On one level Nelson Mandela is merely a man of extraordinary courage whose commitment to racial justice never flagged during 27 years in South African prisons. In another sense he is a "loyal and disciplined member" of the African National Congress, a dedicated revolutionary who humbly submits to the collective leadership of the antiapartheid group. But on a more transcendent plane, where history is made and myths are forged, Mandela is a hero, a man, like those described by author Joseph Campbell, who has emerged from a symbolic grave "reborn, made great and filled with creative power."
In this era of cynicism, such legendary figures have all but disappeared in the U.S. Martyrdom at an early age was necessary to lift John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X to the status of secular saints. Mandela is unique among heroes because he is a living embodiment of black liberation. Like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer enjoying their own eulogies from a hiding place in the church, he can bathe in the adulation of a worldwide throng yearning to, if not touch the hem of his garment, at least catch a glimpse of him whirring by in a motorcade.
Mandela may lack the rousing, bred-in-the-pulpit style of black orators like King or Jesse Jackson. His soft-spoken manner and unflappable dignity bespeak his background as a lawyer, a single-minded political organizer and a longtime prisoner still blinking a bit in the spotlight. But Mandela's magnetism is palpable, the consequence of his endurance and determination in the fight against South Africa's white-minority government. He fires the pride of African Americans and touches a deep desire in the psyche of Americans both black and white for a leader who might rekindle the biracial coalition that destroyed their country's own version of apartheid a generation ago, then fell apart during the long, hot summers of the '60s.
Such yearnings help explain the torrent of emotion that erupted when Mandela arrived in New York City last week on the first leg of a twelve-day, eight- city U.S. tour. For one brief, wistful moment, a city that had been pounded by a series of violent racial incidents seemed to vibrate with one voice shouting "Mandela!" More than 750,000 people lined the streets of lower Manhattan as Mandela sped by in a bulletproof glass chamber borne on a flatbed truck. At a rally on the steps of City Hall, Mandela was presented with the key to the city by Mayor David Dinkins, one of the five African-American mayors who will welcome him on his trip (a sixth, Marion Barry of Washington, will be too embroiled in his trial on drug-possession and perjury charges to take part in his city's celebration).
The next day Mandela captivated more than 3,000 people gathered at Riverside Church by joining in an exuberant rendition of the toyi-toyi, a South African dance of celebration. That night 100,000 people jammed Harlem's Africa Square, content to gaze at the visiting hero whose voice could barely be heard over a feeble public-address system. Later, 50,000 cheered Mandela at a rally in Yankee Stadium, where he delighted his audience by donning a baseball cap and declaring, "You now know who I am. I am a Yankee!"