I went to South Africa for the first time in 1993, the year that this photo on the right was taken. I went with an international King's Kids team of sixty people: young people and families with a heart to pray for South Africa and to share the love of God with people of all races. F. W. de Klerk was still president at the time, and we received an encouraging and gracious letter from his office when we wrote to tell the president about our visit and our desire to be involved in praying for the future of the nation.
De Klerk was the last president of the apartheid era and is best known for his role in supporting the transformation of South Africa into a multi-racial democracy by entering into the negotiations that ultimately resulted in all citizens, of all races, having equal voting and other rights. That process was already underway when our international team was ministering in several cities of South Africa that year, and there was a sense in the air that the nation was ripe for change. Some people were afraid that such dramatic change could never happen peacefully and that the process might end in a "bloodbath." Among other things, our young people from all over Europe, together with families from South Africa, prayed for the process of change to be a peaceful and godly one.
The peaceful transition to a multi-racial democracy at that time was also due largely to who Mandela was as a person. He was very outspoken in saying that you can never really embrace new freedom and a new future unless you are willing to let go of the anger, hatred and bitterness of the past. He was loved and respected by South Africans of all colours and creeds.
And so, for the almost fifteen years that I lived in South Africa, I lived in the experience of the "new South Africa" where our King's Kids outreach teams were made up of young people from all the different racial groups in the nation. Sometimes there would be as many as ten different tribal/language groups represented in our camps: English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana, Sotho, Ndebele, etc, together with the languages spoken by the young people who joined us from Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. The young people who came to our camps and outreaches had never known what it was like to stand in segregated queues at the post office, or to go swimming at separate beaches for blacks, whites and coloureds. They were living the dream of their beloved Madiba and many others like him, of all races, who had prayed and fought and believed that this "rainbow nation" could really happen.
I remember around 1996, when Mandela was still president, that our Daniel Prayer Group of children aged 5 - 16 took several weeks to pray for African presidents and to write them letters, sharing the things that God had showed the young people in prayer. Mandela was only one of the presidents who wrote back to us, thanking the children for their sincerity, their prayers and their readiness to work and pray together as young people of different races and backgrounds.
It seems hardly any time since I sat at home in Cape Town, watching Madiba's 85th birthday celebrations on the TV, and I'm amazed to realise that it was actually a whole decade ago. He was already 95 when he died yesterday. Madiba's life on earth has come to an end now. It's up to the next generation of South Africans to grab hold of the future with courage and faith, acceptance and diversity. By God's grace, and with our continued prayers, the future could be even better.
