Stop the clocks

The day that I wrote about with dread 5 long months ago finally came to pass, Madiba has died.  I was waiting to catch a night bus from London to Edinburgh when I heard the news.  Strangely it was via twitter that the news broke and I hastily tweeted others for confirmation, yes it was true.  Zuma was addressing the nation.

Sitting on a cold bench in a cold country surrounded by foreigners I felt horribly far from home.  I looked around me and no one seemed to know.  Nelson Mandela had died but nobody around me seemed to care.  The line that kept repeating through my head was ‘stop the clocks, cut off the telephone’ from W. H Auden’s poem of the same name:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

I messaged a friend back home.  He cared.  He was a grown man crying tears last seen when his own grandfather died.  And then I checked my twitter feed and realized that I was wrong not that no one cared, everyone did. Out of all the thousands of people I follow on twitter – politicians, journalists, pop stars, actors, companies and regular Joes - everyone was talking about Madiba.  When the occasional vacuous tweet did escape through the wall of humanity it made me roar with anger. I felt so many emotions; trepidation, grief, relief but mostly I felt proudly South African.  I wanted to turn to my neighbour and hug away my bursting heart.

Scrolling through a microcosmic twittersphere I marveled at the power of this one elderly man to unify the hearts of thousands of strangers in this bitter-sweet moment.

There were epic words:

Barack Obama ‏‪@BarackObama

5 Dec

President Obama remembers Nelson Mandela: "A man who took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice."

            


And simpler truths:

Keenan Kyle Harduth ‏‪@KeenyKeenz

5 Dec

South Africa needs a hug. RT: ‪@MsLeloB: I need a hug

And poignant reminders of the giant, gentle space left unfilled:

'Thank you Tata' cartoon by the talented @mynameisjerm

There I was sitting on a cold hard bench waiting for a bus, I didn’t want to stop the clocks and cut off the phone.  I wanted to grab a vuvuleza or ululate. I wanted to walk outside and feel the breath of the universe on my face.  I wanted to look up at the stars and thank God for the beautiful people.

I am reminded why I can’t settle in Britain, because I am African.  I was lucky enough to grow up in a beautiful, complex and challenging place.  I was blessed to expend my teenage years with Nelson Mandela The Educated Man as the head of my country, not Nelson Mandela The Terrorist or Nelson Mandela The Prisoner.  I never felt anything but optimism for my beautiful country and I refuse to stop believing in it now.  I didn’t plan to leave South Africa for so long.  I have spent 7 long years coming home.  As a wise-cracking journalist with a jaundiced eye remarked ' … whenever people assess Africa, they underestimate the nuttily fanatical believers, like you.’

I do believe, nuttily and fanatically because people like Nelson Mandela have lived to show us how.

It always seems impossible until it’s done

-Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)