still racist whites with modifies swastika flags. It was frightening to watch them storm the legislature as they voted toward freedom. There is also a lot of violence. It is not a safe place. But the streets are not running red with blood as one idiot co-worker predicted four years ago.
And there are white people who are responding in ways you might never have imagined. There are some who have opened their property to their poor black neighbors. There are some who have moved out of their houses and moved to smaller ones, giving the larger ones over as community centers.
Mandela included gay rights in the rewritten constitution. This has not stopped antigay violence there, but my God, they are still leaps and bounds ahead of these United State of America in terms of true equality. And President Mandela, on World AIDS Day, announced that everyone must take responsibility in the AIDS crisis. That's a heck of a lot more than what our President Clinton has had to say.
At the end of Mandela they return to the place where he grew up. It's an area where the mountains seem to touch Heaven, and the misty clouds touch the Earth, and Mandela's sister, in her only tongue, a clicking language of the Veld, says that God had a job for her brother to do, and he is doing it.
And when you see where he came from, and you see how Heaven kisses the Earth, you can just about believe it. In God, in God choosing Mandela, and in the possibilities of human miracles in our own lifetime.
So when people ask me what that other flag is on my desk at work, the one they don't recognize, the one next to the gay rainbow flag, I tell them: That's the flag of the new South Africa.
Click here for an official Mandela site, which includes some of his speeches.
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