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In 1995, Little Brown and Company published an autobiographical work that began as scrapes of paper buried under the floor of former President Mandela’s prison cell with the title: “Long Walk of Freedom.”

In this book, President Mandela describes his life journey. After all, life is nothing but a journey that has to be traveled but whose true meaning is complicated by the fact that humanity has not found an answer to its impermanence.

Although we are born equal, the journey of life takes us through different addresses and each day of life brings with it its own surprises and reveals opportunities that can defy human imagination and construction.

In coming up with the title of his autobiography, President Mandela must have been acutely cognisant of the fact that his personal journey was inextricably linked with the journey of millions of South Africans who by law were classified as second class citizens deserving inferior opportunities in life and yet were endowed with the same inalienable right to liberty, justice and freedom.

What is freedom without the means to enjoy it? When the book was published in 1995, a year after President Mandela’s inauguration as the first President of a democratic South Africa, could we safely conclude that freedom had arrived? Was it a long march to freedom? Whose freedom was it?

Any society that exposes its citizens to long walks to freedom rather than short walks to banks limits its own possibilities.

Africa’s key brand ambassadors have acquired their fame primarily climbing on the rough side of the mountain of opportunity often shackled in chains.

We all want to be inspired by the experiences of those we look up to and yet the journey that brought freedom to many African states though necessary produced leaders who were bruised in unnecessary battles.

In need freedom is latent. The majority of Africans are in need of what many in developed countries often take for granted.

The success or failure of any struggle for emancipation must be measured in terms of its impact on human development.

After the long march, the majority of the people remained in the valley of despair and hopelessness.

Whose responsibility is or should it be to bring human freedom? Is freedom a right? What is the relationship, if any, between freedom and human security?

Freedom is a fundamental right whose purpose is to promote and protect human development.

Without it, human security cannot be guaranteed and the road to wealth and prosperity is filled with roadblocks, potholes, and toll gates manned by powerful people determined to slow the traffic.

What Mandela chose to describe as a long walk to freedom, produced an outcome that allowed all South Africans of voting age to exercise their power to govern through democratic means.

The power to govern is and should be a privilege granted to a people citizens elect and can hold responsible for its use.

However, too often in many of our countries, the power to govern is easily Long Walk to Freedom 10converted into a right like freedom by the privileged few who entry into the journey of power ends is often characterised by an abrupt end to freedom.

In the case of South Africa, the last 16 years have produced four Presidents and also witnessed the recall of a sitting President without using guns in intermediating the power transfer process.

History has shown too often that absolute power causes impoverishment and famine.

Although the freedom was meant to produce greater wealth and prosperity of human development and of security from all forms of violence, regrettably the long march did not end at an address that can hardly be described as a freedom address.

Millions of Africans are still subjected to absolute privation, exposure, famine, disease, torture, forced labour, mass murder, executions, deportations, political violence, beatings and even war.

It is and should not be enough that a people have a right to be free.

In reviewing Mandela’s journey it is easy to assign blame on him on the lack of progress on many aspects of the human development story.

What should Mandela have done differently? Is it fair to expect a single individual to change the lives of many?

It is true that Mandela as a person has changed his address. He is now a resident in areas that were restricted before the end to the journey to freedom. The mere fact that he is now a resident of a suburb called Houghton represents change.

Without freedom, he could only dream of calling Houghton a home. What is important for all to learn is that even if Mandela had chosen to live in Soweto, his pre-incarceration address, the fate of the majority of South Africans would not have changed anyway.

With freedom, many have climbed the opportunity ladder while the majority remain in the valley.

Some would call this a betrayal of the revolution forgetting that the obligation of lifting one up the ladder lies and should lay with the individual obviously with the support of his/her circle of friends, family and colleagues.

Mandela’s eyes will only allow him to see people who have access to him and if he were to be asked, for example, to recommend an engineer, his memory will only be able to pick names that he is familiar with.

With a population of about 48 million, it must be accepted that Mandela will only be able to know a limited number of South Africans and yet they expect him to know everything that is wrong and put a meaning to the concept of freedom as if he was not fighting for his own personal freedom.

It is true that Mandela as a person has more choices than he had 20 years ago but it would be wrong that to expect, for instance, his choices to change the lives of all.

The struggle for independence was meant to remove all artificial and man-made and non-market barriers created to block black human development.

The mere fact that Mandela became the first President of a democratic South Africa represented change. After all a President is no more than a man/woman of flesh.

Long Walk to Freedom 8He cannot and should not be expected to think for sovereign people and yet many of us expect people in government to have more wisdom and time than we all have to do the things that we must, should and can do for ourselves.

Mandela like many of his contemporaries has been occasionally accused of betraying the revolution. Is it fair to have expected Mandela to bring the kind of freedom that people expect?

Although freedom is desirable and necessary, it cannot out of itself make people have the same access to justice and equity.

Freedom is by definition limited as a means to good ends such as the public welfare, prosperity, peace, ethnic unity and/or national honour.

What lessons do we learn from Mandela’s journey? We learn that no single individual must and should be expected to bear the mantle to bring food to the table, shelter and opportunities.

Freedom is only sweet if conditions exist for ordinary people to seize Long Walk to Freedom 6opportunities to their own advantage and in doing so to the advantage of all who benefit from transactions that are associated with human progress.

The people who blame leaders for lack of progress are the very people who do not want leaders to have absolute power.

Absolute power requires the means to exercise it, and; if no one has invested in the institutional arrangements to support dictatorship then blame must be placed on the people whose silence and inaction causes tyranny to exist and thrive.

The degrees of freedom are determined by our actions. There is no leader who can cause followers to do that which is not in their own interest.

The human spirit is difficult to cage and the decolonisation project was just one in many examples that demonstrate the power that lies in organised people.

Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary outcomes not through the genius of leaders but their own will to scale the moral mountain.

In making the observations above, one is not blind to the power that leaders can possess in inspiring others to climb the mountain of opportunity.

Leaders can inspire only if they are also treated as human. Any attempt to treat leaders as superhuman is counterproductive.

Long Walk to Freedom 13Mandela, for example, can only fail because we have failed to do the things that we want to do.

If our leaders behaved in a manner that fails to expose the power that the people they govern want them to possess then there would be no need for people to aspire to have useless power.

A good leader is one who acts like he is a superstar and yet for a leader to be a superstar it would only be so because the people they govern choose to be goal getters.

Freedom creates hope and hope makes all of us believe that tomorrow can be a better day if we choose to act today.

Mandela was quick to point out that he was neither a saint nor prophet but just another guy who could be in or out of power without entertaining the feeling of indispensability.NelsonMandela-collage

Mandela’s genius and legacy is that he knew when to let go and even when tempted to remain in office he understood that what ultimately he was fighting for is to making the statehouse a peoples’ house rather than a permanent address of leaders.

He could easily have fallen into the trap but South Africa was spared the cost of enduring and sustaining leaders who believe that real change can only emanate from their actions and choices instead of a product of the choices of free people.