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To overthrow oppression has been sanctioned by humanity
and is the highest aspiration of every free man.
Nelson Mandela, September 1953Our goal is a united Africa
in which the standards of life and liberty are constantly expanding;
in which the ancient legacy of illiteracy and disease is swept aside;
in which the dignity of man is rescued
from beneath the heels of colonialism which have trampled it.
Our vision has always been
that of a non-racial democratic South Africa
which upholds the rights of all who live in our country.
Albert Luthuli, Noble Peace Prize AddressWe have set out on a quest for true humanity,
and somewhere on the distant horizon
we can see the glittering prize.
Let us march forth with courage and determination,
drawing strength from our common plight and our brotherhood.
In time we shall be in a position to bestow upon South Africa
the greatest gift possible-a more human face.
Steve Biko, 1973I am trying to eradicate the thinking
that is prevalent in white society
which makes them operate from fear as a basis.
In other words they do not necessarily
look at things that are done by blacks logically.
They look at them in terms of to what extent
they are threatened in their position as whites,
and this is the basis for police brutality.
Steve Biko, May 1976I cherish my freedom dearly,
but I care even more for your freedom.
Too many have died since I went to prison.
Too many have suffered for the love of freedom.
But I cannot sell my birthright,
nor am I prepared to sell the birthright
of the people to be free.
Nelson Mandela, 1985When we make the so-called preferential option for the poor;
when we become the voice of the voiceless ones;
when we stand in solidarity with the hungry and the homeless,
the uprooted ones, the down-trodden, those that are marginalised,
we must not be surprised that the world will hate us,
and yet, another part of the world will love us.
Desmond Tutu, sermon in September 1987We, who were outlaws not so long ago,
have today been given the rare privilege
to be the host to the nations of the world on our own soil.
We thank all of our distinguished international guests
for having come to take possession
with the people of our country of what is, after all,
a common victory for justice, for peace, for human dignity.
We have, at last, achieved our political emancipation.
We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people
from the continuing bondage of poverty,
deprivation, suffering, gender, and other discrimination.
Nelson Mandela, May 10, 1994To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains,
but to live in a way that
respects and enhances the freedom of others.
Nelson Mandela, 1994The very right to be human is denied every day
to hundreds of millions of people as a result of poverty,
the unavailability of basic necessities
such as food, jobs, water and shelter,
education, health care and a healthy environment.
Nelson Mandela at the UN, September 21, 1998Even after the agreements are signed,
peacemaking is never finished.
Peace is not a goal to be reached
but a way of life to be lived.
Violence erupts in moments of hatred and rejection,
but peace is created in long years of love and acceptance.
Trust must be built over generations.
Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream 120
In 1910 the two Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free
State
and the two British colonies of the Cape and Natal formed
the Union of South Africa.
Four lawyers founded the Natal African
National Congress in 1912.
Africans were pushed into slums by
the 1913 Land Act, the 1923 Urban Areas Act
the 1926 Color Bar
Act, and the 1927 Native Administration Act.
The Congress began
protesting the pass laws in 1919
when 700 demonstrators in Johannesburg
went to prison.
Two years later soldiers massacred 163 blacks
for
refusing to vacate white land in the eastern Cape.
In 1922
thousands of striking miners marched in Johannesburg;
Prime Minister
J. C. Smuts called in the army and air force,
and 153 strikers
were killed with more than five hundred wounded.
During the 1930s
General Barry Hertzog led the National Party,
and after gaining two-thirds of the parliament he removed the
last 11,000 black
voters from the rolls in the Cape.
A bill allowed Cape Town blacks
to elect seven white representatives in parliament
and twelve
blacks to the advisory Native Representation Council.
The African
National Congress (ANC) elected
the physician Albert Xuma president
in 1940.
Albert Luthuli was born in 1898 in Rhodesia; ten years later
his father died,
and his family returned to South Africa.
Albert
was educated by American Congregational missionaries,
and from
1921 to 1935 he taught teachers at Adams College.
To reconcile
Christianity with his Zulu heritage he sponsored
a cultural society
for the study of Zulu folklore.
He became the Zulu chief of 5,000
people at Umvoti in 1936
and continued to preach every Sunday.
Nelson Mandela was born July 18, 1918 in Umtata,
capital of
the Transkei in South Africa.
His father was a chief of the Thembu
people in the Xhosa nation and had four wives;
after losing his
fortune and his title, he died when Nelson was nine years old.
Nelson studied English as well as Xhosa.
In 1937 he went to the
Wesleyan College at Healdtown before studying law
at Fort Hare,
the only university open to blacks in South Africa.
The food was
so terrible that Mandela resigned during a protest.
He returned
to the Transkei; but when the regent arranged a marriage for him
and his friend Justice, both young men decided
to run away instead
and went to Johannesburg.
Mandela completed his B.A. degree in
1942.
Moved by the democratic principles of the Atlantic Charter
signed by
Roosevelt and Churchill, the African National Congress
(ANC) formulated
African Claims demanding full citizenship for
Africans.
Anton Lembede spoke and wrote to get people to think
of themselves as Africans,
instead of as Xhosas or Zulus, and
to overcome their feelings of inferiority
by looking to heroes
such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Haile Selassie.
