{"id":13062,"date":"2013-12-06T15:56:29","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T14:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=13062"},"modified":"2013-12-07T00:11:37","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T23:11:37","slug":"mandiba-we-thank-you-for-inspiring-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=13062","title":{"rendered":"Madiba, we thank you for inspiring us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although expected for so long, the news is still so sad. In my lifetime, I have never known the death of anyone to affect so many people so deeply as the loss of Nelson Mandela.<\/p>\n

On 11 June 1988, Vee and I attended a concert in (the old) Wembley Stadium in London to mark Mandela’s 70th birthday and to call for his release from prison.<\/p>\n

In 2004, during a holiday in South Africa, we visited Robben Island and saw the prison cell occupied for so long by Mandela [my account here<\/a>]. It was at the prison that I bought his autobiography “Long Walk To Freedom” [my review here<\/a>] which has now been turned into a film which is just about to go on general release.<\/p>\n

Only once did I have the opportunity to see Nelson Mandela but I made sure that I took it. It was on 3 February 2005 in London’s Trafalgar Square when he was visiting the UK to put pressure on the forthcoming G7 summit to Make Poverty History. I wrote in my diary:<\/p>\n

“He is almost 88 and he was frail, but I wanted to see the man I most admire on the planet before he leaves us all.”<\/p>\n

For decades now, Mandela has been a kind of secular saint. I always knew that, once he died, the revisionism would start because all heroes are flawed. In fact, the criticisms have commenced already. But, for a few days at least, can we just mourn his loss and treasure his memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"