How to Love a Hero: Singing Happy Birthday to Nelson Mandela

South Africa loves its heroes. In America, our national heroes and founding fathers (in general) died decades if not centuries ago, and have somewhat faded from national consciousness as human beings to instead become something intangible, almost theoretical. Not in South Africa. Nelson Mandela and others that walked with him along that Long Road to Freedom live on, and on Madiba’s birthday, we gathered with school children and teachers to discuss what he has done for South Africa, what’s left to do, and to sing him a very happy birthday.

We stood in a giant circle in the stretching room with little primary students  from the Lynedoc school, helping children put their right hand over their heart. The organizer of the assembly gave a short speech that was eerily familiar, but heard in a different place and different context, I was hearing it for the first time.

He spoke lovingly of South Africa, the country that was their home and for which that had worked so hard to be proud of. He spoke of trials and tribulation and the struggle towards an even brighter future, about picking up the torch that Mandela had lit and carrying it into tomorrow. He reminded them all that education was the path, it was the inheritance that their parents had won for them, and that only they have the power to make changes in the world. He told us that nothing was impossible, and I have never been so convinced of that fact as I was at that moment.

It’s easy to see the struggles that South Africa faces and see it as a crippling heritage to own, that such dramatic inequality, violent history, and extended suffering would always be pitiable and make any amount of action or inaction excusable. But for those children, and for me when I was with them, the sheer volume of challenges is a veritable mountain of opportunity. There is a long way to go before South Africa can know itself as a fair, free, and just society, but these children have the opportunity to walk along that road from the very beginning, right now. They will see tremendous change in their lives, and they alone, their generation of brave, new South African’s, have that chance.

Listening to these students sing their national anthem and then happy birthday to Nelson Mandela brought tears to my eyes. Most of the children were probably too young to fully understand what the teacher was saying, or to know what it might mean for their lives. Standing in silent awe as the children switched between Zulu, Xhosa, and Afrikkans in the national anthem, I realized how incredible, and at the same time incredibly scary, it must be to grow up during such challenging and dynamics times. It was the first time I had ever felt a real sense of commitment to a younger generation, but at that moment I wanted to do and be anything that these children needed. I wanted to help them become the people who they want to be, the ones who will one day become ancestors to be proud of, and I want to be able to say that I witnessed that miracle.

National anthem of South Africa

Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika (Xhosa) (God [Lord] bless Africa)

Maluphakanyisw’ uphondo lwayo, (May her glory be lifted high)

Yizwa imithandazo yethu, (Zulu) (Hear our petitions)

Nkosi sikelela, thina lusapho lwayo. (God bless us, Your children)

Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso, (Sesotho) (God we ask You to protect our nation)

O fedise dintwa le matshwenyeho, (Intervene and end all conflicts)

O se boloke, O se boloke setjhaba sa heso, Setjhaba sa, South Afrika.

(Protect us, protect our nation, our nation, South Africa)

South Afrika! South Africa!

Uit die blou van onse hemel, (Afrikaans) (Ringing out from our blue heavens,)

Uit die diepte van ons see, (From our deep seas breaking round,)

Oor ons ewige gebergtes, (Over everlasting mountains,)

Waar die kranse antwoord gee, (Where the echoing crags resound,)

Sounds the call to come together,

And united we shall stand,

Let us live and strive for freedom,

In South Africa our land.