Mandela Thrills Thousands with Historic Visit

By Alvin Powell

Contributing Writer

The sound of African drums filled Tercentenary Theatre Friday evening. The bells of the Memorial Church punctuated the drumming and signaled the end of the special convocation honoring South African President Nelson Mandela.

People began filing out, some talking excitedly, some walking in thoughtful silence.

One woman stood still, staring at the stage as people flowed around her.

"It's a miracle that I happened to be here," the woman said, explaining that she was cutting through the Yard on her way home, unaware of the event. "I have goosebumps. It's as if I saw Mahatma Gandhi."

Mandela, 80, came to Harvard last week to receive an honorary doctorate degree, joining such notables as George Washington and Winston Churchill as one of the few figures in Harvard's long history to be so honored at a special convocation.

In his speech, Mandela noted, "To join George Washington and Winston Churchill as the other recipients of such an award conferred at a specially convened convocation is not only a singular honor. It also holds great symbolic significance: to the mind and to the future memory of this great American institution, the name of an African is now added to those two illustrious leaders of the Western world."

The official honors were magnified by the respect and admiration in the hearts of the 25,000 who packed the seats, stairs, and open areas of Tercentenary Theatre. It was a crowd made up of people of many different ethnic groups, from Harvard and beyond. People came to see a man whose ability to endure oppression and later forgive his oppressors embodies the best of humanity.

"For someone to go through what he's gone through is amazing. And he came out with such strength. They couldn't break this man," said Al Smith, from the Jackson Mann Community Center in Allston. Smith brought his two sons, Joshua, 12, and Nathan, 10, to the event. "He's something they need to see. His struggles are all our struggles."

Standing straight and tall, Mandela took the stage Friday to the first of several standing ovations. The speeches that preceded the awarding of the degree spoke of Mandela's significance, not just to a society he helped reform and to the world that watched, but to individuals who drew strength and inspiration from his struggle.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the W.E.B. Du Bois professor of the humanities and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, spoke of how anti-war and civil rights protesters took up Mandela's cause and how they watched as he walked out of prison in 1990 after 27 years.

"On the morning you were released, Mr. Mandela, my wife and I woke our daughters early just to watch you walk out of prison, back straight, head unbowed," Gates said. "There walked the Negro -- as my father might have put it -- there walked the whole of the African people, regal as a king."

Mandela, born into the royal family of the Tembu in 1918, helped found the African National Congress' Youth League in 1944. He was appointed chief of the ANC's military arm in 1961 and was serving a five-year sentence in 1964 when he was tried for sabatoge and sentenced to life in prison. He was co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, with South African President Fredrik Willem De Klerk, in 1993 and elected president himself in 1994.

New Center To Research African Development

Mandela's visit was not just one of symbolism, however. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Harvard Institute for International Development and the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade, described in his speech a major new effort to rethink the problems facing Africa.

Called "Emerging Africa," the effort is a research project by Harvard's new Center for International Development. The new center is jointly sponsored by the Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Institute for International Development.

"Our commitment to Africa is unwavering. We know extreme deprivation robs many Africans of health and livelihood," Sachs said. "We believe that intensive study and collaboration by scholars here and in Africa can roll back the scourge of poverty."

The research effort will work cooperatively with major African research, development, and financial organizations in an effort to find answers to the challenges facing modern Africa.

The interdisciplinary study will look at the areas of economic growth, health, education, environment, demography, geography, and government policy.

"What the times call for is a rigorous rethinking of development theory," said Kwesi Botchwey, director of Africa Research and Programs at the new center and the former finance minister of Ghana. "In Africa, as elsewhere, things can be changed through consensus action. In the end, Africa's fate will be determined by what Africa itself does."

Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine presented the honorary degree to Mandela, introducing him as a person who has "reinvigorated the democratic ideal for all of us.

"He was imprisoned and abused, but has not sought to punish his abusers," Rudenstine said. "He has always looked forward toward justice, never backward for revenge. He has taught us all that there is 'no easy walk to freedom' but he has also shown us that, however hard, that walk is one of the only walks ever worth taking."

Mandela said he accepted the degree not as a personal honor, but to honor the struggles and achievements of the South African people.

North-South Partnership

Mandela's 20-minute speech, sprinkled with humorous anecdotes, called for a renewed focus on the developing world and a partnership between the developed nations of the Northern Hemisphere and the developing nations of the Southern Hemisphere. That partnership would look for ways to fight hunger, poverty, and disease. The citizens of emerging democracies must share in the benefits of the developed world, he said, so want does not force an abandonment of hard-won democratic ideals.

"We constantly need to remind ourselves that the freedoms which democracy brings will remain empty shells if they are not accompanied by real and tangible improvements in the material lives of the millions of ordinary citizens of those countries," Mandela said. "Where men and women and children go burdened with hunger, suffering from preventable diseases, languishing in ignorance and illiteracy, or finding themselves bereft of decent shelter, talk of democracy and freedom that does not recognize these material aspects, can ring hollow and erode confidence in exactly those values we seek to promote."

Mandela praised Harvard's efforts in international development, particularly the new "Emerging Africa" initiative.

"It is therefore a source of great encouragement and inspiration for us to learn about the 'Emerging Africa' research project housed in the newly created Center for International Development at Harvard," Mandela said. "Its objective of undertaking an appraisal of Africa's economic, social, and political history, as well as the problems facing the continent, is timely and to be greatly welcomed."

Listening to his speech were many Harvard students, several of whom said they found Mandela's words and presence at Harvard inspiring.

"I feel incredibly thrilled to be in the presence of perhaps the greatest man on earth," said Chandan Reddy '00. "I stood 20 feet from him. It's very inspiring and makes me want to lead a better life."