Madiba’s emotional call for action on poverty (1)

Aliyu Musa

On February 3, 2005 I was one of thousands of people that defied the inclement wintry climate in London that morning to swarm Trafalgar Square to see the great Madiba flag off the Campaign to Make Poverty History. Appreciating that it could be my first and only opportunity to see the man that led a dogged fight against an extremely evil system and vanquished it, I made up my mind that whatever price I paid was worth it, including missing classes. But as it turned out my lecturers were particularly as keen as me on not missing Madiba’s epochal speech, which echoed across the massive expanse of Trafalgar Square, as it oozed out of his frail body.

On hearing the news of Dr Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s death the first few things that immediately flashed through my memory were his traumatic experience under the racist Pretoria regime, which in turn made him an unswerving source of inspiration to many, and his emotional call on the leaders of the most powerful nations of the world to end poverty when I saw him more than eight years ago in London.

As a child growing up in the 1970s and 1980s the fight against apartheid seemed like one being waged at some corner not far away from home. I remember watching a TV documentary on (reconstruction of) the Soweto protest of June 1976 in which hundreds of black South African pupils protesting the introduction of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in local schools were cold-bloodedly killed. A picture that stuck to my memory was of a child, that I thought was about my age, shot and his remains carried by his distraught dad, who later in the documentary expressed utter shock that police officers responded to the protest with such massive force.

In the years that followed the Soweto massacre, Steve Biko’ death in detention in 1977 (apparently from torture) and Mandela’s endless incarceration, Nigeria increasingly took ownership of the campaign against apartheid. Our governments, military or civilian, actively opposed the Pretoria’s racist regimes, continued to fund anti-apartheid movements (including the African National Congress, ANC) and openly countered Western nations that refused to support calls for sanctions against the regimes. In this time, as students we expressed fierce idealism against the sort of institutional racism apartheid represented and often added our voice to the ever soaring pressure apartheid faced. It was clear that it would give way if the pressure were sustained.

Among the countless ghastly, racist decisions taken under one of apartheid Pretoria’s notorious rulers, P. W Botha was Benjamin Moloise’s execution on October 18, 1985. Moloise was a South African poet and activist that was accused of killing a policeman in 1982. He denied the allegation but was, nonetheless, convicted on the basis of clearly questionable circumstances and hanged in the Pretoria Central Prison. I had followed his trial and campaign for clemency (after his conviction) with keen interest. On the day he died, I felt very sad, especially knowing he did not get a fair trial.

But what was comforting was Moloise’s enduring conviction in his fight for justice. Moloise’s show of courage even as he faced the hangman epitomized the millions that never wavered during the long, lonely journey, which Nelson Mandela eloquently captures in his Long Walk to Freedom.

As I look back at Mandela’s speech at Trafalgar Square I now clearly connect his horrifying experience (including the prices Biko, Moloise and many others paid) to his emotional call for an end to poverty, which he said had imprisoned (and still imprisons) people in poor countries.

Poverty, which Mandela likened to apartheid and slavery, is much more rampant today than it was then. And although the world leaders he addressed responded (or purportedly did) through debt reliefs the world has since seen greater drifts in the economies of many countries that have no business being poor. Nigeria is one of such countries.

Nigeria’s poverty, just like the one Mandela urged the world to act on, is man-made although unlike Mandela’s conviction then Nigeria’s case appears to have developed sophisticated resistance to solutions (or what seems like it). And one solution it has progressively defied is reasoning; both the leaders and led are complicit in this.

(To be continued)