Nelson Mandela, the man and the times

When I was growing up as a boy in the 1980’s there were three continual stories that kept coming on the news headlines.  They were all quite similar and the images were almost interchangeable.  Though the world was on edge with the Cold War and people were sad about Tibet and China and the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, what could be guaranteed to be on the news night after night was one of the following.  Bombs, assassination and riots in Northern Ireland, Bombs, assassination and riots in Israel and the West Bank and assassination and riots in South Africa.   Happily two of the three of these unsolvable problems have now been resolved peacefully but at the time every one seemed impossible.

South Africa at the time was dominated by whites, white Afrikaans from areas of the Netherlands who spoke Dutch and despised blacks and white British who saw blacks as second class citizens.    It was the Dutch who arrived in South Africa first, the Afrikaan farmers were fiercely independent and belligerent and they had left Europe for a chance to start new lives in Africa.  When the British arrived shortly after and set about creating the beginnings of a modern and governed territory, the Afrikaans took umbrage at being told to behave themselves and for about a century went further into Africa stealing the lands of the native Africans and causing more than a little chaos which forced the British governors to move in to calm things down which then meant the Afrikaans moved further inland and the whole cycle would start again.

Nelson Mandela was born in 1918 to a family of Kings in the Thembu people of South Africa.  The world he was born into is almost unimaginable to most of us today.  South Africa was a colony but it still offered some opportunities to a black boy and he was the first in his family to go to school, learn English and then at the age of 19 attended Fort Hare University where he quickly became interested in politics.

Strong minded from the beginning he declined to enter into a forced marriage and instead went to Johannesburg where he worked as a guard at a mine. Living in the black Alexandra township where he would meet many other politically minded activists.

When South Africa became an independent nation, a referendum was held amongst the whites on whether to become a republic or not.  The Dutch descended Afrikaans or Boers despised any link to London almost as much as they looked down on blacks but their greater population resulted in a narrow victory and despite some English speaking areas of the country strongly disagreeing, the country left the Commonwealth and became a Republic.

Immediately, the already tough race rules that existed to segregate white and blacks were toughened and punishments for breaking these rules became tougher.  Instead of separation, there was now repression. Black South Africans were not allowed to travel without a pass, they couldn’t sit on park benches, visit beaches, travel on buses or have any sort of personal relationship with other races. Not all whites agreed with this but the majority of them did or did not speak up against it.

Nelson Mandela and other activists formed the African National Congress or ANC and followed the approach of Gandhi and peaceful resistance but they were accused of treason and put on a 4 year trial before all 150 were acquitted.

Nelson Mandela began giving legal advice to blacks in townships as part of a general low level political uprising.  The police were sadistically tough with any blacks who dared speak up and things came to a head in Sharpeville in March 1961 when police killed 69 peaceful protesters.

Forming the armed wing of the ANC or Umkhonto we Sizwe – ‘Spear of the Nation’, Mandela began a series of resistance style disruption to state infrastructure and with the help of the CIA was again put on trial.  He spoke for 4 hours in an eloquent and calm manner that impressed even those who wanted him imprisoned and he closed his speech with the famous lines below:

‘During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.

‘I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.

‘It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.’