Today's Chicago Tribune carries a photo of Illinois Senator Barack Obama while on an African tour visiting the Robben Island prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 27 years. Obama describes the experience as "humbling." Even while in prison, Mandela led a peaceful fight against apartheid in South Africa. After release from prison, Mandela became South Africa's first democratically elected president and, in 1993, received the Nobel Peace Prize.
While in South Africa last January, my daughter and I took a bumpy boat ride to Robben Island for a tour of the prison. Our tour guide Dan had been a prisoner with Mandela and knew him while in prison. As Dan showed us the prison and talked of the hardness of daily life in it, he spoke passionately of how Mandela by his peaceful words and actions had influenced him to change from an angry, hateful, young man to a purveyor of peace. Mandela continually emphasized to his fellow inmates not to hate the guards, saying, "The guards are as much victims of apartheid as we are."
The picture of Obama at Robben Island brought those earth-shattering words of Mandela's back to me this morning. What if all the warring factions in the world today possessed the heart and logic to look at their enemies using Mandela's words as a guide to evaluate the situation? Would it change their actions? If it did, it could change the course of history by changing the tools of cultural evolution.
The boat ride back to the mainland was extremely rough. Every time we slammed into a wave, I was afraid the boat would be smashed. But inside in my mind and memory, I carried a powerful tool for peace.
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