At
the ANC conference in December 1943 they proposed forming
a Youth
League and did so on Easter Sunday in 1944.
Lembede was elected
its president, Oliver Tambo secretary,
and Walter Sisulu treasurer;
the executive committee included A. P. Mda and Nelson Mandela.
The Youth League rejected communism as a foreign ideology.
In
his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela admitted
that he went so far
as to break up Communist Party meetings by
tearing up signs and capturing the microphone.
Lembede, Sisulu,
and Mandela wanted to exclude whites from the League,
but others
such as Tambo disagreed.
Communist J. B. Marks led a successful
strike of 70,000 miners
and in 1945 was elected president of the
League.
Luthuli joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1945.
That year he was elected to the Native Representative Council,
and they demanded the government abolish all discriminatory laws.
At its annual convention in December 1945 the
ANC drew up a bill
of rights for full citizenship.
Prime Minister J. C. Smuts appointed
the Fagan Commission, which reported in 1948
that complete segregation
in South Africa was not only undesirable but also impossible.
When the Smuts government passed the Asiatic Land Tenure Act in
1946
the Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC) and the Natal Indian
Congress (NIC)
launched a two-year campaign of nonviolent resistance
in which two thousand people went to jail.
The leaders, Drs. Dadoo
and Naicker, were sentenced to six months hard labor.
While Dr.
Xuma was speaking at the United Nations, the Youth Leaguers
organized
an ANC boycott of the Native Representative Council.
Xuma opposed
this and Lembede's call to boycott the visit of British royalty
in 1947,
but the charismatic Lembede died of a stomach ailment.
That year Mandela was elected to the executive committee of the
Transvaal ANC.
In 1948 Luthuli spent nine months lecturing to
churches, schools,
and fraternal organizations in the United States,
warning that communism,
Islam, materialism, and secularism were
threatening the soul of Africa.
He recommended combining Christianity
with African culture.
In the 1948 elections Dr. Malan's National Party won a large
plurality
over the United party of General Smuts and began to
implement its
apartheid policy that denied Africans permanent
residence in the towns.
Malan pardoned those who had supported
Nazi Germany, and his government
took the vote away from the Coloreds
(Africans of mixed race).
Mixed marriages were prohibited in 1949,
and the Immorality Act
made sexual relations between white and
nonwhite a crime.
The Population Registration Act defined all
South Africans by race,
and the Group Areas Act restricted where
they could live under the apartheid system.
The Youth League demanded
that Dr. Xuma, the ANC president,
support a program of action,
or they would elect someone else.
He refused, and Dr. Moroka was
elected president and Sisulu secretary-general.
Mandela could
not get permission from his law firm to attend the 1949 conference,
but Oliver Tambo was elected to the national executive committee.
The Communist Party and the Indian Congress proposed a general
strike
for May 1, 1950 and the ANC convention approved the Freedom
Day.
The South Africa government then passed the Suppression of
Communism Act,
which made any protest of state policy illegal.
On May 1, Malan sent in 2,000 police to disperse protestors,
and
their guns killed eighteen people.
The ANC planned a national day of protest for June 26, 1950
and was supported
by the South African Indian Congress (SAIC)
and the African People's Party (APO).
Nelson Mandela was won over
to multi-racial nationalism
and coordinated the various actions
from the office by phone.
Because he had a driver's license, Mandela
was chosen to deliver a letter to
Prime Minister Malan demanding
repeal of six unjust laws by the end of February, 1952.
Luthuli
had been elected president of the Natal branch of the African
National Congress
in May 1951, and a year later they announced
a defiance campaign
with the SAIC and the communist-influenced
white Congress of Democrats.
The Indians had past experience under
Mahatma Gandhi's leadership
and
were influenced by his son Manilal Gandhi.
Mandela accepted nonviolence
as a tactic as long as it was effective.
A banned person could
not meet with any designated organizations and was
allowed to
speak to only one person at a time without risking imprisonment.
After J. B. Marks was banned, Mandela was elected president of
the Youth League.
The first stage of the Defiance Campaign included entering
prohibited areas
without permits, using "Whites Only"
facilities, and staying in town after curfew.
On June 26, 1952
some 250 ANC leaders
risked arrest by infringing color-bar regulations,
and in the next five months more than eight thousand people went
to prison
without a single incident of violence on their side.
The volunteers refused to pay bail or a fine.
The police raided
the offices and homes of ANC and Indian leaders on July 30,
and
two weeks later they arrested Dr. Moroka, Mandela, Sisulu, Marks,
Dadoo,
Yusuf Cachalia, Ahmed Kathrada, and thirteen other leaders
for "promoting communism."
By then they were bailing
out.
Although the campaign had no full-time organizers, during
this period
ANC membership increased from 20,000 to 100,000.
Mandela
and Tambo formed a law partnership in August, and they
had much
work defending Africans from prosecution by apartheid laws.
In
October and November the police killed several Africans,
and blacks
killed a few white civilians.
Luthuli was ordered by the secretary
of Native Affairs, Dr. Eiselen,
to resign from the ANC or from
his chieftainship.
