Head Space Daily Words...

I can remember sitting in my bedroom as a sixteen year old, watching the T.V as Nelson Mandela was released from prison on February 11^th 1990. It was a Sunday afternoon and not a great deal happened on a Sunday back then and I was transfixed. The Berlin wall had come down live on my telly a few months earlier, as had the Romanian uprising which saw off the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his missus, on Christmas Day 1989. Times had been a changing and Nelson Mandela being set free epitomised this change. I can recall a significant build up to his release and the excitement was electric as he emerged from prison. Mandela had become an almost mythical figure - a symbol for the black struggle against apartheid in South Africa. The physical embodiment of apartheid and South Africa itself were the bald, racist bully boys, Pik Botha and FW de Klerk, who spoke with harsh Afrikaans accents and seemed immovable objects. Part of the excitement that afternoon was seeing what Nelson Mandela was going to look like, considering he had been imprisoned for 27 years, a large chunk of it carrying out hard labour. Instead of a gaunt, emaciated, beaten down figure, we were presented with a smiling, defiant, 71 year old, who would go on to bring apartheid to an end, become President and lay down a template for equality in South Africa. I’m sure the country still has plenty of problems but having equal rights is a pretty good start. My memories of South Africa at the time are of a rebel cricket tour to the country, resulting in international bans for English players; the talk of economic sanctions, although our government of the day preferred making money to human rights for a long time; and there were what felt like at times, almost daily reports of police brutality in the townships, against the black population. Musically speaking, there was a single called Sun City by Artists United Against Apartheid but the song which I vividly remember, with the catchiest sing-along line of any protest song, was Jerry Dammers with Special AKA and Free Nelson Mandela. Mandela was never outwardly antagonistic towards his opponents and seemed to do everything out of good will, with a smile on his face. This song captures that spirit. Rather than portray Nelson Mandela as a martyr, or come across as too worthy, the tune is happy, straightforward and effective. In his later years Mandela seemed to be pictured with every celebrity under the sun – even The Spice Girls. He had the patience of a saint…