Nelson Mandela
Louise said to me this morning, “Here I go”. I asked, “What do you mean?” She said, “I am taking Nelson Mandela off my prayer list”
I will never forget it. On a Sunday afternoon – February 2nd, 1990 – when Nelson Mandela walked out of prison after twenty-six years, two things gripped me. First, Louise revealed to me that day that she had been praying for him every day for several years – beginning when he was on trial – long before he was in prison in Robin Island, near Cape Town, South Africa. I had no idea she had been praying for him. But for some reason she connected with him and began praying for him every day. Today she stopped. I would be surprised if there is a person in the world who has prayed more for Mandela than she has – every day for some forty years. Second, the phrase “the bearing of a prince” came to mind as I watched Nelson Mandela that day. We all wept. What a man. Sheer class. Utter dignity. Extraordinary presence
A few years later I received a phone call from Ken Costa, prominent London banker and churchwarden of Holy Trinity Church, Brompton. “I am sitting in the car with Washington Okumu, the man who is responsible for putting Nelson Mandela in power, and he wants to meet you”. I had never heard of Washington Okuma, but I was happy to meet him. I found out later he was a protégé of Dr. Henry Kissinger at Harvard and became a professor in Kenya. He sat on the front row at Mandela’s inauguration in Pretoria. Dr. Kissinger walked over to Okumu and said, “You did what I tried but failed to do”. Okumu came to our flat in London. He said he wanted to meet me because my book God Meant it for God had changed his life. He shared something that was quite over-the-top: that Nelson Mandela would not be president of South Africa apart from him. His reasoning was that God Meant it for Good spurred him to get president de Klerk, chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Mandela together – which put Mandela in power. He wanted me to give him a signed copy of God Meant it for Good to pass on to Nelson Mandela (which he apparently did). I later asked Washington Okumu to write the Foreword to my book Total Forgiveness.
I did my best to meet Nelson Mandela. Never in my life have I tried so hard to meet anybody. But on a flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town my Bible reading that day leaped out at me, “Should you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not?” (Jer.45:5). That verse brought me right down. I was smitten. My prideful motives surfaced and I felt pretty awful. I knew that I was not aiming for something God was in. Four different people assured me they could get me to Mandela (this in itself is a story!). I even had thirty minutes with the very man who was arguably the closest to him – Frank Chicane, and yet meeting Mandela never happened. Why? It was not God’s idea. It taught me a lesson. I wanted to meet Mandela for the wrong reason.
Louise cried when hearing the news last night of Mandela’s death. I do not know why she had this desire to pray for him. Her role in this was not to meet him but only to pray for him. She hoped that at some stage he would have a strong Christian testimony. I asked Chicane – himself a Pentecostal preacher, “Do you think Mandela is saved?” He smiled. “That’s a good question”, not the words I hoped to hear. However, for reasons I outline in my forthcoming book on Wisdom, I choose to believe he was a Christian.
That said, whether Mandela was saved or not, he rises above all the great men in history – whether Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln. I thank God for him. He was (in my humble opinion) the greatest man in human history outside the Bible.
RT Kendall