South African-born Calgary doctor remembers Nelson Mandela

She lived in South Africa before and after the end of apartheid and now a Calgary doctor is giving her final thoughts on the life of Nelson Mandela.

Calgary Dr. Natasha Iyer got to see first-hand how the country changed after Mandela’s release and election victory before moving to Canada at the age of 26 in 1998.

In the province where Dr. Iyer lived on the east coast of South Africa, she dealt with both black-on-black civil unrest among tribes, but also the stigma of apartheid, completely isolated from many white Africans, and didn’t realize its reach until she went to a white high school.

“And I remember thinking oh my gosh, this is what it means to have apartheid, they have so much more than I have,” she said, saying she would never have been able to marry her Caucasian husband and have her children under the rule.

“You hear about apartheid, but you don’t know what it actually means and what it meant was you didn’t have the same things that people in America would take for granted, in Canada would take for granted,” she said.

As Mandela was released and ran for president, Iyer was recruited to count ballots during the election.

“You started to get really excited because you had a man who had devoted his entire life to equality for all of us,” she said. “He gave up being a father, he gave up being a husband, he gave up everything he had for equality and freedom for us all, so that our children could live equally.”

As a doctor who practices complementary and integrative medicine, she also credits Mandela’s mental strength living in prison for 27 years in unhealthy conditions, working in a quarry mine breathing in dust and still managing to live to 95 and forgiving his jailors.

“What he taught us was forgiveness, what he taught us was that when you truly believe ion something, anything is possible,” she said.