Icon

I like the Eastern Cape. It's rural areas are like no other I have seen. The rolling hills and valleys, painted huts and the young men on horseback looking like Mongols on the Steppes of Asia and the women with their bundles of firewood inching their way up a steep slope to their homestead. It is a poor area with a wealth of experiences on offer.

It is here that a young Nelson Rolihlala Mandela on the cusp of adulthood, biting back tears of pain after the snip, grit his teeth together and exclaimed "Ndiyindoda!" - I am a man!- only to find to his shock that he really wasn't a man because the land before him, the land of his ancestors was firmly in the grasp of a settler regime. There was no Mandela ville, only King Williamstown, Port Elisabeth and this young son of a chief was more serf than royalty in practice. It was a defining moment for the young Nelson before he could spell the words "long walk to freedom."

But "character is what you do when no one is watching" and young Mandela's journey in to politics arguably started on that day. The rest, you know. He is a global icon and, today, he turned 95.

How great it would be if every African nation celebrated its political icons in much the same way with 67 minutes of this and that. Instead, we are forced to revere our sportsmen and women: Gebresellassie, Weah, Drogba, Bwalya, Milla, Eto, Abedi Pele, Mutola and others.

Madiba and South Africa's liberation would not have been possible without Ben Bella, Cabral, Machel, Kaunda, Mugabe, Nyerere, Neto, Tambo and his other colleagues. Madiba has said so himself on several occasions.

Africa must reprise her history. She must tell it like it has never been told before. As we rightly salute Madiba for the man, politician, leader and icon he is, it is incumbent on us to celebrate our history in its proper context, in our own words and with our own experiences. Every country must have its own "Qunu" sign pointing to a repository of living history that our children can learn from.