The youth should seize this Mandela moment and redefine nation’s future

By Tony Gachoka

Last Sunday in an opinion piece, Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba, gave interesting examples of successful aged leaders.

The Parliamentary Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs chairman cited Abraham Lincoln, President Kibaki, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Nelson Mandela as aged leaders who contributed tremendously to various political and historic achievements.

He argued if a leader is good enough, he is old enough and youth or generational change should not be a key factor in seeking leadership.

Let me start by saying all great leaders start young. In Kenya, leaders like Kibaki, Raila Odinga, John Michuki, Kenneth Matiba and Tom Mboya all started public life while young. They made their greatest achievements in earlier days.

Secondly, those who begin well don’t always end well as is the case with Robert Mugabe. I wish to see generational change in the life and times of Madiba. Nelson Mandela will be remembered throughout history as one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country.

Mandela stands on the high pedestal with Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jnr and Thomas Jefferson. He did not start his struggle as an old man, but as a young lawyer. He has defied oppression throughout his life and that pinnacle cannot be seen in isolation from his beginning.

In his advanced age, Mandela only served one term in Pretoria; his dream was not power but to deliver peace and a constitution to South Africa. At one time, he even delegated the presidency while travelling abroad to a political adversary Mangosuthu Butelezi, Chief Minister of KwaZulu and President of Inkatha.

In Kenya, some leaders are still talking about the power structure more than two years after the National Accord and the Annan (Kofi) mission. We read it in the Press. It is all about more power, more teeth, more protocol, more sharing of power, more committees, and more commissions... Period. In contrast, since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the centre of the most compelling and inspiring political story. Uniting and breaking barriers regardless of the power play.

As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation towards multi-racial government and majority rule.

The ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, a book destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of world’s greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela tells the extraordinary story of his life — an epic struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph.

The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age, learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid. He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the 1950s between the ANC and the Government, culminating in his struggles as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He recounts the surprisingly eventful 27 years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations leading to his freedom and beginning of the end of apartheid.

In Kenya, this is time of the youth. This is your Mandela moment. You must redefine the nation’s future. Stand in solidarity, demand equity and justice and the right to a dignified life. Even US President Barack Obama, who is so popular around the world, is not a Mandela yet; King Jnr and Gandhi are that calibre. Kenya needs a fresh leadership with sobriety and sincerity of purpose.

The journey to 2012 has begun and the youth cannot ignore its importance then cry after the event. We should reject the politics of deception as America did in 2008. The youth united must know not even the mightiest army can defeat an idea whose time has come. Ponder this: "It is not the size of the wave, but the motion of the ocean that moves the ship."

The writer is the chief executive at the Eugene Wamalwa Centre