I remember years ago when Regina wove a tapestry for Nelson Mandela, the man who delivered freedom.
All the women at the Mapusha cooperative agreed this was a good idea and Regina began to weave a tapestry of many colors. There was a central zigzag motif moving up the center of the weaving and when I asked , she told me, “It is our long, long walk to freedom.” Shaking her head, she continued, “It was not a straight line.” We were proud to send off the finished weaving with a thank you note signed by each woman and happy to think of Mapusha represented in his gallery of gifts.
Regina was born in 1948 just as the Nationalist party was gaining political majority power in her country. She grew up, married and raised five children through those jagged, oppressive years of Apartheid and her husband left the family to work in Johannesburg, as so many did. He never returned to their home in rural Limpopo so she bore a very real scar from the system of separation.
One day I asked what she remembered most of those Apartheid times and she was quiet, thoughtful before replying, “We would sit with our weavings at the fair at Swadini. There were many, many white people there but they never looked at us. We were not there. We were invisible. That is what I remember. “
And so today, when I spoke with Regina to express my sorrow at the loss of Madiba, again, I asked what she would like to say to her friends in America about him. She said “He knew.” I puzzled, what did she mean, he knew?
“He knew what our lives were with Apartheid. His work changed our lives. He knew.”
Listening to her rich voice over the Skype line I remember the Native American greeting, “I see you” and suddenly, viscerally I understood what she meant. Mandela had the capacity to walk in the shoes of another and for each of us, to be seen, to be understood is to be honored. Regina believes he knew how it burned and ached to be a poor black woman in rural South Africa during the Apartheid era, to be invisible, without the power to hold your husband or educate your children. And, because he knew, he acted and because he acted she was free in a way she had never known before.
Maybe Regina is right, maybe the truly great are those who know how others feel and take that knowledge, whole heartedly into right action. Madiba, the old man, our father, showed us all what it looks like to heal a nation and inspire the world with right understanding and courageous, heart centered action.
