Yihla Mojo

You can blow out a candle...

But you can't blow out a fire.

-Peter Gabriel, Biko

I was in middle school when I first heard the song Biko.  At that phase of life, I knew about Apartheid, but it seemed like a nightmare fairy tale of something that happened a long way away.  It inspired a feeling of vague fear and a sense of injustice, sort of like learning about the Nazis or the KKK, or stories of antebellum slavery.  Honestly, at that age you just don't have much of a sense that there is even a world beyond the school  you go to and the community that you live in.  All that stuff that happens on the news sort of seems like fiction, and not very nice fiction at that.

The one thing that really mattered to me though was music, and when I heard Biko, something broke open.  I became aware that Apartheid was not something that happened years ago, before I was born, like WWII or JFK being assassinated, it was happening right now.  Stephen Biko had been killed when I was 3 years old, but Nelson Mandela, Madiba, was still in prison.  I'm guessing that I heard Biko in the late 1980s sometime, because that's when I was into artsy music like The Cure and Peter Gabriel.  Madiba was released in 1990 and by that point I had become much more aware of the reality of Apartheid thanks in large part to musicians like Steve VanSant and U2 that sort of kept it out there.

Madiba's story to that point was awe inspiring.  He had been in prison since before I was born, and now he was free and Apartheid was ending, and he and all the silent martyrs of the cause were finally able to step into the light.  You want it to end there, with the evil broken and the long-suffering people rising up to take their rightful place at the table.

But it's not that simple.  Some things are entrenched and embedded in our souls.  South Africa was a mess, black and white still hated and feared each other.  Mandela became the first democratically elected President of post Apartheid South Africa, and the vision he had spent 27 years behind bars dreaming about was burning before his eyes.

I can't imagine how he did not rise up in anger.  After that much injustice had been done to him.  He had gone into prison a young man, full of violent passion for change, and I think no small amount of justified rage against the system of oppression that firmly gripped South Africa.  He came out of prison an old man, with white hair and smiling eyes.  That was the thing I remember about Madiba in 1991, his serious, but smiling eyes.  How did those eyes not lose their shine in those long years of persecution?

How did he not harbor profound bitterness towards his white neighbors?

They had taken most of his life, they had taken all the life of some of his friends and colleagues.

How was he not overwhelmed by hatred?

I don't know, but he wasn't.  I don't think I can ever remember seeing a person who was so conscious of the fact that they were a symbol.  Everything about his bearing spoke of calm and peace.  He was not the man he was when he went into prison, full of revolution and violence.  He was now precisely the man that his people, both black and white, needed.

As a teenager I watched several things that had seemed impossible only a few years ago happen before my eyes.  The Berlin Wall crumbled and the Soviet Union fell.  Apartheid exploded, but South Africa was not destroyed, thanks in large part to one man, who understood the power of symbolism in the human heart.  Maybe he knew what Peter Gabriel wrote in his song about Biko: "The eyes of the world are watching now."  He knew that things like sports could draw people together, he knew that he needed to be the symbol of change and peace.  I can't help but stand in awe of a man like that.  No wonder so many South Africans called him Tata (father).

Madiba has passed from our community into the cloud of witnesses.  He was 95, he had lived through the process of becoming a symbol.  Others, like Biko, had become stories and songs and legends and inspired people in a different way.  The Xhosa words Yihla mojo, are a part of Peter Gabriel's song about Biko's murder.  In Madiba's native tongue they mean something like "descend spirit," which sounds like a plea that we all should be making in difficult times.

Descend Spirit and strengthen those whose freedom is trampled.

Descend Spirit and change violent and angry hearts into peaceful and wise ones.

Descend Spirit and heal your broken children.

Descend Spirit and cast out our fear.

Descend Spirit and remind your people that no injustice is impossible to overcome.

Descend Spirit and remind us of the joy in Madiba's eyes that his people were free.

Yihla Mojo!