humanity and Africans, Chido takes a measure of their works and consequence to write that Mandela and Achebe have left “footprints
of greatness.” He chronicles, movingly, his 1998 reporting from the Robben Island jail room in South Africa where Mandela was held for decades through his 20 years of being close to Achebe. He moderated the 2012 Achebe Colloquium at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
“I’ll forever remember having walked inside and peeped through that historic Mandela jail cell (where he was held for most of his 27 years in unjust imprisonment) at the dreaded Robben Island, on March 27, 1998, alongside then Editor-in-chief of TIME magazine and later news chief executive of the CNN, Walter Isaacson (and others) when President Bill Clinton made his first official trip to South Africa and came to Robben Island. Come to this island of scourge and you will understand, in part, the simple greatness and towering grace of Nelson Mandela”, notes Chido Nwangwu, award-winning writer, multimedia specialist and founder of USAfricaonline.com, the first African-owned U.S-based newspaper published on the internet, in his insightful, first book.
On his mentor, the late but great Achebe, Chido states with bold insistence that: “Achebe’s works especially the 1958 literary masterpiece novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ and his 2012 blockbuster book ‘There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra’ opened the eyes of millions and have combined to amplify the power and permanence of Achebe. The two books, in my view, have set him on a higher pedestal as the master of artistic lucidity and a courageous, factual witness to history.”
Chido argues in the chapter titled ‘Madiba and the President-for-Life masquerades’ that “The selfless examples and sacrifices made by Mandela in public service remain historical and monumental indictments to the sit-tight, elections-subverting, president-for-life masquerades and dealers who dimmed the light on African posterity and progress.
While those handful of older men who crave to be called as ‘father of the nation’ ruined whatever remained of the tattered, over-sized robes in various governments across the African continent, even with his evident greatness and assured landslide victory for another tenure as first post-apartheid, multi-racial election President, Madiba Mandela served one term (May 10, 1994 – June 14, 1999) and handed over to the technocrat Thabo Mbeki. Ironically, in June 2013, one of those leaders who’s 89 years old and has been in power since April 18, 1980 in the person of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe criticized Mandela for being ‘soft’ on Whites in South Africa….”
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ACHEBE lives as an immortal writer in our hearts and minds. By Chido Nwangwu
