“I fought against white domination and against black domination.”
After finishing the book, we felt sad but full of hope. Guilty despite being innocent. Filled with remorse for faults not ours. A necessary text, to understand the world of yesterday and, unfortunately, that of tomorrow.
We had read it years ago, and reread it today, and we have come closer to its contents. A small book of just a few pages, but of unimaginable scope.
It is not a novel or a treatise, but a collection of Nelson Mandela’s most emblematic and interesting speeches, given in Africa, Europe, and North America, beginning with the letters addressed to President Botha when he was still in prison, unjustly incarcerated for twenty-seven years. Deprived of the most basic civil rights. This is certainly the greatest lesson we have taken away: that we must not necessarily give in to hatred, no matter how impossible; that we must overcome the rancor and resentment that risks settling within every single person subjected to such a great injustice. But are we still capable of it?
It seems out of time, considering the evolution of the world today, yet there were also these men a few years ago who were able to make their voices heard without raising their voices, but with gentle reasoning.
Racism, described in its human aspect, is what we fear most. The ease with which it has spread within a political-state system, and even psychologically, because it takes so little to become executioners, without even being fully aware of it. Dogmas accepted almost as if they were divinely derived. That’s how it was, and unfortunately, that’s how it seems to be again.
We recommend it to all readers, perhaps as a companion reading for younger readers who might not fully understand some of the historical references, and especially how a country based on total racial discrimination could exist, where not everyone was a citizen simply because of the color of their skin. Ironically, all this happened in Africa.
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Nelson Mandela, Contro ogni razzismo, Mondadori, Milano, 1996