He refused, and the Native Commissioner dismissed
Chief Luthuli in November 1952;
he was banned from all South African
towns for a year.
The next month Luthuli was elected president
of the ANC
with Mandela as the deputy from the Transvaal.
Luthuli
disagreed with communists such as Walter Sisulu,
but he accepted
them as allies in the struggle for social justice.
During the
Cold War he agreed with the neutral
foreign policy of India's
prime minister Nehru.
In December after a trial Justice Rumpff
sentenced the twenty leaders
to nine months but suspended them
for two years.
The South African government banned the ANC in the reserves
(bantustans);
52 leaders were banned for six months,
and Mandela
was forbidden to leave Johannesburg.
Mandela suggested a strategy
that was called the M-Plan so that they could
communicate from
small cells by street up to ANC branches.
Government authorities
threatened to evict Mandela and Tambo
from their law office because
of the Urban Areas Act.
In 1953 the ANC called off the resistance
campaign so as
not to help the National Party in the elections.
The Public Safety Act authorized the minister of Native Affairs
to suspend civil liberties
and the Criminal Laws Amendment Act
set punishments of three years' imprisonment
for any protests
against laws and five years for inciting others to do so.
Soon
after Luthuli's first ban expired, he was banned again for two
years.
Mandela began to question whether violence would be needed
to overturn the power of the white minority; but he was reprimanded
by the ANC
executive committee and agreed to defend the policy
of nonviolence in public.
He urged Walter Sisulu to ask the People's
Republic of China for weapons,
but the Chinese rejected the request.
In April 1954 the Law Society of the Transvaal tried to disbar
Mandela
because of his political activities, but expert lawyers
working for free won his case in court.
Efforts by the ANC and
the TIC were unable to stop the government
from using 4,000 police
and soldiers to remove more than 60,000 people
from Johannesburg's
popular communities of Sophiatown, Martindale,
and Newclare in
February 1955 even though ten thousand people
had gathered to
hear Chief Luthuli speak.
The parliament had passed the Bantu Education Act in 1953,
and the Native Affairs minister Hendrik Verwoerd said tha
the
Bantu needed no education in European society above a certain
level of labor.
In protest of the government take-over, Bishop
Ambrose Reeves closed his schools
in Johannesburg that had ten
thousand students.
The transfer to the Native Affairs department
was scheduled for April 1955
and the ANC planned a boycott.
Schools
were improvised, and the government
made offering unauthorized
education a crime.
Professor Zachariah Matthews suggested drawing up a Freedom
Charter for all Africans.
A coalition of groups formed the Congress
of the People (COP)
and chose Luthuli as chairman with Sisulu
(ANC), Yusuf Cachalia (SAIC),
Stanley Lollan (South African Colored
People's Organization)
and Lionel Bernstein (Congress of Democrats)
as secretaries.
The South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU)
was formed
in March 1955 and collected workers' demands for the
Charter.
After widespread and extensive discussions, three thousand
delegates,
including three hundred Indians, two hundred coloreds,
and one hundred whites,
met at Kliptown near Johannesburg in June
and agreed on the Freedom Charter
before the police disbanded
them after two days of meetings.
The preamble reads as follows:
We, the People of South Africa,
declare for all our country and the world to know:
that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white,
and that no government can justly claim authority
unless it is based on the will of all the people;
that our people have been robbed of their birthright
to land, liberty and peace by a form of government
founded on injustice and inequality;
that our country will never be prosperous or free
until all our people live in brotherhood,
enjoying equal rights and opportunities;
that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people,
can secure to all their birthright
without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief;
And therefore, we, the people of South Africa,
black and white together-equals, countrymen and brothers
adopt this Freedom Charter;
And we pledge ourselves to strive together,
sparing neither strength nor courage,
until the democratic changes here set out have been won.1
Because communists in the Congress of Democrats had also participated,
the government of South Africa prepared treason charges.
Although
the Freedom Charter called for national mineral wealth to be restored
to the people and industries be controlled to benefit the people,
it also stated, "All people shall have equal rights to trade
where they choose,
to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts,
and professions."2
On September 27, 1955 more than a thousand
police officers raided the homes
and offices of five hundred people.
In March 1956 Mandela was banned for five years.
After pass laws
were extended to women, the
Federation of South African Women
(FEDSAW) was formed,
and 20,000 women protested at Pretoria in
August.
In December the police arrested 156 leaders including
Mandela and Luthuli.
The Congress responded by organizing a bus
boycott in which
45,000 people walked to work for three months,
and to avoid a general strike
the government required employers
to subsidize the bus fares.
In 1957 the ANC Women's League became active, and about two
thousand
women were arrested at the Central Pass Office in Johannesburg.
They stayed in prison for two weeks before bailing out,
and Mandela
and Tambo defended most of them in court.
Luthuli said, "When
the women begin to take an active part in the struggle,
no power
on earth can stop us from achieving freedom in our lifetime."3
At the end of 1957 the government dropped the treason charges
against Luthuli
and sixty others because they failed to prove
a Communist conspiracy
or the use of violence; a year later charges
were dropped on 64 more, leaving thirty on trial.
