As a South African who has witnessed much of the country’s progress over the years, both as a patriot and a journalist, I watched Channel 4’s Free Nelson Mandela three-part documentary with great interest.
It was fair and well balanced as an historical record, but there was a missing link – almost touched upon in the concluding scenes in which Nelson Mandela talked of forgiveness and Afrikaner government minister Barend du Plessis remarked on Nelson’s kindness, tolerance and dignity.
And there was a nod to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called by Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu at which many victims of apartheid forgave those who had shamefully mistreated them.
But the key to the successful handover of power to the majority black population was clearly the Christian faith that was foundational both to Nelson and his predecessor as national leader, F W de Klerk.
It had been widely acknowledged that civil war could easily have erupted in the tinder box political and social arena surrounding apartheid that was attracting global attention by the mid-1980s. And the Free Nelson Mandela globalised concert at Wembley was credited as significantly contributing to Mandela’s release from prison after 27 years.
Indeed, civil war could well have broken out between the various black tribes, with the Zulu-led Inkhata movement initially unwilling to partake in negotiations for a new South Africa.
But Christians were rallied to major sports stadiums to pray for the nation. Mandela himself, brought up among Methodist missionaries who even paid for his university education, had evidently allowed Christ’s teaching on forgiveness to permanently affect his actions.
F W de Klerk, meanwhile, had reportedly called on Jesus to have mercy on his nation, following which true reconciliation was set in motion.
Rev Colin Chambers, an Assemblies of God minister from Muizenberg, near Cape Town, attested to Mandela’s faith commitment during a visit to Doncaster (my home city) some years ago. Colin was at one time appointed chaplain to Mandela and some of his closest associates on Robben Island, and he told of the genuine faith in Christ expressed by them during intimate Bible studies in the prison.
The key to the relatively peaceful handover of power in South Africa was, and is, the gospel of Christ, the Prince of Peace. There is no other force in the world capable of the kind of reconciliation witnessed in Cape Town, the city of my birth, in the 1990s.
And may I also say that the Jewish people, who gave us Jesus and the precious Scriptures on which to lay a sure foundation for civilized society, also played a significant role. Lawyer Albie Sachs, featured in the programme, was a high-profile anti-apartheid activist who lost his arm and was almost killed for his efforts.
And Helen Suzman, a member of the old white Parliament, campaigned fearlessly over many years for an end to apartheid. I was proud to have canvassed for votes on behalf of her Progressive Party back in my student days. But it was a year or so later that I discovered there was something even more powerful than political persuasion when I too committed my life and hopes to the Lord Jesus Christ, the only sure foundation on which to build any nation.
Personally, I felt the influence of pop stars on the outcome of South Africa’s destiny was overstated. And this has seemingly had the adverse effect of celebrities forever climbing on the woke bandwagon, accusing everyone who doesn’t agree with them of being racist and even having the nerve to accuse the very people who helped dismantle the hated system – i.e. the Jews – of reassembling apartheid in Israel.
If anything, it is Israel – and not the so-called Palestinians – who are the real victims there, coming under attack from every direction. Whatever way you look at it, it was Judeo-Christian values that gave birth to the new South Africa.
Or, to put it another way, apartheid ended at the cross, reconciling black and white in the name of Jesus (see Ephesians 2:14-16).
Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon; Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com; To the Jew First, A Nation Reborn, and King of the Jews, all available from Christian Publications International.
