“Yes, Mandela’s day is done. Yet we, his inheritors, will open the gates wider for reconciliation.”-Maya Angelou
(AllHipHop News) The world lost a revolutionary activist on December 5th, Maya Angelou lost a friend of over 45 years. Yesterday (December 6th), a day after Nelson Mandela’s death, the U.S. State Department released a tribute poem written by Dr. Maya Angelou for him “on behalf of the American people.”
The poem, entitled “His Day Is Done” speaks on the Dr. Maya Angelou also reveals a little known fact regarding Nelson Mandela’s 1990 inauguration as South Africa’s President:
When Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote we were enlarged by tears of pride as we saw Nelson Mandela’s former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front row his inauguration.
Back in 2010, in honor of the 20th anniversary of Mandela’s 1990 release from imprisonment, Maya Angelou spoke with The Grio about the first time she ever met him:
When I first met him I was living in Cairo and I was married to a South African freedom fighter who was with the Pan African Congress and Mr. Mandela of course represented the African National Congress. He came to Cairo and came to my house there and it was so wonderful to hear the ANC and the PACpeople talking out of the country. There was no animosity. There was no rancor. They talked as brothers in Cairo, Egypt and it was so wonderful to see that.
She also revealed that Mandela was able to receive her books in South Africa prior to their initial encounter.
Check out Maya Angelou’s riveting poem “His Day Is Done” in full below: