Unconquerable soul

When you think of people who’ve played the long game, who’ve showed steadfast courage and a generosity of spirit despite the most despicable treatment from their oppressors, I believe you would not cast about too long before you spoke the name of Nelson Mandela.

In the course of his revolutionary leadership in the struggle against apartheid, Mandela was denounced as a terrorist and spent 27 years in prison, before being released in 1992 and becoming the first black president of South Africa. As we are seeing today with the white male base of the Kleptocrat’s supporters, the attempts by the Afrikaners who had held power since the days of the Dutch settlements became more and more repressive with every successive wave of black African refusal to live as second class citizens in their own land. And Mandela was the most visible representation of the African National Congress.

One of his many remarkable qualities was his refusal to carry the terrible weight of bitterness or revenge—he could certainly be remorseless, but he was not vindictive. Even though he certainly had real, personal cause for grievance.

The poem “Invictus”, is the best-known work of the Victorian poet William E. Henley. It certainly encapsulates the Victorian mantra of maintaining the stiff upper lip, but also includes that kind of, well, master-of-fate mentality that formed the backbone of the British Empire. You really do have to have an underpinning of a complete belief in yourself in order to conquer, occupy and govern peoples literally around the world.

That belief also helps if you’re going to lead the resistance to the kind of oppression that people like the Kleptocrat, and the Bothas dish out.

And “Invictus” (Latin for, essentially, “unbroken”; literally, “unconquered”) was a touchstone for Mandela during his imprisonment. It has also served the same purpose for Aung San Suu Kyi, and American POWs held by the North Vietnamese, so it could do so for us, too.

“Invictus”

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

 

 

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