Nelson Mandela
1918—2013
Genesis comes to a close with the story of a prisoner who becomes president and gives a nation a future based on forgiveness. But it’s not a story which must be relegated to ancient history. These things still happen. Injustices still occur and occasionally great souls still rise up to lead people out of the dead-end of retaliation into a future only reconciliation can create. The story of a prisoner who becomes president and gives his people a future based on forgiveness is the story of the Hebrew patriarch Joseph. It’s also the story of Nelson Mandela.
The history of South Africa is one of the saddest stories in the shameful saga of European colonialism. Before the story of South Africa would give rise to hope, it would first give rise to a racist regime that lasted until the final decade of the twentieth century. After centuries of colonial exploitation, in 1948 the all-white Afrikaaner National Party instituted a government policy of segregation and discrimination based on race — a system which legally extended and institutionalized the already long existing practices of racism. The system was known as apartheid— a Dutch word meaning “separateness”. (Interestingly, the words apartheid and Pharisee both mean the same thing!)
To read the rest of this article, click here.
Comments