a final goodbye

When I visited Cuba in 2000, I asked why only Che Guevara's face adorned the many t-shirts we saw there and why there were none of Fidel Castro - we were told that, in Cuba only the dead are immoralised in this way because the living can still betray the revolution.

Today I watched from a thousand miles away how Nelson Mandela's body was lowered into the ground. One minute his coffin was visible over the graveside and then, with just a blink,  it was gone. I've been filled with such sadness, and deep reflection that feels at the same time personal but inextricably part of a collective consciousness. I'm in England and all I wanted was to be home in Cape Town, in South Africa, with my family. So I could sit with them and cry, and remember, and debate, and shout at the TV in unison when No 1 offered the world insincere half truths, lied and delivered unemotional cliche sentiments - even though the act of shouting at the TV would showed up our failings, our inability to be like and act like Madiba would.

I don't have any words of wisdom about how Mandela changed my life and how I'm now going to uphold his legacy and do as he would have done. I'm not quite sure when the sadness I feel will leave me even though the acceptance of his death, and this death to come, has been living with me for a while now. What I know now is that I will be proud to wear a t-shirt with his emblazoned image safe in the knowledge that he did not betray the revolution. Hamba kahle, Nelson Mandela, hamba kahle.