Saint or statesman? In India Madiba walked his own path

On his first diplomatic visit to India, Nelson Mandela was treated as a kindred spirit and likened to Gandhi, a gesture he gently rejected

- Marlan Padayachee

As South Africa and the world observed International Mandela Day on 18 July, my thoughts returned to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela — the man, the myth, the miracle. A moment etched in my professional and personal memory is how, during his 1995 state visit to India, Madiba diplomatically declined India’s subtle efforts to canonise him as a “saint” in the moral tradition of Mahatma Gandhi.

I was among the South African media corps travelling with Mandela — one of his earliest diplomatic journeys as South Africa’s first democratically elected president. It was a trip rich in symbolism and sentiment, coinciding with India’s own Independence Day on 15 August — the day in 1947 when it broke free from British colonial rule.

On that humid day in New Delhi, Mandela stood alongside the then prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao, at the Red Fort, attending the flag-hoisting ceremonies, parades and patriotic festivities. He listened attentively as Rao addressed a nation of more than one billion people. India, with its traditions, freedom struggle credentials and global democratic stature, was welcoming in many ways a kindred spirit.

But the Indian media, swept up in the aura of Mandela — prisoner-turned-president, peacemaker-turned-legend — began to invoke saintly comparisons with Gandhi, their own apostle of peace and nonviolence. Gandhi, after all, had lived and worked in South Africa for two formative decades, where he pioneered the nonviolent resistance movement known as satyagraha.

Mandela, who studied Gandhi’s writings while incarcerated on Robben Island, had long acknowledged the influence of satyagraha on the ANC’s strategy. After his release, as he navigated the treacherous road from armed resistance to reconciliation, it was Gandhi's legacy that offered a moral framework for South Africa’s negotiated transition.