08042018 - Education in free fall! •Sector gets paltry N3.9 trillion out of N55.19 trillion in 10 years

PAGE 36—SUNDAY VANGUARD, APRIL 8, 2018
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Winnie Mandela, Mama
Africa: And so it goes…
She was beautiful in
that ethereal and ex
quisitely African
way: fierce, plump, straightbacked,
and unbent by adversity
or struggle. There
was both fire and love in her
eyes. You could see that in
all her pictures. The bold lioness.
The daring twinkle.
The changing cloud of her
face that could either gather
with the rain, or open with
the sun. Prickly and hot.
Calm and seductive.
She was the fire in that
burning spear that was
hauled against apartheid,
and her voice traveled far,
like a javelin and pierced the
armor of the most powerful
white supremacist regime
ever established anywhere
in the world. No shield was
proof against her. She was
the cornerstone of the struggle
for the liberation of the
land, which people like me
grew up to call “Azania” –
South Africa. At the end of
the struggle she became
that stone which the builders
of the new South Africa
rejected, but which remains
the capstone of its temple to
all intents and purposes because
history may be unkind
in one generation, but does
not forget. The great heroes
of today, might become in
the passage of time, the villains
of tomorrow. In the
fullness of time, a true measure
of her life will be rendered,
but today, Winnie
Madikizela Mandela passes
on. Two women from
South Africa embodied the
image, for my generation,
of the dimensions of the
South African struggle:
Miriam Makeba – whose
musical genius spawned of
the Shebeens of Soweto
gave idiom to the South African
struggle much like the
mournful and insouciant
jazz of her former spouse,
the now equally late Hugh
Maskela.
When Makeba sang
“Pata-Pata,” you heard the
calming balm on the spirits
of men and women who
have gone to battle; when
she sang, “Aluta Continua,”
you heard the thundering
feet of the revolutionaries in
Africa gathering in the
street, defiant, and proud
and sworn to liberty:
My people, my people
open your eyes
And answer the call of the
drums
Frelimo, Frelimo –
Samora Machel has
come –
Maputo, Maputo, home
of the brave,
Our nation soon shall be
one.
Frelimo, Frelimo –
Samora Machel has won.
In Mozambique –
Aluta continua, Aluta
continua, continua…
It was a song which like
Bob Marley’s “Zimbabwe”
written for that moment,
and the powerful, almost
elegiac song, “Babylon System,”
with its defiant refrain,
“We’ve been trodding
on the wine press for much
too long…rebel” broke
walls, and the backs of
apartheid and colonialism.
But it was Winnie Mandela
who embodied these songs,
and the spirit of the land,
and her struggles. The
heave of protests which had
swollen from when her husband,
the much eulogized
Nelson Mandela stood trial,
and defiantly refused to
denounce or reject armed
struggle as an alternative to
the negotiations for the full
rights of Africans in South
Africa held under the thrall
of settler colonialism and
apartheid.
Nelson Mandela was
jailed with his comrades,
condemned to death following
the Rivonia trials. Let
me point here as an aside,
that it took the back channel
diplomacy of Dr. Nnamdi
Azikiwe, pressuring the
British and the Americans,
to force South-Africa to
commute the death sentence
on Mandela and his cohorts.
Indeed, the decision
to return to South Africa
from Lagos, through London,
and make the Mandela
trial a political and international
issue was taken
in Lagos, where Mandela
had fled, under the protection
of Azikiwe and the
NCNC was made, I understand,
in Lagos in 1962 between
Zik, his principal secretary
Adisa K. Disu, Jaja
Wachukwu and Mandela.
Mbazulike Amechi with
whom he lived in Yaba had
given just a hint of this and
the partnership between the
NCNC and the ANC in an
interview with me in 1996
published in the Sunday
Vanguard, but not much has
been known publicly yet of
the efforts by Dr. Jaja
Wachukwu, Nigeria’s first
republic Foreign Minister
and Dr. Azikiwe in internationalizing
the Mandela
situation, in the years when
Nigeria mattered in the
world and carried weight in
When people saw
Winnie Mandela they
saw Nelson Mandela.
Winnie bore the brunt
of his long absence;
she was already a
widow for the struggle;
and like all passionate
humans, she sought
consolation in the arms
of passionate men, in
the absence of her
husband
international affairs before
she became a laughing stock
of the world. I hope that soon,
someday, the vast papers of
Dr. Wachukwu kept in his
Mbawsi Home could be acquired,
indexed, and preserved
by the National Archives
in Enugu, or by the
Special Collections Section
of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Library
at the University of Nigeria
Nsukka, or the proposed
Archive of Igbo Life
and Letters in Owerri when it
is fully established and operational.
