How did Mandela’s understanding of freedom change with age and experience?
When Nelson Mandela was a boy, he thought he was free. To him, freedom was doing whatever he wanted to do; to run in the fields near my mother’s hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village, free to roast mealies under the stars and ride the broad backs of slow-moving bulls etc. He was contented as long as he followed the social norms. As a student, he had percieved freedom differently. He wanted freedom only for himself.
When he discovered that he was a victim of oppression and discrimination, he understood that his perception about freedom was unreal. He could realize the bondages when he was deprived of the basic rights of humans like achieving his potential, earning his keep, marriage and a family. With the sense of reality of his plight, he observed that the people of his own race were the victims of the same oppression. This inflamed his purpose for the collective struggle against the injustice. It gave him the moral strength to become a courageous man.
