Happy birthday, Nelson Mandela

Today is Nelson Mandela's birthday. 87 years old. He should make 90, although he's slowed down a lot. I saw him at Riverside Church this year, where he didn't mount the steps to the podium, but stayed at ground level. He said it would be his last visit to America.

Mandela is my biggest hero ever. I'm an ex-South African, who grew up under apartheid, and despaired of freedom ever happening in my country, to the point that I immigrated to the USA, which seems to be backsliding in the freedom stakes.

This is from the Bangkok Post, of all publications:

South Africa's Nelson Mandela, an increasingly fragile icon whose moral message nevertheless grows louder with each passing year, turns 87 years old today. Unlike earlier birthdays, which saw the Nobel laureate party with film stars, royalty and adoring children, this one will spotlight Mr Mandela's political legacy rather than his celebrity allure, officials say.

Nelson Mandela Foundation officials and associates say the focus is firmly on ensuring Mandela's lessons of human respect and dignity live long beyond the man himself. "The greatest danger is that his legacy will be understood in purely mechanical or political terms, and stripped of its humaneness and humanity,'' said Mac Maharaj, a former transport minister who spent 12 years as a political prisoner with Mr Mandela in South Africa's notorious Robben Island prison. "Mr Mandela has his strengths and weaknesses just like all of us, but we need to understand his ability to control himself, to see what needs to be done, and to do it,'' he said.

Aides acknowledge that Mr Mandela -- the anti-apartheid hero who in 1994 became South Africa's first black president -- has slowed down considerably since announcing his official retirement from public life early last year. He appears in public gripping a cane or the arm of an assistant, and spends long periods at home with his family including his third wife Graca Machel, the widow of Mozambique's founding President Samora Machel. "I think he's trying to relax, he's trying to spend more time with Mrs Machel,'' said John Samuel, the chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. "He spends more time just taking it easy.''

But the man who led South Africa from white domination to multi-racial democracy remains a giant in the public imagination, who can still rally tens of thousands to support his messages of fighting HIV/Aids and poverty. Known by his clan name "Madiba'' by his grateful countrymen, Mr Mandela travelled to the Arctic Circle this year to support the battle against Aids, hosting a Norwegian rock concert as part of his own "46664'' campaign against the epidemic, named after his former prison number.

He has also spoken out forcefully about the US war on Iraq and global poverty _ keeping his message of justice and reconciliation in the headlines.

Associates say Mr Mandela remains in good health for his age, but this past year has nevertheless proved challenging in both his private and public lives. He announced in January that his eldest son Makgatho had died from HIV/Aids at the age of 54, using his personal tragedy to once again exhort South Africans to confront an epidemic which infects an estimated five million of their countrymen, the highest toll in the world. And his public image has taken a rare knock in recent months amid a legal battle over rights to the use of the Mandela name, which local media have depicted as an unseemly struggle over money among some of his family members and close associates.

For most South Africans, however, Mr Mandela remains above reproach -- an increasingly mythologised figure who embodies both the country's difficult past and its hopes for the future. The Nelson Mandela Foundation will mark his birthday this year with a lecture on Tuesday by Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner, as well as the release of new comic books designed to bring his message to the younger generation. "There is a legacy that we need to wrap our minds and our thinking around,'' said Cyril Ramaphosa, a senior member of the ruling African National Congress. "Many people in this country are beginning to deal with that."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Madiba. Here's a poem I wrote about him when I voted in South Africa's first free election.

MANDELA

so this is why I’ve been in New York all this time
to stand at the UN and vote for a man
Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela
his life cut by twenty-seven and a half years
yet he said, I’m not bitter
I’m not bitter?
up here in the north
we sure could learn from his south
here the smaller the brain
the bigger the mouth

you liked New York, Nelson
but I have to warn you
we poopscoop our dogshit
and giftwrap our bullshit
we’re all prisoners in a dark sitcom
some talk revolution
but the closest they get
is to call Doctor King
an Uncle Tom

praise-sing Rolihlahla
Nelson Mandela
your mother Nosekeni
your eldest son Thembi
they too went underground
prison-bound
unable to go their funeral
where did you go?
the last walk to hell
a deep descent
but you came back
your back unbent
you knew a nation
marched from Lagos to London
Beijing to Boston
Moscow to Cuba
Makgatho, Maziwe
Zenani and Zindziwe
how proud for them yeah
that you were their tata

my father was proud
when you went to jail
he, a ten-foot crackpipe
I couldn’t inhale
his idea of father
came straight from hell
he touched me only
to beat the shit out of me
and when he finished
he beat the shit as well

all those years I made up
two fathers for me
the one I could smell
whiskey-fart near
the other one gone
island-bound, gagged
Nelson, he ain’t here

I liked having one father who was missing
he made up for the one who was too much there
but far from my fatherland
on the isle of Manhattan
where the hype high-fives
to maroela-tree size
you get to spot self-deception
it wears a funny green hat
check it out, the cold smile of fact
Nelson, I can never dig my tata
the way I love you
but marooned in my whiteness
how long? very long
in my self-imposed exile
I know one thing that’s true
the father who is my father
is my father
and the father who is not
is not
is you

amandla! – power
awethu! – is ours
the price of freedom has been paid
in blood, in pain, in tears, in rage
hey, dad, I count the scars
you wrote on me
I price the resentment
I kept forever on simmer
I total up the rage
I ate each New York night for dinner
but now today
as I make my cross
with Rolihlahla I say
sweet freedom at last
I’m not bitter