Daughtry and grandson share experiences from Mandela funeral
Faith In Brooklyn
The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a charismatic Brooklyn pastor and widely-known civil rights activist, last week gave a press conference to report on his attendance at the private funeral and burial of former South African President Nelson Mandela.
Affectionately named Madiba (his tribal name), Nelson Mandela died on Dec. 5 at age 95. A leading member of the African National Congress (ANC), which opposed South Africa’s policy of racial separation known as apartheid, he became a political prisoner for this cause. The then-white minority government outlawed the ANC in 1960. Captured and jailed in 1962, Mandela was convicted two years later of treason and sentenced to life in prison. South African President F.W. de Klerk finally released him in 1990, lifted the ANC ban, and worked with Mandela to abolish apartheid. Mandela forged a new, multi-racial democracy. Mandela and de Klerk shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. Mandela, now a symbol of the anti-apartheid movement, became South Africa’s first black democratically-elected president. His family also recognized the work of civil rights leaders in the United States, Revs. Daughtry and Jesse Jackson among them, in helping about this change in South Africa.
Rev. Daughtry was one of a few clergy leaders selected to take part in Mandela’s funeral and burial rites. Accompanying him was his grandson, 24-year-old Lorenzo Daughtry Chambers, Northeast District Leader for the House of the Lord Church, and a sixth-generation minister.