Oh Madiba, we need you here – now!
- The King-Emperor of Reconciliation- December 18, 2013
The year was 1995. The date was 24 June. It was the Rugby World Cup final at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, South Africa, between two southern hemispheric rugby power houses: The All Blacks of New Zealand and the Springboks of South Africa.This was the ‘new’ South Africa, christened the Rainbow Nation by Arch Bishop Tutu. The nation that had emerged out of the horrors of white Afrikaner dominated apartheid. Rugby, even then in South Africa, still was the white Afrikaner man’s sport.
When Madiba’s father died when he was 12, he went to live with the Paramount Chief. He watched the Chief dispensing tribal justice mellowed with equity; this gave him an early interest in the law. The Paramount Chief liked to resolve disputes through consensus; he said the leader should be like a shepherd, directing his flock by skilful persuasion. It was a lesson in the art of politics which Madiba never forgot.
