Nelson Mandela

Composed by: Sydney Wright

April 19, 1998

“Apart from life, a strong constitution and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla...its colloquial meaning is ‘troublemaker’” (Mandela 7). As Mandela’s name would suggest, his political temerity would get him in trouble later on in life. The challenge for every prisoner, particularly every political prisoner, is how to survive prison intact, how to emerge from prison undiminished, how to conserve one’s beliefs. I do not know how that I could have done it had I been alone. But the authorities’ greatest mistake was to keep us together, for together our determination was reinforced, we supported each other and gained strength from one another. (Mandela 121) Very few presidents have won a Nobel peace prize. Even fewer still have spent time in prison. Nelson Mandela, however, has done both. On May 10, 1994, Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president. Throughout his career, Mr. Mandela has played many roles. Mandela is influential today because of his brilliant political career, his role as an agent of change, and his symbolic stand against racism.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born the son of a tribal chieftain in Umtata, in what is now the province of Eastern Cape, South Africa. When he became an adult he began to study to become a lawyer (Encarta-Mandela). Lazar Sidelsky had agreed to take me on as a clerk while I completed my BA degree. The firm of Witlein, Sidelsky and Eidelman, one of the largest law firms in the city, handled business from blacks as well as whites. In addition to studying law and passing certain exams, in order to qualify as an attorney in South Africa I would have to serve several years of apprenticeship to a practicing lawyer. (Mandela 24-25) Mandela’s early experiences at the law firm served to direct his life purpose. To reach our desks each morning Nelson and I ran the gauntlet of patient queues of people overflowing from the chairs in the waiting room into the corridors...to be landless (in South Africa) can be a crime, and weekly we interviewed the delegations of peasants who came to tell us how many generations their families had worked a little piece of land from which they are now being ejected... to live in the wrong area can be a crime... our buff office files carried thousands of these stories and if, when we started our law partnership, we had not been rebels against apartheid, our experiences in our offices would have remedied the deficiency. We had risen to professional status in our community, but every case in court, every visit to the prisons to interview clients, reminded us of the humiliation and suffering burning into our people. (ANC- biography of Mandela 1) With that quote from Oliver Tambo, then the ANC national chairman, we can observe that Mandela was becoming more involved in the politics of his homeland. I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, and a thousand indignities produced in me the anger, a desire to fight the system that enslaved my people. (Mandela 35) In 1944 Mandela joined the African National Congress and embraced its philosophy of liberation of black South Africans from racism. He and his colleagues started the ANC Youth League, which soon eclipsed the parent organization in its demands for the overthrow of white power, elimination of apartheid, and the establishment of a democratic government (ANC- Biography of Mandela 1). The object of the Youth League was to give direction to the ANC in its quest for political freedom. However, Mandela still retained reservations about the extent of his political commitments (Mandela 36). In my experience, a political strike is always riskier than an economic one. A strike based on a political grievance rather than on clear-cut issues such as higher wages or shorter hours is a more precarious form of protest and demands particularly efficient organization. (Mandela 42) Mandela’s political devotion was tested when the ANC became an illegal organization. He and his executive colleagues decided to carry on underground despite the risk (Mandela 83). In 1962 Mandela was implicated in plans for guerrilla warfare. He and others were sentenced to life in prison on counts of treason. They barely escaped the death penalty (ANC- Biography of Mandela 2). In prison Mandela carried on his political actions as best he could, and continued his political and academic studies (Mandela 142). In 1990, Mandela was released, assumed control of the ANC, and started political negotiations. In 1993 Mandela and President de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in establishing democracy and racial harmony. In May 1994, after South Africa’s first multiracial elections, Mandela became president.

