USA Africa Dialogue Series - Hamba Kahle Mandela - 'The Black Pimpernel'

Subject: [UDADISI: Rethinking in Action] Hamba Kahle Mandela - 'The Black Pimpernel'

"I then truly realized that I was in a  country ruled by Africans. For the first time in my life, I was a  free man. Though I was a fugitive and wanted in my own  land, I felt the burden of oppression lifting from my  shoulders. Everywhere I went in Tanganyika my skin color was automatically accepted rather than instantly reviled. I was being judged for the first time not by the color of my  skin but by the measure of my mind and character.  Although I was often homesick during my travels, I  nevertheless felt as though I were truly home for the first  time. We arrived in Dar es Salaam the next day and I met with  Julius Nyerere, the newly independent country's first  president. We talked at his house, which was not at all  grand, and I recall that he drove himself in a simple car, a  little Austin. This impressed me, for it suggested that he was a man of the people. Class, Nyerere always insisted,  was alien to Africa; socialism indigenous" - Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom

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Posted By Blogger to UDADISI: Rethinking in Action at 12/06/2013 03:25:00 AM