Titans of History

MANDELA

1918–

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea 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.

Nelson Mandela, defending himself at the Rivonia Trial (1964)

In his fight for freedom against South Africa’s apartheid system Nelson Mandela has inspired millions across the world with his courage, endurance and nobility of spirit. The transfer of South Africa from apartheid to black rule could have led to vindictive massacres, similar to the slaughter when India became independent, but, thanks to one politician, this revolution was essentially tolerant, peaceful, orderly and bloodless. This is the towering achievement of a man who embodies South Africa’s journey toward democracy and racial equality.

On February 11, 1990 Nelson Mandela walked out of the gates of the Victor Verster Prison in the Dwars Valley near Cape Town. It was the first time that he had been free for twenty-seven years, a triumph of hope that signified the beginning of a new era for a country riven by apartheid since 1948. It was Mandela who in 1994 became South Africa’s first democratically elected president.

The privileged son of a Tembu chieftain of royal descent, Mandela grew up in rural Transkei and had a boarding-school education that exposed him to little of the discrimination that most of South Africa’s black population faced. Before Mandela fled his home to avoid an arranged marriage, his most significant experience of oppression had been his naming as Nelson by a primary-school teacher who found his African name too difficult to pronounce.

But on arrival in Johannesburg the young lawyer began to live up to his birth name: Rolihlahla or troublemaker. Mandela became one of the first freedom fighters for the African National Congress (ANC). He was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned for his nonviolent protests throughout the 1950s. When the ANC was outlawed, Mandela—the “Black Pimpernel”—went on the run, drumming up overseas support and military training for the organization. In 1961 he became the leader of the ANC terrorist wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), planning violence against military/government targets. He regarded terror as a last resort to be used only when peaceful methods seemed hopeless, but he later confessed that the increasingly violent ANC terror and guerrilla campaigns also abused human rights. After being arrested and jailed in 1962 for leaving the country, in the Rivonia Trial of 1964 Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Mandela’s speech from the dock echoed through the townships from the Cape to the Paarl. It helped to politicize a people who had had every opportunity for education, advancement and independence taken away from them by the apartheid policies of the Afrikaner Nationalist government, which had crushed their rights and dignity. His words gave them hope.

Mandela is a man of awesome obduracy. Sentenced to hard labor in a stone quarry on Robben Island, Mandela transformed his prison camp into the “Island University,” assigning instructors to educate the teams of inmates as they toiled at their back-breaking work. He put on plays and distributed books to fill the hours. After twenty-seven years’ waiting, Mandela delayed his final departure from prison by one more day: “They are going to release me the way I want to be released,” he explained, “not the way they want me to be released.”

As Mandela’s stature grew across the world, the apartheid government, under hardliners like P.W. Botha, tried to do deals with this prisoner who had become their Achilles’ heel. They offered to release him if he would denounce the ANC; Mandela refused: “Until my people are free, I can never be free.” Peace takes men of vision and courage on both sides, and in 1989 the new South African president, F.W. de Klerk, was courageous enough to take the necessary risks. In 1990 he lifted the ban on the ANC just days before he released Mandela. And once free, Mandela almost immediately renounced violent action, thus making the vow he had refused to undertake while imprisoned.

Mandela has never indulged in racism. At his trial he called for freedom regardless of color, and on his release he refused to stir up racial tensions. As president (1994–9) he included representatives of all ethnic groups in his multi-party government. He established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights abuses. The Madiba—the honorific tribal name by which South Africans know him—shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk. His one embarrassment was the violent gangsterism of his wife Winnie, whom he divorced. He later married the widow of President Machel of Mozambique. Mandela has recognized that during his presidency he did not do enough to combat the AIDS epidemic. In retirement he has taken every step to redress his mistake. With characteristic honesty, Mandela has since admitted that his own 1960s militancy, no less than apartheid, violated human rights and he has refused to let his followers suppress this fact.

“My life is the struggle,” said Mandela.