Luthuli spoke
to audiences of all races emphasizing the dignity of the individual
and the importance of defending it.
When Chief Luthuli was assaulted
at an Afrikaans university,
Henderik Claasens was sentenced to
three months and a fine.
The treason trial went on for three more
years.
The evidence on Mandela amounted to 400 pages;
Capetown
university professor Murray testified on Marxism for 23 days,
and Chief Luthuli was a defense witness for three weeks.
Luthuli
distinguished the nonviolent from pacifists who refuse to defend
themselves;
he believed that nonviolent men and nations
have a
right to defend themselves when attacked.
After Mandela's wife Evelyn became too dissatisfied because
of
Nelson's dedication to the freedom movement, they decided to
divorce.
Mandela was attracted to young Winnie and married her
in June 1958.
That year another general election occurred in which
three million whites
could vote while thirteen million Africans
were excluded.
The ANC, other Congresses, and SACTU called for
a three-day strike during the April elections.
They campaigned
against the National Party; but the strike was a failure,
and
the Nationals increased their popular vote by more than ten percent.
Luthuli believed in a multi-racial society,
but Africanists
wanted Africa for Africans only.
At the 1958 ANC conference Luthuli's
leadership survived a challenge
by the Africanists who believed
that white communists and Indians
were dominating the ANC; so
they formed the Pan-African Congress (PAC)
under the leadership
of Robert Sobukwe in April 1959.
That month Luthuli proposed a
boycott of farms
and factories owned by National party supporters.
The potato boycott was most effective,
and some manufacturing
concerns made concessions.
Luthuli published "Boycott Us"
to encourage those in other countries to boycott
South African
goods even though it meant sacrifices for the Africans.
He hoped
that nonviolent methods would reconcile the races
and prevent
the country's destruction.
Luthuli was banned again in May 1959,
this time for five years.
In 1959 the parliament of South Africa
created eight isolated bantustans
for different ethnic groups,
and they excluded non-whites from universities.
Now 70% of the
population was confined to 13% of the land.
People in Sekhukhuneland
refused to pay taxes; their main chief and other counselors
were
arrested or banished, and the new chief was perceived
as a government
puppet and was assassinated.
In February 1960 British prime minister
Harold Macmillan spoke
to the South African Parliament and urged
them to change their racial policies
because "winds of change"
were liberating Africans.
Seventeen former colonies in Africa
were scheduled to become independent states in 1960.
Demonstrations
against requiring passes for women were provoking clashes with
the police.
At their conference in December 1959 the ANC agreed to begin
a nation-wide
anti-pass campaign on March 31, 1960, but the Pan-African
Congress
launched their campaign to resist the Pass Laws on March
21.
Their leaders turned themselves in at the Orlando police station,
and Sobukwe was sentenced to three years in prison.
On the first
day 75 police fired on thousands of unarmed demonstrators
at Sharpeville in the Transvaal, killing 69 Africans and wounding 178.
News reports
of the Sharpeville massacre spread around the world,
and for the
first time the United Nations Security Council condemned South
Africa.
Luthuli was testifying for the defense at the treason
trial in Pretoria.
He immediately called for Africans to stay
home from work on March 28
to mourn the victims, and he publicly
burned his Reference Book on March 26.
Arrests for Pass Law violations
were suspended the next day.
Mandela and many Africans destroyed
their Reference Books on March 28,
but most renewed them a week
later.
The Pan-Africanists called for continued resistance,
and
some churches and schools were burned.
On March 30 the Government
declared a
state of emergency and arrested 234 people;
Luthuli,
who had a weak heart, was assaulted
by a prison guard and was
taken to a hospital.
Oliver Tambo escaped and found political
asylum in Bechuanaland.
On April 5 the South African Parliament
banned
both the Pan-African Congress and the ANC.
More than two
thousand people were detained without being given trials.
In April
the thirty defendants in the treason trial dismissed their lawyers
as Mandela and Duma Nokwe began defending themselves and the others.
During the emergency they were held in the Pretoria jail.
South Africa lifted the state of emergency on August 31, 1960
but more than 5,000 people were still being detained.
Luthuli
was sentenced that day for burning his Reference Book;
but already
having been imprisoned for five months,
he was released on condition
that he not commit a similar offense for three years.
The Government
implemented its Bantu administration and replaced
traditional
chiefs with those loyal to the Government.
At the All-African
Convention at Pietermaritzburg on March 25, 1961
Mandela was allowed
to speak to an audience for the first time in five years,
and
Luthuli recommended defiance of apartheid and "active sacrificial
service."
The chief urged the Commonwealth prime ministers
meeting at London
to expel South Africa from the Commonwealth,
and at Capetown the
South African Colored People's Congress nominated
Luthuli for
president of the newly forming republic of South Africa.
On March 29, 1961 the long treason trial finally ended
as Justice
Rumpff announced acquittals for all the accused.
Mandela sent
a letter to Prime Minister Verwoerd demanding a national
constitutional
convention or they would stage a three-day strike from May 29
to the day South Africa was to be proclaimed a republic.
Mandela
advocated the stay-at-home tactic
because the enemy could not
easily strike back.
