Beyond has a very famous song singing the praises of Nelson Mandela. When I listened to this popular song in 90s of last century I wondered why Beyond would like to sing a song like this. Nelson Mandela was a prisoner, a fighter or a president? Why can he affect lots of young people like Beyond all over the world? I could not find the answer when I was very young. After you read the following essay written by Nelson Mandela maybe you will understand no wonder Beyond would like to sing a song called The Glorious Years for him. Real free man has a free soul even if he is in the prison.
Mandela’s Garden
To survive in prison, one must develop ways to take satisfaction in one’s daily life. One can feel fulfilled by washing one’s clothes so that they are particularly clean, by sweeping a hallway so that it is empty of dust, by organizing one’s cell to save as much space as possible. Just as one takes pride in important tasks outside of prison, one can find the same pride in doing small things inside prison.
Almost from the beginning of my sentence on Robben Island, I asked the authorities for permission to start a garden in the courtyard. For years, they refused without offering a reason. But eventually they gave in, and I was able to cut out a small garden on a narrow patch of earth against the far wall.
While I have always enjoyed gardening, it was not until I was behind bars that I was able to tend my own garden. My first experience in the garden was at Fort Hare where, as part of my university’s manual labor requirement, I worked in one of my professors’ gardens and enjoyed the contact with the soil as an alternative to my intellectual labors. Once I was in Johannesburg studying and then working, I had neither the time nor the space to start a garden.
A garden was one of the few things in prison that one could control. To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it and then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the owner of the small patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom.
