Learning the lessons of Mandela: Nelson Mandela, like Mahatma Gandhi, has left us a legacy that "we should empower the hungry and the weak so that they can learn to feed and strengthen themselves and contribute to the well being of others".

• Author: Vie, Sherine
• Position: Worldview

"LIVE FREE OR DIE," the official motto of New Hampshire, captures the essence of what the nonwhite people were thinking in South Africa the day that Nelson Mandela stood at the Rivonia trial prior to his being imprisoned for 27 years.

It is said that modern humans evolved from the great continent of Africa more than 4,000,000 years ago. By 900 A.D., the African groups of Zulu and Xhosa were well formed in South Africa. Then came the European explorers conquering new lands while searching for a viable sea route to the jewels and spices of India. In 1497, Portugual's Vasco da Gama set foot in South Africa Yet, it was not until 1652 that the terrain of South Africa changed--when the Dutch East India Company, led by Jan van Riebeeck, landed there.

Since then, many nations have attempted to take ownership of South Africa. The main rulers were the Dutch, then the British in 1795, and back to the Dutch rule when South Africa became a republic on May 31, 1961. On that day it was decided by the ruling party that apartheid--racial segregation--would continue in the new South Africa.

This was nothing new to the nonwhite people of the nation. For hundreds of years, even though they were the majority of the population, Africans--together with the Coloreds and the Indians who were brought from India as indentured laborers--were subjected to apartheid's discrimination, outcasts with barely any rights.

When Mandela spoke at the Rivonia trial, tens of thousands of Africans already had been killed since the occupation of the foreigners: "Forty percent of the Africans live in hopelessly overcrowded and, in some cases, drought-stricken reserves.... Thirty percent are laborers, labor tenants, and squatters on white farms and work and live under conditions similar to those of the serfs of the Middle Ages.

"The incidence of malnutrition and deficiency diseases is very high amongst Africans. These diseases, my Lord, not only destroy the vital organs of the body, but they result in retarded mental conditions and lack of initiative, and reduce powers of concentration."

As Mandela spoke to the courtroom before his sentencing, he was talking on behalf of the 90% percent of the population that was ruled by 10%: "I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized, but, my Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

As a young Indian girl growing up in South Africa, I lived with my family in an Indian residential area that had four separate beaches: White, Indian, Colored, and African. We were deemed nonwhites and could not eat at the same restaurant as...