I want to break free #twistedpair

My #twistedpair are Nelson Mandela and Captain Jack Sparrow.

Nelson Mandela spent more than 26 years in South African prisons, mainly in squalid and inhumane conditions. He was imprisoned largely as a punishment for his political beliefs and membership of the outlawed African National Congress during Apartheid.

I won't forget the day I visited Robben Island, the penal colony on which Mandela spent the large proportion of his prison sentence. It's a small island in the bay near Cape Town. It is unbearably hot in the fierce summer sun, and is cold and inhospitable in the winter months in the icy Antarctic wind.

I visited the cell in which he spent most of his time, and was appalled at how small and cramped it was. I would have been easy to despair. Yet Mandela didn't give in. He proved that in adversity, when all the odds seem stacked against you, you can still achieve your dream. You need persistence, resilience and a strong belief that what you are doing is right. Mandela had all those qualities. He survived.

Mandela's cell on Robben Island

Eventually he was released as the political climate changed and the influence of Apartheid began to decline, and he was ultimately elected as president of the country that had once rejected him. He studied for a law degree while still in prison, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and became one of the most revered icons of the age.

Jack Sparrow is the fictional character of the movie series Pirates of the Caribbean. Sparrow is a wisecracking rascal of a character, who leads a motley crew that represent freedom from the ruling powers of the British Empire and the East India Company. Sparrow and his crew fight numerous battles with the powers that be, and ultimately using his guile and audacity he triumphs again and again, but always with a cost.

On the face of it, it seems that Jack Sparrow and Nelson Mandela have very little in common, and there is no comparison between a fictional pirate and a real-life hero who freed an entire nation. But there is this: Both fought tyranny and sought freedom. Like Mandela, Sparrow ends up in prison, although it's only for a brief period. Sparrow is freed from prison to rescue an innocent girl from the grasp of a gang of ruthless pirates, while Mandela is released from prison to rescue an entire nation from its hatred and divisions.

There are many prisons in life - some are physical but many more are self imposed, mental prisons. Apartheid was an idealogical prison, created in the minds of racists. It limited millions of people from achieving their full potential. But it was defeated. In education the same principle applies. Mental prisons are those in which we limit ourselves by the way we think. To break free from a mental prison, you will need to change the way you think.

What can we learn from this #twistedpair? Mandela once said: 'Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.' I say: You have to be on the inside if you want to change things. To break free, you need to see beyond the walls and imagine a better world. Be persistent. Be resilient. Believe.

Photo by Stepph on Wikimedia Commons


I want to break free #twistedpair by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.