Strauss & co - WWF Art Auction

60 This portrait of Mandela was sold to an anonymous buyer in New York. It was a record price (R2 million) for a photograph in South Africa. The photographer generously donated half toWWF in association with the WWF Art Auction. The other half is donated to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital. M arco Polo was a famous Italian merchant and explorer of the East living during the thirteenth century. His legacy inspired the likes of Christopher Columbus to discover the new world. When I was a little boy growing up in Australia we would swim in our pool to escape the summer heat. My brother and I would race the length of the pool to see how many times we could swim a length holding our breath. Naturally we would also conduct some very competitive games of Marco Polo. Marco Polo revolved around a very simple premise. One person would close their eyes and try to catch the other. He or she had the right to say ‘Marco’and the other must reply‘Polo’. Follow the sound and catch the competitor. The game relied on complete honesty and to be frank only lasted until one would scream out,‘You have your eyes open!’Heated discussions or wrestles would follow. I was sitting on a rock at Bakoven in Cape Town, South Africa and to my surprise saw a par­ ochial game of Marco Polo taking place in front of my very eyes. A young white girl was wading through the cold Atlantic water with her eyes tightly closed. In hindsight I think that the girl abused the honesty system far less than we did as she stumbled gamely over the uneven ground. An even younger black boy was laughing and splashing through the small waves to avoid her. With her arms outstretched and face a carefree picture of innocence, she earnestly screamed ‘Nelson!’The young black boy laughed excitedly and responded with ‘Mandela!’before ducking under a wave. I was caught completely off guard. Same game, same rules, different dialect. It seemed so natural. The African children playing a game of Nelson Mandela in the October sun were oblivious. ‘Nelson!’she would scream and ‘Mandela’he would answer. I wondered whether South Africans playing a game of Marco Polo thirty years ago could ever have envisaged a mixed-race game of Nelson Mandela with the joyful abandon of these two tiny protagonists. As I sat there and the children played below me I wondered whether Mandela could truly envisage what he had created in his fight for freedom. Sure he had created a new democracy, a paradigm for hope and fairness in the twentieth century, but did he ever think that a generation of children would embrace him in the simplest of games without question or murmur? His bridging of the gap between freedom fighter, father of a nation and most iconic person in our world had transcended into popular children’s culture. Meanwhile the contestants, blissfully unaware, continued playing in the salty water. It made me wonder how many other icons of our world had passed through unnoticed – victims of timing or circumstance, undocumented and unheralded. A moment in time lost, with no legacy of hope to pass on to the children of tomorrow. Surely we must celebrate these icons while they are still living. They are a part of our society’s tapestry, part of a lesson learnt, a comforting reminder of our humanity. Perhaps this is a part of the Madiba legacy. His life is an inspiration to document and celebrate the men and women who have shaped the twenty-first century. And, of course, the children were right. When anybody around our world says ‘Nelson’, we all reply … ‘Mandela’. Mandela Adrian Steirn