HUMAN beings like Nelson Mandela do not die: they simply stop breathing.

Fifty years from now, another generation will ask of us their elders: who was that person whose life could evoke such worldwide adulation and whose passing released such pervasive grief?

One will have to tell them that such a phenomenon is better experienced than explained. Meanwhile, for those of us who recall the death of John F. Kennedy 50 years ago, the clock of remembrance has begun another silent count until eternity.

In 1955, when John F. Kennedy was writing his book Profiles of Courage, Nelson Mandela was presiding over the Congress of the People, a multiracial assemblage that decided to challenge the racist South African government. That congress adopted a Freedom Charter which declared that “only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief”.

The charter continued: “And therefore, we, the people of South Africa, black and white together equals, countrymen and brothers … pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.” Mandela’s African National Congress later used that charter as its manifesto.

Kennedy never knew Mandela. He may have known of him, but unknowingly, he outlined in his book the contours of the courageous leader Mandela would become. “A man does what he must,” Kennedy had written, “in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures.”

And again, without South Africa specifically in mind, Kennedy warned: “A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — but a revolution is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.”

The British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, could see that inevitability more clearly. For him, it was just around the corner. After an eye-opening tour of African countries in 1960, he cautioned the all-white South African parliament: “The wind of change is blowing through this continent and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.”

It would take another 30 years or so (of which Mandela spent 27 in jail) for that growth of national consciousness to blossom into South Africa’s first multiracial elections, and Mandela’s appointment as its first black president.

It is a strange quirk of history that the 20th century should have produced on mainland Europe such belligerents as Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Adolf Hitler, in Italy Benito Mussolini, and in Spain General Franco. And before the century ended, down in the lowest tip of the African continent, two leaders — Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela — who would use non-violence as their weapon of moral force.

Both Mahatma Gandhi and Mandela were much married men. Gandhi was wedded first to his wife Kasturbhai, then to Politics, and finally to Martyrdom.

Similarly, Nelson Mandela’s married life mirrored the three different stages of his career. His first wife Evelyn occupied the pre-revolutionary years, his second wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela the firebrand years of agitation while he was in jail, and after his release Graça Machel whom he married on his 80th birthday to share his calmer evening years.

Both Gandhi and Mandela had seen the inside of South African jails. Through their prison bars, they viewed the prospect of revenge separately and differently. Gandhi countered the biblical concept of revenge with the sensible observation: “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” Mandela outdid his fellow Christians, deciding he would forgive his enemies not just once but repeatedly.

One wonders whether, had Mandela been a white European leader post-Second World War, he would have persuaded the victorious Allies to appoint a truth and reconciliation commission instead of conducting as they did the vengeful Nuremburg trials. The Christian Allies at the time though were in no mood to forgive Christian Germans.

Mandela’s oppressors had subtracted 27 years from his active adult life. They tortured his body. They threatened his very sanity. But what they could not succeed in doing was to extinguish his humanity.

Alan Paton — a white anti-apartheid South African lawyer who had once defended Mandela — wrote a memorable line in his seminal novel Cry, the Beloved Country (1948). It anticipated Mandela’s philosophy: “But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.” Mandela did not need to seek power. He had it and the courage to use it compassionately.

His friend Alan Paton also seemed to foresee Mandela’s peaceful end: “Happy the eyes that can close” and not die.

The writer is an author and art historian.

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