ON SUNDAY the world of both whites and blacks joins hands in burying Nelson Madiba Mandela, a unique African political hero.
Unique in that generally in Africa political values of whites as colonisers and blacks, are diametrically opposed.
And yet with Mandela, both blacks and whites regard him as their hero because of the different roles he played towards the liberation of South Africa.
To Africa Mandela is a hero because of his role as South Africa’s African National Congresss (ANC) leader from the early 50s.
That is the time he radicalised his opposition to the repressive apartheid system,a system that thrived on racial segregation in which blacks were treated as inferior beings.
That is the time he also concretised his belief in the Freedom Charter, a philosophy that advocated the transfer of the country’s wealth from whites to blacks.
Not only Afrikaners but also all whites even those in the West benefitted from this segregatory system.
This is the system which saw nothing wrong with the massacre in 1960 of blacks at Sharpeville, who were protesting peacefully.
As Africa mourned this cruel shedding of innocent blood , the kith and kin syndrome forced America and Britain to stand even more resolutely against Mandela.
And when Mandela became the commander-in-chief of the military wing of the ANC, Africa welcomed their hero as the brave nationalist toured the continent, canvassing for financial and moral support as he confronted apartheid head-on.
The West would have none of that and rallied against Mandela.
To them this anti-apartheid African hero was simply a terrorist who deserved to be locked in prison and the keys thrown away.
Africa was saddened when Mandela was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment and exiled to Roben Island.
The West celebrated, including people like present British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was a member of a lobby group that advocated the arrest of Mandela.
Curiously enough when Mandela was released 27 years later, there emerged a change of character which resembled a metamorphosis.
The Freedom Charter champion was now talking about avoiding rocking the economic boat.
The expectant blacks were further stunned when the liberation icon advocated a reconciliation that saw the whites remain in full control of minerals, land and industry as the majority of blacks remained impoverished.
It seemed economic empowerment would remain a pipe dream for the blacks as the reconciliation preached by Mandela would guarantee the entrenchment of economic apartheid.
What the blacks seemed guaranteed was mere political independence.
Whites in the Western world celebrated.
For to them a new hero had been born.
Here was a Mandela who had witnessed blacks being economically marginalised by whites, but his concern was now to promote peace by preaching forgiveness and living the whites alone.
The whites loved it and did the unthinkable by rewarding him with the Nobel Peace Prize together with apartheid kingpin, then SA Prime Minister FW de Klerk.
Even at his death, the Western leadership treated Mandela like their own.
It is remarkable that four British Prime Ministers and four US Presidents were at his memorial service at Soccer City Stadium in South Africa on Tuesday.
David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major were there while Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George Bush 1 could not be left behind.
Perhaps Mandela’s major concern was peace and fear of antagonising the whites by disturbing the economic status quo.
But the question is, will this relative shaky peace be sustained if poverty continues stalking the blacks while whites remain economically privileged.
If, however, blacks are to revolt against the peace and reconciliation at the expense of poverty, then Mandela’s legacy so laboriously built by the West will lie in tatters.