Africa: How Young Activists Maintain Mandela's Legacy in Africa

Last month, at a conference on African inequalities co-organized by our school and the London School of Economics, the first issue of 39, hearing came from a young woman. Why, she asked, did the Nelson Mandela High School be relaunched when Mandela's appeasement legacy took away much of the economic structures of the university? ;apartheid?

His question, despite its narrow context, people are struggling to reconcile the current need for significant transformation with Mandela's first steps towards his possibility.

This requirement for a more critical view of one's heritage troubles those who intend to preserve Madiba's mythology or those who focus only on his remarkable personal and moral qualities. Young people are too radical, too eager to break up instead of consolidating, arguments are going.

But I believe that there is a healthy debate about his legacy. And it is only by rethinking through new eyes that it will be possible to extract what is precious. And for young people to benefit from what he has done best.

Mandela's greatest legacy is much larger than the merits – or not – of his political decisions that were limited by the circumstances of his time. His central legacy was the example of a bold leadership, dedicated, but ethical and responsible. Mandela's leadership is a beacon for our time, everywhere in Africa.

Increasingly, young people across the continent are meeting Mandela's challenge. Some already run powerful civic and political organizations and campaigns. For example, Sampson Itodo successfully ran a campaign for young Nigerians seeking political office. He is one among many young innovative and effective Africans

Youth activism is critical in this challenging era where Africa is both the youngest and poorest continent

Reasons for Optimism

Itodo is Executive Director of YIAGA, a rights advocacy group that encourages young people to get involved in governance. He also convened the not-too-young-to-run movement, which has spent years asking the Nigerian government to change the constitutional constraints on the age limits of those running for election.

I met Sampson in 2016 when he was attending our school. African Leaders Program – one of many programs offered to emerging African leaders, from mid-career officials to top-level experts. Known as the Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice, our work has always been inspired by the urgent call that Mandela made to the University of Cape Town in 1990 to [transform] learning centers in relevant institutions for the future of the country and the continent.

Sampson was one of 30 participants in the program this year, from ten African countries. Among them, a Ugandan transitional justice coordinator, a South African human rights lawyer, a Kenyan food security activist and a Zimbabwean director of the public health program who are dedicated to eliminating malaria. Despite their geographic and professional differences, they were all pbadionate about creating and sustaining significant change – in their own countries and on the continent.

Investing in young leaders creates the kind of legacy that I believe Mandela would have memorialized, achieved by politically engaged young people who are pushing the imagination of what our continent can and should look like.

Actions speak louder than words

Mandela knew that actions spoke louder than words. This is evident from the fact that he was remarkably uninterested in preserving the heroic cult built around him. He left explicit instructions, systematically ignored, that he should not be treated as a demi-god and that no monolithic statue or structure should be erected in his memory.

On May 31 of this year, the Sampson bill was pbaded in the Nigerian Senate and House of Representatives. President Muhammadu Buhari signed it. Any 35-year-old Nigerian can now stand for the presidency, and from age 25 for the House or the State Assembly.

Although he led the process, Sampson did not accomplish this remarkable feat alone. He did so over the course of two years of concerted strategic mobilization of youth who were concerned about representation and who wanted to have a voice in a political system they felt had failed them.

For Sampson, as for so many young people on the continent of faith in the power of youth action is alive