It’s the last place you’d imagine but there’s good reason why we’re celebrating Glasgow’s Nelson Column and Mandela in the world.
Scotland’s biggest city has a long, pioneering tradition of supporting Madiba going back to 1981.
When it became the first in the world to grant the freedom fighter the freedom of their city.
Followed by Aberdeen, during your favourite Bandanaman’s time editing the university’s student newspaper there.
One in the eye for apartheid
All of which makes you wonder why it has taken until now to erect a statue to the Great Man.
But rather on dwelling on that and the statues in the nearby George Square which celebrate the exploitation of empire.
We’d prefer to mark that it’s 40 years since the city renamed St George’s Place to Nelson Mandela Place.
A delicious, and typically gallus Glaswegian dig at the South African consulate-general whose address was there.
Mandela repaid the tribute when he visited the Dear Green Place in 1993 and spoke in front of 10,000 people.
A giant of South Africa
Now it is gratifying to see Mandela as equally celebrated in my hometown as in his home province of the Eastern Cape.
But it begs the question why is there not a Nelson’s column in every country in the world?
And we reckon this is a Nelson the Irish and the Bajans could get behind.
Now Nelson Mandela is understandably ubiquitous in South Africa.
And we had the pleasure of holding hands with him in the 38m-long Voting Line in Gqberha (Port Elizabeth).
But for sheer height then the 10m bronze statue of Nelson in Durban soars over them all.
An icon of the ages
Mandela is celebrated too in London whose citizens campaigned long and hard for his release.
But it remains incongruous that Boer leader and South Africa’s first premier Louis Botha should be on a pedestal in Parliament Square.
Our Mandela mates tell us that there are statues of him in at least 24 places around the world.
From China to Cuba, Washington to Ramallah in Palestine, South Africa to Brazil, and elsewhere.
And other heroes we’d love to raise up
But, of course, as inspiring as it will be to look up to Mandela every day as we walk to work.
The struggle, much like the unfinished statue of Martin Luther King in DC, goes on.
Until we see Frederick Douglass raised up in Edinburgh, where he lived three years, and slavery prevaricator William Dundas torn down.
As well as countless other anachronisms around the world.
