Radical Joy Revealed is a weekly message of inspiration about finding and making beauty in wounded places. We hope you'll enjoy these doorways into places that are both familiar and surprising, and we welcome your suggestions, stories, and photos. Click here to subscribe.

How Nelson Mandela Fought
the Prisoner's Worst Enemy

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela knew that a prisoner's worst enemy is not isolation, not humiliation, not lack of decent food or hygiene or the harsh punishment of guards. The worst enemy is the prisoner's own despair.

Therefore, from the very start of his sentence on Robben Island, Mandela refused to submit to powerlessness and waged a constant fight for rights for the South African political prisoners. Tirelessly he made demands of both the system and the prisoners, whom he urged to use the time behind bars to improve their lives. A few of the rights Mandela won:

1. better food (which meant food equal in quality to what "colored" and Indian prisoners got)

2. no hard manual labor

3. the right for the black prisoners to wear long trousers

4. the right to read newspapers

5. the right to have books in one's cell

6. the right for the political prisoners to talk among themselves

7. the right to study for higher degrees

8. the right to grow a garden

Mandela refused to capitulate to despair and kept saying yes to life. By the time he was freed twenty-seven years after he was incarcerated, he was already a great leader. (To learn more about Mandela's life, read his remarkable autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.)

To discover other stories of inspiring people, stories, photos, and ideas, subscribe to

Radical Joy Revealed.

Radical Joy for Hard Times is a global community of people dedicated to finding and making beauty in wounded places. Reconnecting with these places, sharing our stories of loss, and making acts of beauty there, we transform the land, reconnect people and the places that nourish them, and empower ourselves to make a difference in the way we live on Earth.

Donate to help Radical Joy

Join The Ground Beneath Our Hearts
September 12, 2015

Click here to learn how you can be part of #HeartGround.

Know someone else that would be interested in our organization?

Not yet signed up to receive our informative emails?

See what's happening on our social sites.