1. Dear Madiba: On your 92nd birthday Tata, pray for us to pay due passion to your lifelong lessons on peace. U spoke for decades of dedication, warning against bigotry and prejudice. U exemplified resolute fortitude and incredulous sanity against raging tides of tortuous challenges. Hopefully, today’s leadership shall lend ears to your lessons, fickle as today’s leaders are.
2. Mandela quote: “I’m the Master of my Faith. I’m the Captain of my Soul.”
Dear Lord, grant that this man of might makes impact on the weaker fiber of today’s spurious leaders. We live with the legend yet learn little to nothing as senseless savagery sails the unstable seas of our souls.
3. As we celebrate Madiba: Who today in world leadership aspires to make just one copy of Mandela’s depth of spirit? Politicians see only a smiling man and hear only a great speaker. They do not see the inner man and hear the unspoken as well as the expressed messages of salvation.
4. Lessons ought o be learnt from Madiba and learnt now, for I fear, we’re all romantic about the Man but fail him in failing to heed his calls: Character strength comes with forgives; faith comes with compassion; integrity comes with passion; vengeance is a speech of doom.
5. Dear Madiba: If I were blinded & wrote u a poem, it would still rhyme for your life has rhythm. If I were deaf and composed u a song, its melody would be sweeter ‘cause your many voices in one have sweet resounding replays in my brain.
6. Dear Mr. Mandela: Not only are u a colossal imagery of fortitude and principle, u’re a physical construction of charisma and character. I replay in me, visions of your drum beat dances; for whenever opportunity came, u celebrated life a million times fold.
7. Happy Birthday Madiba and Congratulations to the Lord Almighty, that, He saw fit during our lifetime, to bring us a living example of personified greatness.
8. As the day grows older and the minutes increase to make the 24 hrs, I remind myself to enjoy the wonders of my world, so tomorrow, I shall not only claim to have lived in the Mandela era but have reaped the harvest of his soul.
9. Age is a number yes, but so are numbers we pursue for material gain with frequent loss. But, age as a number never goes less. So there’s comfort in knowing Madiba will grow older, his soul and ours richer & prosperous, if we like him, plant to reap the harvest of peace.
10. Nelson Mandela did not change his colonial first name because history is not a scar, but an engraved reminder of who we are and where we come from. It’s in retaining true history that we learn the old for the new and become forever young in spirit, just like Madiba.
11. True world order is made of the best majority full of love and hates only dangers to love & peace. This is the majority celebrating Mandela today. It’s a quiet & often reticent majority of modest humans who don’t publish their hearts on pretentious walls. The mean minority is ever vociferous in its vitriol of evil.
12. That Mandela’s Birthday comes just days after South Africa’s successful hosting of the 1st World Cup ever in Africa, is a borrowed chapter from the many inspiring Madiba speeches. It’s a recovered page from the Dream Speech of Martin Luther King. It’s a Ghandi dreams revival. The legend lives on…
13. As a dedication to Madiba’s life, all politicians must aspire to cast off the saber rattling menace that inflames passions & brings us closer to an irrevocable order of self-destruction. Political power must give way to People Power and All People, except politicians, thrive on peace, forgiveness, justice & freedom. Voters, control your politicians.
14. Rre Madiba: Thanks. Thanks for making us rediscovery the truth of what & who we really are, not just as Africans, not just as black people, not just as the oppressed; but we recovered humanity in liberty & the pardon of the guilty. We’re better people for it.
15. Happy 92nd Birthday Ntate. For us in Botswana, upholding your values has been a vindication of our cultural heritage. We’re a forgiving people, a giving people, a peaceful people, an outspoken people of free will. You’ve made us feel right on course. Pray we retain these qualities.
16. Madiba, as u celebrate your 92nd Birthday, we see the footprint u left when crossing Botswana during the troubled days of injustice. We feel the lingering shadows of your presence; and we say, thanks, for confirming to us, that peace, forgiveness and free speech are traits of the human soul none should ever sacrifice.
17. Ntate-Mogolo Madiba, u gave back to the word pardon, its true definition; u redefined forgiveness to mean living with knowledge of wrongs done to us; u gave us spiritual revival and soulful pride. In Botswana, we cherish that recipe for peace. We pledge to remain free, true to your inspiration.
18. If my wish could reach u, Madiba, though u deserve well earned respite, I’d ask u to remind my people in Botswana, that freedom must never be taken for granted; that liberty is the property of the soul we must guard jealously; that we must never compromise democracy. Otherwise, Happy Birthday, Grand Dad.
19. U’re the inspiration of nations, Dear Madiba. The world’s best and one unanimously picked present to u on your 92nd birthday is: Gratitude; gratitude for people now know why the spirit of a liberty seeker should never be vanquished; gratitude for people to know it’s not wrong to express themselves and live with judgment by others.
20. Madiba’s Birthday is not a South African property. Those that don’t- on this day- replenish their commitment to peace and liberty, tolerance and justice, are diminishing the true values of democracy. Let’s not wait for his transition & our other deprivations, before saying: we love & shall protect all values of freedom.
21. The Madiba story as we reminisce on his 92nd birthday, is a testimony of God’s public relations with humanity; it’s a confirmation of the outcomes & attributes of faith; it’s a personification of miracles we’ve hitherto thought only as Biblical. Defend your faith and all the rights that nourish it.
22. The platitude that prophets are never appreciated during their times should become a tired cliché, as we all use the lessons of the Madiba living legend to fortify our defenses against the erosion of fundamental human rights at home & the world over. There’s no option to freedom of expression.
23. Rraetsho Madiba: Birthdays are re-birth days for it’s at these times that we take stock & are reminded of our mortality. It’s on these occasions that we rekindle our commitments. U’ve done your part, Madiba. It’s for us all, in our individuality and collectivity to start taking stock: are we passive, apathetic & dormant consumers of liberty without nourishing its values?
Andrew Onalenna Sesinyi
18th July, 2010
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