Nelson Mandela went underground and disguised himself
as a
chauffeur or gardener to avoid detection.
He began suggesting
a turn toward violent methods.
Although the Communist Party was
considering forming a military wing,
at a meeting in June their
secretary Moses Kotane believed the nonviolent methods
could work
if they were imaginative and determined enough,
warning Mandela
that violence could provoke the enemy into massacring innocent
people.
Chief Luthuli insisted that the ANC remain nonviolent,
but he said that
Mandela and others were free to form an independent
military movement.
The Communist Party decided to support an armed
effort,
but the Indian leaders wanted to stay with nonviolence.
J. N. Singh said, "Nonviolence has not failed us; we have
failed nonviolence."4
Mandela joined with communist Joe Slovo
and Walter Sisulu to form
the Spear of the Nation (Umkhonto we
Sizwe or MK).
Their strategy was to begin with sabotage that would
damage the state
but not be violent to individual persons, and
they recruited demolitions experts.
On December 16 when South
Africans were celebrating Dingane's Day,
MK attacked electric
power plants and government offices in Johannesburg,
Port Elizabeth,
and Durban with home-made bombs;
one of their men was accidentally
killed.
At the same time the MK Manifesto was distributed in leaflets
explaining their national liberation movement.
Ironically, Albert
Luthuli had just returned from Oslo,
where he had received the
Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1961.
Mandela managed to escape the police for seventeen months.
In February 1962 he attended the Pan African Freedom Movement
for East,
Central, and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) conference in
Addis Ababa.
From Ethiopia he traveled to Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco,
Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana,
Mali, Senegal, Guinea, and Uganda,
raising money and support for the armed struggle.
In London he
stayed with Oliver Tambo, who had set up
ANC offices there and
in Ghana, Egypt, and Tanganyika.
Mandela went back to Addis Ababa
for eight weeks of military training.
In June 1962 South Africa
enacted the Sabotage Act
with penalties ranging from five years
to death.
Returning to South Africa in July, Mandela met secretly
at Liliesleaf Farm with
Sisulu, Kotane, Govan Mbeki, Dan Tloome,
J. B. Marks, and Duma Nokwe.
He visited Luthuli at Groutville,
and disguised as Cecil Williams' chauffeur they headed
for Johannesburg;
but on August 5th police cars stopped them and arrested Mandela.
In prison he found that Walter Sisulu had also been arrested.
Mandela chose to defend himself and asked Joe Slovo to be his
legal advisor.
While he was awaiting trial in prison, the MK sabotage
campaign
was led by Raymond Mhlaba and Joe Modise.
The banned
African National Congress (ANC) held its conference in Bechuanaland
in October, the month of Mandela's trial.
He was not charged with
any violence, and in his trial he accused the government
of being
the criminals; he was sentenced to three years for inciting a
strike
plus two years for leaving South Africa without a passport.
He joined Sobukwe in the Pretoria prison.
Sisulu was sentenced
to six years; but he appealed and was released on bail.
The movement
advised him to go underground, and Sisulu did so.
Meanwhile the
United Nations General Assembly had voted
for sanctions against
South Africa for the first time.
In May 1963 the government of South Africa enacted what was
called
the Ninety-Day Detention Law, authorizing the detaining
of any person
without a warrant for ninety days, which could be
extended indefinitely.
When Sobukwe's sentence ended, he was redetained
and sent to Robben Island,
where he was isolated in a cottage
for six more years.
Mandela was also transferred to the island.
In July the police captured most of the MK commanders at Liliesleaf
in Rivonia.
Mandela was also charged with sabotage along with
Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Kathrada, Andrew Mlangeni, Bob Hepple, Mhlaba,
Elias Motsoaledi, Dennis Goldberg, Rusty Bernstein, and Jimmy
Kantor.
Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe escaped from prison
along with two Indians.
The Rivonia trial began in December, and the state called 173
witnesses.
They were tried for sabotage and conspiracy because
these were much easier to prove than treason under South African
law.
The charges included sabotage, guerrilla warfare, conspiracy
to aid invasion
by foreign military, and soliciting and receiving
funds
from foreign countries for these purposes.
As they each
pleaded not guilty, they accused the government of being criminal.
In his long statement Mandela admitted that he had planned sabotage,
but he denied that they had moved on to the second step of guerrilla
warfare.
He emphasized that they were still committed to not harming
human life.
He concluded with the following words:
During my lifetime I have dedicated myself
to this 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.5
Most of the defendants expected that the gallows was likely.
However, Justice de Wet had been appointed by the party of Smuts;
all the defendants decided not to appeal even if they got the
death penalty.
He found Kantor and Bernstein not guilty
but sentenced
all the others to life imprisonment.
On Robben Island all the warders and none of the prisoners
were white.
Mandela and the other Africans and Indians from the
ANC decided to
continue their fight against apartheid in the prison.
To avoid pressure to work faster, they worked at half speed.
Blacks
were given short trousers and were treated like boys.
Mandela
asked for long ones; but when given them he refused to wear them
unless all the blacks were given long trousers.
Rules preventing
communication were strict.
Each prisoner was only allowed two
visits and two letters per year;
they had to be immediate family
members,
and anything but family matters was censored.