But the flame had been lit,
that will light the path of the
anti-apartheid struggle: it was
in the voice and soul of Mandela’s
young wife. Nelson
Mandela’s wife was much
younger than he. Winnie was
his second wife. From the moment
in 1962, when her husband
was taken to the Roben
Islands, Winnie Mandela
took on the role of the voice
of the struggle. Many fled
South Africa. But she stood,
unflinching, and fearless. She
led marches on the streets.
She campaigned vigorously
and relentlessly. She was beaten
and tortured. She was banished
and confined to solitary
house arrest in rural Banfort.
But she kept the “Free Mandela
movement” alive and active.
Her power-salute thrown
defiantly in the air became
the symbol of that defiance,
not only of the African, but of
that species of the Black woman
– mother, lover, wife, and
image of the goddess of the
land. Great men like Oliver
Tambo left for exile, and kept
the international pressure on
apartheid alive in their lives
of restless exile.
Oliver Thambo in a sense
was like Moses of the Jews.
He led the ANC and South
Africa through the Forty-year
wilderness, saw the glimpse
of the Promised Land, but died
just on the eve of the postapartheid
elections that
would have symbolized the
culmination of his struggles.
Tambo was blamed for the
Church Street massacres,
during the Truth and Reconciliation
tribunals. Winnie
Mandela stayed on in South
Africa and kept the ANC
struggle at home fierce and
resolute.
There would have been no
Mandela without Winnie
Mandela, because she it was
who stoked his legend; turned
his from an ordinary man of
the struggle, to the spirit of the
struggle. When people saw
Winnie Mandela they saw
Nelson Mandela. Winnie
bore the brunt of his long absence;
she was already a widow
for the struggle; and like
all passionate humans, she
sought consolation in the
arms of passionate men, in the
absence of her husband. It
was not what broke their
marriage. It was that time
and the cruelty of that separation
had sundered their relationship.
Nelson Mandela
returned from prison an old,
sagely man. Winnie, still at
the height of her power
longed for familiar consolations,
the kind which Mr.
Mandela could no longer
provide. She too had been
shaped by the contradictions
of the struggle. She was accused
of being an accessory
after the fact of murder in the
now legendary Stompie case.
She was later acquitted. She
was accused of corruption as
a government minister. It was
later overturned by a judge
who established that the
transactions involving Winnie
Mandela were not conducted
for “personal gain.”
Her divorce from Nelson
Mandela must be counted as
one of the most obvious
blights in what should have
been a symbolic and model
union. It has been said that
Winnie Mandela’s “infidelity”
was the primary cause of
the divorce. But it is clear that
Winnie Mandela was one of
the sacrifices Nelson Mandela
had to offer to the gods of
“reconciliation,” if he had to
ascend to power in South Africa.
Winnie’s abrasive involvement
in the struggle; the
threat of her personality
and popularity; and the
pan-African vision that animated
her, threatened the
balance of forces in the
“new South Africa.” She
had to be sacrificed. But she
remained popular among
ordinary folk. She criticized
her ex-husband’s postapartheid
stances, particularly
in her defence of the
ordinary folk, who have
never benefited from the
struggle to end apartheid.
Mama Africa: her soul
marches on.
Good Night, My Blood,
My Brother
other, , Yemm
emmy
There is no comfort for
the heart when it is
broken. There is no
comfort for the eyes when the
tears come in torrents. And
there is never a comfort for
tomorrow when today looks
like the end of the road. Where
is the comfort when all
around you there are sorrowful
faces that demand answers
to sad questions on their
minds?
Where is the comfort when
the world is upside down, and
you have to pick existence out
of the rubbles? Where is the
comfort when at every step
you take it feels as if you are
treading on your own heart
and the pain is unbearable?
How do you seek comfort
when the heart is “knocking”
wildly and threatening to
burst out?
You cannot give up. In this
state, there are people who
are clinging on to you for direction,
for a new beginning
and purpose. You are as lost
and directionless as anyone
could get. The pain becomes
unbearable when you are
asked the way forward when
Diaspora Matters, with
Morak Babajide-Alabi
http://www.babajidealabi.com
all you want to do is walk
back into the past. Sadness
overwhelms you, but you cannot
say this. You are clueless,
yet you have to pretend you
are in control.
People with heavy hearts
gather around you, yet you
cannot offer any comfort because
you are struggling to
hide your own grief. You advise
people not to cry anymore,
yet at every opportunity,
you lock yourself up in the
closet to cry your heart out.
You can not do it in public,
because you will break people
you should be a tower for.
This is life! It is a misery
which no one has been able
to explain. This past week I
asked many questions in my
bid to understand life’s mysteries.
