Mr Nelson Mandela: International Patron
Nelson Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 into the royal family of the
Thembu, a Xhosa-speaking tribe which nestles in a fertile valley in the
Eastern Cape. There in the family kraal of white washed huts, the young boy
spent a happy and sheltered childhood, and listened eagerly to the stirring
tales of the tribal elders. His Xhosa name, Rolihlahla, has the colloquial
and rather prophetic meaning “trouble-maker”, and he only received his more
familiar English name, Nelson, on his first day at Healdtown, a British
colonial boarding school.
The teacher apparently chose English names at random for each unsuspecting
child in her class, and was possibly thinking of Lord Nelson at the time,
since the famous seagull hadn’t arrived yet; but that would only be a guess.
The school principal, ironically, was called Wellington, and frequently
informed young Mandela and his classmates that there was no such thing as
African culture, and that they, the natives, were indeed privileged to be
educated by such a fine and civilized Englishman as himself.
Thus it was that early on, that Nelson Mandela’s political awareness began
to take shape, and he steeled himself to resist such indoctrination while he
immersed himself in the very real cultural practices of his own Xhosa
people. He remembers the harsh rigors of his initiation, when he was
prepared for the trials of manhood that lay ahead. He remembers emerging
from his long seclusion, coated in red ochre, and receiving two cows and
four sheep, which made him feel richer than he had ever felt before, and, as
he put it, “walking……straighter and taller….and thinking that he might
someday have wealth, property, and status.” He certainly was right about
that, but a long road lay ahead.
The 1930’s were troubled times in South Africa, when forced removals, pass
laws and other segregation bills were passed. With growing unease, Mandela
went to Fort Hare University to do a Bachelors degree, but it wasn’t long
before his strong will and indignation at injustice got in the way, and he
was expelled in 1940 for leading a Student Representative Council strike
with Oliver Tambo.
Already it was clear that nobody was going to tell this young man what to
do, and when he discovered, on his return home, that his tribal chief and
caretaker had decided it was time for him to marry a suitable girl, for whom
labola (payment for marrying a girl of African decent) had already been
paid, Nelson Mandela took the gap and ran away to Johannesburg.
Thus, at 22, he found himself working as a mine policeman, knopkiere (stick
with knob at end) and whistle in hand, at Johannesburg’s Crown Mines.
Contrary to his expectations of grandeur, the Mine offices were rusted tin
shanties in an ugly, barren area, filled with the harsh noise of
lift-shafts, power drills, and the distant rumble of dynamite. Everywhere he
looked he saw tired-looking black men in dusty overalls.
The contrast from his peaceful rural life must have been a rude shock, and he rapidly learned the reality of the grinding poverty and inhuman exploitation of his fellow workers. Now, politics began to play a very significant role in his life. Stirred up at the humiliation and suffering of his people, and outraged at the increasingly unjust and intolerable laws of the country, in 1944, he, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo amongst others formed the ANC Youth League, and within a few years, Mandela became its president.
Fired with ambition and determination, he completed his law degree
through the University of the Witwatersrand, and with Tambo set up South
Africa’s first black law firm. Thus began the dangerous and dedicated life
of full time struggle against the evils of apartheid. Mandela involved
himself wholeheartedly in leading a non-violent campaign of civil
disobedience, helping to organize strikes, protest marches and
demonstrations, encouraging people to defy discriminatory laws.
Inevitably, as the people’s rage increased and repression cracked down,
Mandela was eventually arrested for the first time in 1952, and experienced
the other side of the dock, no longer an attorney, but now the accused. He
was acquitted, but further harassment, arrests and detention followed,
culminating in the infamous Treason Trial in 1958. A full four years after
the trial began, Mandela gave his impassioned and articulate testimony, and
was found not guilty and discharged. Until this time he had somehow managed
to maintain his legal practice, but after the trial, with heightened
repression and the banning of the ANC, armed struggle became the only
solution.
Thus it was that he sacrificed his personal family life and his legal
practice and took up armed insurrection. He went abroad for military
training, and on his return he formed the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we
Sizwe (meaning spier of the nation), taking on life as a hunted fugitive,
constantly on the move, sometimes disguised as a chauffeur, sometimes as a
laborer, evading his enemies so successfully that he earned the title “The
Black Pimpernel”.
In 1962 Mandela was arrested for treason again, and sentenced to five years
in prison. He made it quite clear that he was guilty of no crime, but had
been made a criminal by the law, not because of what he had done but because
of what he believed in. While serving this sentence, he was again charged
with sabotage, and the Rivonia trial began. His eloquent and stirring
address, lasting 4 hours, ended with his famous words: “I have cherished the
ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in
harmony……It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs
be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” As we well know, in 1964
Nelson Mandela was convicted of sabotage and treason and sentenced with his
fellow colleagues the supreme punishment: life imprisonment on Robben
Island, that flat disc in the foaming Atlantic ocean which represents more
completely than any other patch of South African earth, that which has been
unspeakable in the last three centuries of South Africa’s history.
There, on a grim, overcast day with the cold winter wind whipping through
him, he was met by tense armed guards, ordered to strip naked while standing
outside the old stone jail, and to put on the plain khaki uniform of the
maximum security prison. Apartheid’s regulations extended even to clothing:
in order to remind the black prisoners that they were “boys”, they received
short trousers, a thin jersey, a canvas jacket and shoes without socks.
Fellow Indian prisoners got long trousers and socks.
At forty-six years of age, he first entered the small cramped cell in
Section B that was to be his home for so many years to come. It had one
small barred window, and a thick wooden door covered by a barred metal
grille. He could walk the length of the cell in three paces, and when he lay
down, he could feel the wall with his feet and his head.