The prisoners
used bribery and blackmail just to get a daily newspaper.
They
worked in the limestone quarry for thirteen years,
but after 1966
they were allowed to talk while they worked.
They struggled to
improve their conditions and to be able to study for degrees.
Mandela wrote that the only organization that really responded
to their complaints was the International Red Cross.
The ANC prisoners
supported a hunger strike by other prisoners
without even knowing
what the issue was; but fasting was usually ineffective
because
they could not alert people on the outside.
Winnie Mandela had
difficulties trying to visit her husband Nelson,
and she lost
two jobs as a social worker.
In May 1969 she was charged under
the 1967 Terrorism Act
and was detained for seventeen months.
Section 6 of the Terrorism Act allowed the police to detain and
interrogate
anyone suspected of terrorism or of withholding information
related to terrorism.
The political prisoners formed their own university.
Walter
Sisulu taught the history of the ANC,
Ahmed Kathrada the history
of the Indian struggle, and Mandela political economy.
Mandela
also used his legal skills to help some inmates with their appeals.
Once Mandela was taunted into threatening a warder and was going
to be charged;
but he responded by indicting the racist prison
system as a whole,
and the prosecutor withdrew the case.
Mandela
worked at night writing his memoirs, and Mac Maharaj
smuggled
out a complete copy upon his release in 1976.
They buried the
originals in three parts in the garden; but one of them was discovered,
and Mandela, Sisulu, and Kathrada lost their study privileges
for four years.
Also in 1976 the minister of prisons, Jimmy Kruger,
came and offered Mandela
a shorter sentence if he would recognize
the Transkei government of his nephew
K. D. Matanzima; Mandela
disagreed with the collaboration of his nephew and declined.
After
the Soweto uprising, young people from the
South African Students'
Organization (SASO) and the
Black People's Convention (BPC) began
arriving at Robben Island.
They had radical attitudes and considered
the older prisoners too moderate.
Mandela welcomed them, and SASO
leader "Terror" Lekota
and others decided to join the
ANC.
They were in the second year of a go-slow work strike
and
began demanding an end to all manual labor.
On May 16, 1977 Winnie Mandela was banished to the Brandfort
township.
In June 1978 the ANC guerrilla fighter Solomon Mahlangu
was sentenced to death, and he was executed on April 6, 1979.
The Robben Island prison began broadcasting
their censored version
of the news in 1978.
Some newspapers with numerous holes were
allowed,
and movies were occasionally shown.
In 1979 discrimination
in the meals was ended,
and the Africans, Indians, and Colored
all got the same food.
Because almost all the prisoners were now
political,
the siphoning off of the better food by kitchen workers
decreased.
India selected Mandela for its Nehru Human Rights award.
In 1980 the ANC began a "Free Mandela" campaign,
and
the MK stepped up its sabotage activities.
In reaction P. W. Botha
and General Magnus Malan
militarized the country with their "total
onslaught" policy.
When Matanzima deposed the Transkei king
Sabata,
Mandela advised supporting Sabata and because of
popular
sentiment refused to meet with his nephew.
Stephen Bantu Biko was born on December 18, 1946
at King William's
Town in the Cape Province.
After his older brother was arrested,
Steve was expelled
from Lovedale High School in 1963.
He graduated
from St. Francis College boarding school in 1966
and began studying
medicine at Natal University.
Biko was elected to the Students'
Representative Council (SRC) and worked
with the multi-racial
National Union of South African Students (NUSAS),
but he complained
it was dominated by white liberals.
In 1968 he was elected the
first president of the all-black South African Students'
Organization
(SASO); they included the Indians and Colored (mixed race)
who
were categorized as non-white in the apartheid system.
Their purposes
were to help the non-white students make known their grievances,
establish their identity, protect their interests,
heighten their
confidence, and solve their problems.
For the SASO newsletter Biko wrote a regular column called
"I Write What I Like"
which was often signed by Frank
Talk.
In 1971 he wrote an article about how fear is used in South
African politics.
Once the Europeans had cruelly imposed themselves
on the Africans,
fear was used to perpetuate their domination.
Attempts by blacks to protest were intimidated by security visits,
banning orders, house arrests, and worse.
Europeans were not respected
for such injustices, but they were feared.
Whites claimed an exclusive
monopoly on comfort and security.
Yet because of their greed for
power and wealth, they continued to feel insecure.
Biko criticized
blacks who agreed to prop up such a system.
In a paper on Black
Consciousness, he urged them "to operate as a group
in order
to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual
servitude."6
He argued that blacks cannot reform a system
that implies acceptance of its injustice;
instead blacks must
completely transform the system.
In South Africa the whites were
the haves, and the blacks were the have-nots.
The
one major force that Black Consciousness had to challenge was
white racism.
Biko also wrote on black theology within the context
of the black man's suffering.
After completing three years of study,
Biko was dismissed from
the university in 1972.
He was a leader in the Black Consciousness
movement,
and in July they formed the Black Peoples' Convention
(BPC).
Biko began working for Black Community Programs (BCP)
in
Durban and contributed to the Black Review.
