Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the former president of Zimbabwe, has died at age 95 in Singapore, while receiving medical treatment there over the past few months. Just as he was in life, Mugabe in death is a highly controversial political figure, with a legacy that is as much celebrated as castigated, as much praiseworthy as unworthy.

Hamba kahle in the Xhosa and Zulu languages of South Africa is a commonly expressed heartfelt wish for a deceased person to “go well” on their spiritual journey in the Great Beyond. Another commonly heard English phrase at South African funerals is that someone “ran a good race” during his/her lifetime on Earth, having lived a life worthy of praise.

Nelson Mandela, in his lifetime, had a way of getting people’s attention. Whether it was living up to his African childhood name of Rolihlahla — “one who shakes the tree” or stirs up trouble — or serving as the first chief of a liberation army connected to his political party, the African National Congress, or going to prison for nearly three decades for his beliefs, or emerging from that prison hell to become the first elected president of a free and democratic South Africa, he commanded people’s attention and could not be ignored.

...A select few musicians in the world, though, rise to the status of soundtrack-makers for entire cultures, peoples and nations. Hugh Masekela, the South African jazz trumpeter who passed on recently at the age of 78, is among that highly regarded level of musical giants. His music was the soundtrack of a nation-in-the-making, South Africa, and spoke directly to countless numbers of people around the globe, especially in the African diaspora.

It was January 1990 and here I was at a conference center in Harare, the capital city of the southern African nation of Zimbabwe, sniffing around for some kind of a good story I might report at a high-level, ministerial meeting of British Commonwealth nations — a gathering of sovereign countries, like Zimbabwe, that still bowed down and answered to their former colonial master, the United Kingdom, out of economic necessity and survival. Nothing much happening here, I thought, and I was just about ready to leave the boring governmental event empty-handed.

Say the words “Cuito Cuanavale” to the average American citizen, liberal and conservative alike, and you’re likely to get a shrug and a blank stare in response. Add the name “Fidel Castro” to that phrase and you’ll instantly notice a nervous tick in their squinting eyes. Dare to throw the word “hero” into the mix and you’ll see a definite jerking motion in their knees and a reddening in the face.

Today, 5 December, marks exactly one year since the passing of former South African president Nelson Mandela at age 95. In death, as in life, Mandela — arguably the greatest statesman of our time — seems to have left his own special mark on the world, and he most certainly has not been forgotten.

Has it really been one year already? These past 12 months have sped by, almost like they were one long morning after Mandela’s final rest. And who could ever forget the dramatic scenes we saw coming out of South Africa in the world’s media back then?

Millions of people lined up for miles and miles over the course of three days in late April 1994, many of them voting for the first time in their lives in their country’s first democratic elections — who can forget such images?

The whole world seemed to hold its collective breath as it watched South Africa take its first steps away from the brutal apartheid racial segregation polices of the preceding 48 years (and from centuries of European colonialization of southern Africa before that) and into a new era of liberation and freedom.

As we celebrate the life and times of the late Nelson Mandela in this website’s special tribute edition, it is perhaps appropriate to balance out the high honor and respect I hold for Mandela and his elevated place in world history (and in my life personally) with a few thoughts on Mandela the man vs. Mandela the myth.

As Nelson Mandela often told the story in his lifetime: When he was preparing to come out of prison in 1990 after 27 long years, his biggest worry was that the public would see him as what he called a “demigod” — someone who was saintly, morally perfect and closer to God than the rest of us. He wanted the people of South Africa and the world to see him not that way, but rather as an ordinary man with faults and problems of his own who was struggling like everyone else.

Those who are honored to have met the late Mr. Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, always seem to take special pride in their particular Mandela Moment, a memory that remains with them for a long time.

My first such Mandela Moment took place on 28 October 1990, a Sunday, when I had a chance to shake hands with the great man at a welcoming rally in Osaka, Japan just a few months after Mandela, then-deputy president of his party, the African National Congress (ANC), had been released from 27 years in South African prisons.

My second Mandela Moment a few months after that was just as memorable, if not more memorable, than the first one.

It has been nothing less than soul-shaking and inspiring to follow the stories of so many people around the globe over the last week or so of how Mr. Nelson Mandela touched them in some way, whether up close or from a distance, whether with a smile or a hug or some kind of personal encouragement from him.

One of my favorite Mandela stories from South Africans themselves is this one that appeared in the New York Times: how, during an early-morning walk in his native village back in 1995, one year into his presidency, Mandela helped a farmer plow his field. It’s a warm story, yet so typical of the testaments that so many people from all walks of life are sharing about their own encounters with Mandela.

Like some folks who have actually had the high honor of meeting Mandela in person, I too have my own personal episodes to share, two of my own special Mandela Moments that will remain a part of me for as long as I live.

What does Nelson Mandela mean to you?

It has been deeply moving for me these past couple of days to watch people from all walks of life, from all corners of the world, being asked that same question and to witness their responses.

Whether they are heads of state in some of the biggest countries of the world or ordinary South Africans in their own neighborhoods, people have been emotionally expressing their love and respect for the man that South Africans affectionately call Tata Madiba, the loving father of their nation.

By now you have probably heard the very sad news that Mr. Nelson Mandela has just passed away at age 95 in South Africa.

The world stands divided in many ways, yet in Mandela's passing, he does now what he always did: bring the world that much closer together and remind us of our common bonds to each other.

There is a place in the rural grasslands outside of Johannesburg, South Africa that stands on the frontlines of the HIV/AIDS epidemic worldwide. The place is called “Botshabelo” (pronounced boh-tscha-BELL-oh), and it serves as a struggling oasis of love and support for mostly children and young people who have nowhere else to go.

Botshabelo is, first, an orphanage that is a home to more than 250 South African children, many of whom are so-called “AIDS orphans” that have lost the adults in their families to HIV/AIDS. Some of the children themselves at Botshabelo are living with HIV/AIDS, including some who contracted the disease after being raped by HIV-infected adults. These are children coping with sexual trauma at its worst.

Thanks in great part to its “honorary white” status in apartheid South Africa, Japan in 1990 was one of the largest trading partners of South Africa, following the sanctions that other western countries had implemented in cutting their economic ties with the isolated apartheid regime.

Nelson Mandela had been out of prison eight months when he was invited by the Japanese government to Japan on a six-day visit as a state guest. A month or so before Mandela’s arrival a high-ranking Japanese government minister happened to make disparaging public comments about Black people that ignited a firestorm of criticism within and outside Japan. It was against this backdrop that Mandela visited Japan for his first-ever visit to the wealthiest country in Asia.

Two days after Nelson Mandela’s memorable welcoming rally in the Japanese city of Osaka, Mandela stood before a joint session of Japan’s Diet (parliament) in downtown Tokyo on Tuesday, 30 October 1990 to make his appeal for support directly to the government and people on the national stage of Japan.

It was indeed a rare honor for a private citizen to be invited to address the Diet, reportedly only the second time in Japanese history that such an event had happened. It was a measure of the high esteem in which Mandela was held in Japan and in the other countries around the world that he had been visiting in the eight months since he was released from 27 years of imprisonment in South Africa.

I’m a firm believer in honoring our elders, heroes and inspirations while they are still with us in this life, that we may deepen our respect and remember anew how they lived, what they stood for and how they changed our lives in their own special ways.

Since no one has had for me a more positive impact and influence than Mr. Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, and since he is still with us, I'd like to post here a few thoughts of my own about him.