Nelson Mandela's Legacy to World Methodists

As I read through news accounts of Nelson Mandela's death, I was caught by an article* that made me realize how closely my memories of him are linked with music. Mesmerizing music. Defiant music. Joyous music. Music that makes a body move. That probably seems odd to us repressed American Methodists for whom embodiment embarrasses, but thankfully, the rest of the world is not like us.

I was too young in the early days of South Africa's apartheid struggles to remember much, and when I matured I was too busy as a young community journalist, wife and mother to pay much attention. Yet the music seeped into my soul without my realizing it, and before long I began to see the tyranny, struggle and hope behind the popular tunes of people like Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela.

Then in 1987 I interviewed Joseph Shabalala, a Pentecostal preacher from South Africa who is the leader of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The a capella musical group was then coming to the world's attention by performing with Paul Simon on his legendary "Graceland" album. Black Mambazo means "Black Axe" in Zulu and represents power, both the power of the rhythmically repetitive style of music the group performs and their longing for the power of simple human dignity. I think Joseph and I were both surprised during our interview to discover our bond as Christians; because of it, we struck up a pen-pal correspondence that lasted for a few years.

When Mandela was released from Robben Island prison in 1990, I wrote of my joy to Joseph. He was cautious in response, and I was surprised again. In my Western shallowness and naïveté, I simply didn't understand the depths and complexities of the political and cultural situation in South Africa for black people like Joseph, particularly with Mandela's release. Not long after Mandela was freed, Joseph's brother, Black Mambazo's bass singer Headman Shabalala, was shot and killed on a road near Durban, South Africa. After that Joseph stopped writing to me.

But I didn't stop listening. Eventually this untutored white church lady discovered how deeply Methodism is embedded within the African liberation struggle. As I later learned, the pan-African liberation anthem, "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" ("Lord Bless Africa" in Mandela's native Xhosa language), was originally composed in 1897 as a hymn by Enoch Sontonga, a Methodist missionary teacher in Johannesburg. I learned to sing it in Xhosa by listening to Miriam Makeba, just as she once said she learned to speak English by listening to Western songs.

The role of Methodism and music in Nelson Mandela's life etched indelibly on my mind in 1999, when I reported from Cape Town, South Africa, on the presentation of his World Methodist Peace Award. The ceremony at Central Methodist Church on Greenmarket Square began with a spirited procession of Xhosa singers and dancers, and segued into a surprise performance of what I can only describe as "dance preaching" by the Rev. Mvume Dandala, then presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.

Nelson Mandela seemed frailer than I expected when stood up to speak that night. The day before the presentation, our group visited the notorious Robben Island prison, now a United Nations World Heritage Site, where Mandela spent 27 years. We saw the squalid prison, the tiny cells and the blinding limestone quarry where Nelson Mandela and his comrade, Methodist Bishop Stanley Mogoba, broke rocks. Bishop Mogoba told us how the guards would laugh at the prisoners if they sat on chairs. The white guards considered black prisoners little more than animals, and the guards thought it "funny" that such "animals" would sit on chairs like humans.

I marveled then at what it must have taken Mandela, Mogoba and their comrades to endure such conditions. I know I could not have survived.

Yet when he spoke the next night, Mandela took on an energy that radiated from somewhere beyond his frail body. Departing from his text, his voice swelled with affection as he spoke of his boyhood education at a Methodist school, and how that experience laid the moral foundation of his life. Eyes brimming with tears, I could hardly take notes.

After the presentation, the World Methodist contingent rushed to form a receiving line to greet Mandela. When the Rev. Joe Hale, then the World Methodist Council's top executive, introduced me to Mandela as "one of our most prominent Methodist journalists," for a split-second I genuinely thought I might faint from embarrassment. Next to Mandela, I was nothing. But I grasped his hand and, in a probably too-familiar way used the honorific of his clan name to say, "Thank you, Madiba, for all you have done for us."

And Nelson Mandela smiled at me.

Since that night in Cape Town, I have pondered how Mandela could have emerged from all those bitter prison years with a heart to forgive his tormentors. I especially wonder now whether there are any United Methodists with the spiritual courage and determination to follow his example, as we continue to wound one another with hatred, suspicion and intolerance. Clearly Mandela's forgiveness and reconciliation, rooted in the Methodist teachings of his youth, inspired a racially divided South Africa to form his beloved "Rainbow Nation." Where are those among us who can emulate him within the global denomination of United Methodism? And if such leaders emerge, will we give up our own agendas, however justified they may seem, to follow the higher purposes of grace such leaders might show?

For me, our brief, shining encounter gives me more weeping than singing at Mandela's "transition," as South Africans say of death. Yet I trust that joy comes in the morning, as the psalmist promised. If Mandela showed us anything on his long walk to freedom, he showed us that we don't merely walk out of the valley of the shadow – if we listen to love's music, we dance.

May that be Nelson Mandela's legacy to the Methodist tradition that started him in life.

* Thanks to National Public Radio's Gwen Ansell and her article "The Mandela Playlist: A Life And Legacy, Told In Music," for inspiring this remembrance.