In February
1973 several SASO and BPC officials were banned;
Biko was restricted
to King William's Town for five years.
He founded the Eastern
Cape branch of BCP and worked as branch executive
until he was
banned from doing that also at the end of 1975.
That year he founded
the Zimele Trust Fund to support political prisoners
and their
families and the Ginsberg Educational Trust to help black students.
In 1975 Biko was one of many black militants
detained for 137
days without being charged.
When Mozambique was near its independence from Portugal in
1974,
rallies were organized in South Africa.
On the evening before
the rallies of September 25, Minister of Justice
Jimmy Kruger
announced that SASO and BPC were banned until October 20.
Nearly
five thousand people gathered outside Curries Fountain Stadium
in Durban.
The police released dogs, and many fleeing people were
arrested and injured.
Police raided the SASO offices in October
and arrested SASO and BPC activists.
Nine people including Lekota
were eventually indicted and were held in jail
for nearly sixteen
months as the trial went on for 136 days
with 61 state witnesses
and 21 for the defense.
They were charged under the Terrorism
Act, which states that a person is guilty
of terrorism if he (or
she) "with intent to endanger the maintenance of law and
order
in the Republic or elsewhere, commits any act or attempts
to commit any act."7
This Act also placed the burden on the
accused
to prove that one did not have such intent.
Although no
physical act of terrorism was alleged, the nine were prosecuted
for
the ideas of "black consciousness" which the government
feared could cause terrorism.
Biko had not been charged because he was already restricted
to King William's Town;
but as the foremost proponent of Black
Consciousness he testified for the defense
for four and a half
days during the first week of May 1976.
He explained that black
people were oppressed by "institutionalized machinery"
that caused them to develop in a state of alienation.
He said
they tried to get blacks to grapple with their problems by "conscientization."
They asked foreign investors to help build up the humanity of
blacks,
and they encouraged foreign companies to criticize South
Africa's racist policies.
For Africa he suggested, "As black
people live in Europe on terms
laid down by Europeans, whites
shall be subjected to the same conditions."8
He said they
believed that voting should be on the basis of one person, one
vote,
and they advocated the economic sharing of black communalism.
He also explained that they were committed to using peaceful means.
Finally in December 1976 Justice Boshoff found all the defendants
not guilty
of eleven counts because SASO and BPC were not revolutionary
organizations;
but he convicted them of conspiracy to commit acts
that would further racial hostility
and for holding rallies in
support of the Mozambique liberation movement (FRELIMO).
He sentenced
six of the defendants to six years and the other three to five
years.
Since 1950 more than 40,000 Africans had been incarcerated
under the repressive apartheid system.
The government of South Africa was spending more than six times
as much
for each white student than it did for each black student.
In 1974 the government began to deliver textbooks in the Afrikaner
language,
and students organized to protest in 1975.
On June 16,
1976 about 15,000 schoolchildren in Soweto rallied against the
government's attempt to impose the Afrikaner language on half
their classes.
The demonstration was peaceful until the police
began shooting and killed a student.
Then the children fought
with sticks and stones,
and riots spread in the townships of South
Africa.
Students boycotted the schools.
On August 4, about ten
thousand adults joined 12,000 students
in the first major political
strike in South Africa since 1961.
Many black schoolchildren were
shot by police, and 700 people
had been killed by October 1977;
2,430 students were being detained.
Students organized against
proposed rent increases in Soweto,
and the Government's control
was replaced by the more democratic Committee of Ten.
Biko recommended
smaller demonstrations but more of them
so that the police would
not kill so many people.
He believed that boycotts were helpful
and pointed to the sports policies
adopted by most countries toward
South Africa's apartheid.
After being arrested in August 1976, Biko was detained for
101 days.
A few days after his release he sent a memo to and met
with US Senator Dick Clark
on American policy toward Azania, which
is what he called South Africa.
The memo urged President Jimmy
Carter to reverse US policies and implied that
he could use trade
boycotts, an arms embargo, and withdrawal of investments
even
though Biko was prohibited for calling for such things.
Biko suggested
that the United States could demand the release of political prisoners
and stop tolerating bantustan leaders such as
Gatcha Buthelezi,
Matanzima, and Lucas Mangope.
Biko rejected the division into
Zulus, Xhosas, and Pedis but wanted to unite
the Africans of Azania
against their common enemy.
Biko was arrested and released again
in March and July 1977;
he was never accused of any violence,
and he was never convicted of a crime.
Biko's last arrest was on August 18, 1977 when his car was
stopped
at a roadblock outside of King William's Town.
He was
kept naked and manacled in the Port Elizabeth jail for the next
twenty days.
When a magistrate visited him on September 1, he
complained
that he had not been allowed to wash.
On September
6 the police interrogated Biko from 10:30 a.m. until 6 p.m.
All
night he was left handcuffed with a leg chained to the wall.
The
next morning at 7 a.m. he was released from the handcuffs and
manacle
but was given several blows to the head, apparently causing
the brain damage
that led to his death six days later.
After being
examined by doctors and spending time in the prison hospital,
on September 11 he was put into a land rover naked and manacled
and driven
740 miles to Pretoria, where he was left on the floor
of a cell and died after several hours.