Mandela stood for change. Most evident are his actions for a change from the system of tyrannical apartheid. From 1960 to the mid-1970s, the government attempted to make apartheid a policy of ‘separate development.’ Blacks were consigned to newly created and impoverished homelands, called Bantustans, which were designed to eventually become petty sovereign states. The white population retained control of more than 80 percent of the land. (Encarta-Mandela) Mandela and the ANC first exhausted every constitutional means at their disposal to fight the unfair laws. When all else failed, they turned to illegal and extra-constitutional means (Mandela 46). Mandela also was an important agent of change within the ANC. For fifty years the ANC had treated non-violence as a core principle. Mandela, lawyer from Eastern Cape, was given the task of starting an army. He, who had never used a weapon in battle, was compelled to change his attitude (Mandela 89). He also had to change his attitude toward his opponents. My attitude toward my bans had changed radically. When I was first banned, I abided by the rules and regulations of my persecutors. I had now developed contempt for these restrictions. I was not going to let my involvement in the struggle and the scope of my political activities be determined by the enemy I was fighting against. To allow my activities to be circumscribed by my opponent was a form of defeat, and I resolved not to become my own jailer. (Mandela 64) After his conviction, Mandela began to experience the hard changes of prison life. Abusive guards, no communication, and hard labor helped to remind the prisoners where they were (Mandela 119). Through it all, Mandela was unyielding about his goals and morals. “When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat” (Aphorisms Galore-Mandela). When he was released in 1990, Mandela set to the ironic task of changing people’s hate into acceptance. There could be people who say, ‘why don’t we just kick whites out of all those wonderful houses they are living in because they have had all the advantages all these years?’ We say: ‘no, no, no. Hold your horses. We want to have a new kind of relationship.’ There is a price you have to pay for this. (Lewthwaite-Airing linen 2) Mandela faced another uphill battle for racial harmony and peace, which still isn’t completely won . The other thing we have to keep saying to our people is that when someone commits acts as atrocious as this, our temptation is to dismiss them and say, ‘They were beasts, they were demons.’ We have to relate to our people. ‘No, they carried out demonic, bestial acts but they remain human beings. And none of us knows how they would have reacted had they been subjected to the same conditions as these persons.’ There is always the possibility of change. (Lewthwaite-Airing linen 2) Now that he is president, Mandela must worry about harmful over-nationalism. Africa is a volatile political playground, and overt stress on African nationalism could be harmful (African Nationalism 1). As his term as president draws to a close, Mandela is sure to be pondering the changes in his career and South Africa’s future. I was made, by the law, a criminal, not because of what I have done, but because of what I stood for, because of what I thought, because of my conscience. Can it be any wonder to anybody that such conditions make a man an outlaw to society? (Mandela 106)

Mandela was the keystone in the foundation of the fight against racism. He served as a symbol and rallying point for the plight of the oppressed masses. He symbolized the fight against the indiscriminate tyranny of the South African government, which would, for example, outlaw communistic activities and then define them so broadly that anyone could be branded a communist (ANC- Biography of Mandela 1). Mandela boldly showed his symbolism at his treason trial. I entered the court that Monday morning wearing a traditional Xhosa leopard-skin kaross instead of a suit and tie... I had chosen traditional dress to emphasize the symbolism that I was a black African walking into a white man’s court. I felt to be the embodiment of African nationalism, the interior of Africa’s difficult but noble past and her uncertain future. (Mandela 105) Mandela, then an experienced attorney, enhanced his symbolism by representing himself, a risky thing to do in a treason trial (Mandela 103). The defense team in the trial attempted to prove that the beliefs expressed in the Freedom Charter (secret planning documents) were not treasonable or criminal. On the contrary, they contended that the ideas and beliefs expressed were shared by the majority of the people in South Africa. They insisted that it was a political trial in which the government was attacking them for taking morally justified actions (Mandela 68-69). “A nation’s grievances cannot be suppressed, people will always find a way to give voice to those grievances... the accused had had only two alternatives: ‘to bow their heads and submit, or to resist by force’” (Mandela 116). Mandela and his colleagues planned to continue their symbolic fight no matter what sentence was passed in the trial. “Whatever sentences we received, even the death sentence we would not appeal. If a death sentence was passed, we did not want to hamper the mass campaign that would surely spring up. Our message was that no sacrifice was too great in the struggle for freedom” (Mandela 116). On the other hand, “It was decided that if we were not convicted, I would go underground to travel about the country organizing the proposed national convention... I would surface at certain events, hoping for a maximum of publicity, to show that the ANC was still fighting” (Mandela 83-84). In prison, one of the things that enabled Nelson to continue was the knowledge of his importance. “My comrades and I were enormously cheered; the spirit of mass protest that had seemed dormant in the 1960s was erupting in the 1970s... There is nothing so encouraging in prison as learning that the people outside are supporting the cause for which you are inside” (Mandela 148). Today, as president of South Africa and leader of the ANC, Nelson Mandela serves as a symbol of his nation’s wishes. “Today the ANC is firmly nonracial, but it is challenged by what it calls ‘the national question’: What sort of African country should South Africa become” (Lewthwaite-African Nationalism 2)?

In prison, Mandela loved tending his garden. In some ways, I saw the garden as a metaphor for certain aspects of my life. A leader must also tend his garden; he, too, sows seeds, and then watches, cultivates and harvests the result. Like the gardener, a leader must take responsibility for what he cultivates; he must mind his work, try to repel enemies, preserve what can be preserved and eliminate what cannot succeed. (Mandela 150) Mandela now serves as both president and role model to South Africans. This gardener has raised a successful crop, but his fields will continue to flourish. Nelson Mandela is influential today because of his successful political career, his role as an agent of change, and his symbolic stand against racism. On December 11, 1996, Mandela both mournfully and optimistically signed a charter in a city scarred by the past. With the survivors of the Sharpville massacre flanking him, Mandela declared: “Out of the many Sharpvilles which haunt our history was born the unshakable determination that respect for human life, dignity and well-being must be enshrined as rights beyond the power of any force to diminish” (Duke-Hopes and History Mingle 2).

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