All to no avail. I gave
up because I realised that no
matter how hard the wisest of
human beings try, no one can
crack it. You may think you
understand it right now but
turn around in a second and
you will be confused what it
is all about. The mysteries belong
to God, the Almighty.
In my reflection, I realise
that in life, one minute your
laughter might be the loudest
in a hall, and in a twinkle
of an eye your pain may become
the “deepest”. Sometimes
it takes just a phone call,
or the door to open inwards
and life brings a new meaning.
Who can explain this?
For me, for us, the laughter
boomed and boomed, the
hearts were merry, songs of
joy, until that moment when
all changed. It was a dream
that we prayed we should
When we said
goodbye a few
days ago, it was
not to be last.
When we hugged
as he set out for
London the
thought that it
could be the last
never crossed my
mind
wake up from on time. So as
we rang each other up, there
was a consensus that we were
networking in our various
dreams and when we wake
up we would all heave sighs
of relief and pick up the
laughter where we left off.
Dreams do become reality.
While reality also sometimes
sends us into trances.
Last week was the longest
of my life. It was the most tor-
•Yemmy
tuous week of my adult existence
and definitely will take
a while for the inflicted wound
to heal. The week typified the
scenario I painted above,
from the highest height of joy
to the lowest depth of pain and
sadness.
Ironically yesterday was my
birthday, incidentally, a week
after the resurrection of our
Lord Jesus Christ. It was a
week I had to repeatedly say
the words - “we lost him” - to
closest relations, while to
some I could not even bear
the courage to say anything.
I had to let the sobs and tears
convey the message.
How do you explain the
mystery? I lost Yemmy a few
months to his 50th birthday.
It sounds so unreal. Is this
how death play the game?
Dirty! A man full of life, hopes,
plans and dreams and had to
go just like that. Death is indeed
shameless. If it is not,
why will it take Yemmy when
all he wanted to do was go
and visit his family in Abuja?
He loved his wife, his children
and anyone that ever came
in contact with him will testify
of his large heart.
Death, where is thy sting?
You waited for Yemmy where
we least expected. He walked
into Heathrow Airport,
checked in his luggage, got
his boarding passes, and with
a smile waved goodbye to his
good friend, Simon, who had
accompanied him to the airport,
as he walked through the
security barrier. Yemmy was
a few metres from boarding
his flight to see his family before
he slumped and was
rushed to the Harefield Hospital
where he passed on a day
after.
When we said goodbye a
few days ago, it was not to be
last. When we hugged as he
set out for London the thought
that it could be the last never
crossed my mind. I would
have held tightly to him, and
pushed my heart into his. As
we chatted on the way to the
airport on this fateful day, if I
had an inkling, I would have
told him how much fun he
brought into my life these past
three months. But he never
gave any clue that he was nearing
the end of his journey.
As I spent some time with
him at the Chapel of Rest,
Harefield Hospital, a while
after passing on, he looked so
peaceful like someone at
sleep. This was my first reality
of death. I was lost for words
as I starred through teary eyes
at a brother I admired so
much. Yemmy was gone. His
lips were curled as if to say:
“Jide, it’s okay. Stop crying, I
have done my bit. Be strong
for Bukky, the children and
sisters.”
As I walked into the outer
room the words of God hit me
like fresh air. Revelations 4:11
- “Worthy are You, our Lord
and our God, to receive glory
and honour and power; for
You created all things, and because
of Your will they existed
and were created.” And I realised
Yemmy had gone to a
better place.
This is not a tribute. I will
write one later. But I must say
Yemmy was a gentleman,
good husband, father, friend,
brother, colleague, etc anyone
could have wished for.
He was above all, a Christian.
His kindness will live
forever in the hearts of all he
came in contact with. He
loved life and he made it a
duty to put smiles on people’s
faces. With Yemmy, there was
never a downtime. His laughter
was infectious as it always
came from his heart, and with
him, you knew where you
stood.
Yemmy was a pioneer, a
brilliant individual who excelled
in all he laid his hands
on. He was a First Class graduate
of Surveying and Geomatics
from University of
Lagos and a British Chevening
Scholar of the University
of Edinburgh with distinction
in Masters in Geographical
Information Sciences.
He consulted for many UK
local councils and shared his
expertise with many individuals
and businesses. Perhaps
he knew his time was short
that was why he did all these
fast.
It is still incomprehensible
but we have accepted the sovereignty
of God. I am so happy
you chose to spend your
last three months on earth
with me and my family. We
miss you. Your nephews and
niece still knock on the door
to your room, as a habit, before
they leave for college. It
will take a long while for us
to adjust.
Good night, Yemmy, my
blood, my brother.