R.W. Johnson: Madiba remained an enigma, surprising to the end

The death of Nelson Mandela brings to an end an extraordinary saga which saw a Transkei country boy rise to become the world’s most admired and loved politician. To the end, however, he remained an enigma, with a capacity to surprise even those who thought they knew him best.

He grew up as part of a chiefly family in an area where chieftainship remains important. The leader of a radical nationalist movement, he himself would often settle arguments by simple pronunciamento, sending colleagues away shaking their heads at the discovery that they were, in the last analysis, dealing with a Xhosa chief.

At the same time Madiba — as he was popularly known — would display a quite enchanting openness, patience and humility, an ability to laugh at himself and a complete absence of formality which endlessly captivated individuals and audiences in all countries. Officiating at a formal occasion he would often arrive resplendent in a gaudy shirt and, when a band or choir was performing, would wander down to it and dance happily with the children present.

He began as an African nationalist of a fairly anti-communist kind, then gravitated towards the communists, but then returned to African nationalism and ended his days upbraiding the communists as he had begun. But such turns mattered less than the few big decisions that he got right.

The first, following the turn to armed struggle after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, saw him commit himself with the utmost bravery to the cause, giving a heroic speech of defiance from the dock at a time when it might well have cost him his life.

Second, through the next 27 years and more in jail — at first under the most barbaric conditions — he showed the utmost fortitude and patience, never allowing himself to be tempted by various compromise solutions. Over the years his sheer steadiness and natural dignity saw him assume an easy mastery over his warders and, in the end, even over his captors, emerging at last in 1990 on his own terms and no one else’s.

Mandela’s third great decision was his entire rejection of bitterness or any desire for revenge: he emerged the leader of his people and from the first preached an unswerving commitment to reconciliation. The obvious sincerity and generosity of his stance gave him a sort of moral grandeur — a grandeur he was politician enough to use on occasion to get his way by sheer force of character.

Mandela was over 75 when he came to power, in 1994, and after what had passed before his time in government was largely anticlimax. He had no particular talent for administration, tolerated incompetence and corruption among his colleagues and devolved the real work of the government to his deputy and successor, Thabo Mbeki.

Long before the end — he retired in 1999, and largely withdrew from public life in 2004 — he was eager to quit power and spend what time he could with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He was as much at home with the Queen as he was with black street-children, for there was to him a touching simplicity which made the baubles of office seem as nothing. He had seen and experienced too much not to know what was really important — and formality and worldly goods were not among those things.