Pathologists reported
that the cause of death
was the three brain lesions from blows
to the head.
Biko's funeral was attended by 15,000 people despite
police efforts that kept thousands more away.
Bishop Desmond Tutu
spoke about how injustice and oppression
can dehumanize both victims
and perpetrators.
Biko was the 46th detainee to die while being interrogated
by South African police
since the detention law of 1963, but no
one was ever charged for these homicides.
Donald Woods, editor
of the Daily Dispatch, became
a close friend of Biko and
wrote a personal biography.
He praised Biko for his wisdom, humor,
compassion, understanding,
brilliancy of intellect, unselfishness,
modesty, and courage.
He noted how Biko would sit in the back
during meetings and
after others had spoken would offer incisive
suggestions that others would accept.
Woods tried to persuade
South African authorities that Biko was a man of peace
who was
standing up for his principles and could be a moderating influence
in bringing about the reconciliation needed.
Instead of heeding
this advice, the government began investigating Woods
and banned
him on October 19, 1977.
He wrote his book about Biko secretly
and then escaped from South African with his family.
Steve Biko saw the Black Consciousness movement as a way to
emancipate
the entire continent of Africa by making whites realize
they are not superior
but human, and blacks that they are not inferior
but also human.
When a reporter noted that most blacks are really
brown,
Biko replied that whites are actually pink.
Biko was committed
to using only nonviolent methods.
The Black Peoples' Convention
(BPC) operated within the law.
Thus it was not a communist organization
and had no military wing.
In April 1982 Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Raymond Mhlaba,
and Andrew Mlangeni
were transferred from Robben Island to Pollsmoor
prison in a suburb of Cape Town.
In August the ANC activist Ruth
First was murdered by a letter bomb.
In December the ANC's MK
used bombs to damage the unfinished
Koeberg nuclear power plant
and other military targets of the apartheid regime.
That month
the South African army killed 42 people
while attacking the ANC
outpost in Maseru, Lesotho.
In May 1983 MK used its first car
bomb
against a military intelligence officer in Pretoria.
In November,
P. W. Botha's referendum to form chambers in Parliament for Indians
and Colored was passed by white voters; but they could be vetoed
by the
white portion of the Parliament, and eighty percent of
Indian and Colored voters
boycotted the election to these two
houses in 1984.
The colored priest Allan Boesak had called a meeting
that led to the forming
of the United Democratic Front (UDF) with
delegates from three hundred
civic associations, churches, unions,
student groups, and sports bodies.
They opposed the racially separate
chambers that excluded black Africans.
Mandela told visiting dignitaries that he wanted a non-racial
South Africa
without
segregation by homelands and with one-person-one-vote
for a nonracial Parliament.
He called the concessions that repealed
some apartheid laws such as
the Mixed Marriages Act and the Immorality
Act a "pinprick," warning that the ANC
could make governing
difficult even if it could not win a military victory.
Yet Mandela
indicated that he wanted the whites to continue to live
in South
Africa after they shared power with the Africans.
When Americans
asked Mandela why he did not stay with the nonviolence
of Martin
Luther King, he reminded
them that the United States had constitutional
guarantees to protect
equal rights; but South Africa was a police state based
on inequality
that used force against nonviolent protests.
He noted that even
Jesus used some force
to expel the moneychangers from the temple.
Violence increased in 1984, and in October a force of 7,000 police
and soldiers raided nearly 20,000 homes and arrested 350 people.
The UDF organized a massive stay-away-from-work-and-school day
on November 5
in the Transvaal, and 6,000 of the 800,000 strikers
lost their jobs.
By the end of the year 160 people had been killed,
and more than a thousand were detained.
On January 31, 1985 President
Botha announced in Parliament that he would
release Mandela if
he "unconditionally rejected violence as a political instrument."
Mandela rejected the offer and sent a message that was read by
his daughter Zindzi
to a cheering UDF rally at the Soweto stadium,
asking Botha to renounce violence,
dismantle apartheid, unban
the ANC, free political prisoners,
and guarantee free political
activity.
While Mandela was having a prostate operation,
he was
casually visited by Kobie Coetsee, the minister of justice.
Next
Mandela was transferred to a large three-room cell by himself.
He sent a letter to Coetsee suggesting talks.
Meanwhile demonstrations continued to be suppressed violently;
879 people were killed in 1985, and 1,298 in 1986.
Some blacks
had taken to "necklacing" those they considered traitors
by burning a car tire around their necks.
At a black funeral Bishop
Desmond Tutu saved a
suspected informer from being murdered by
a mob.
Tutu had been given the Nobel Peace Prize for 1984, and
in August 1985
he defied the ban to lead a funeral procession
in Daveyton,
pleading with the officers for pity and the dignity
of a burial.
Pope John Paul II criticized apartheid, and the US
House of Representatives
voted 380-48 for economic sanctions against
South Africa.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
was founded in December 1985.
At the beginning of 1986 Oliver Tambo promised that South Africa
would continue
to be ungovernable until apartheid was destroyed
and power was transferred.
Seven eminent persons from the British
Commonwealth conference visited Mandela,
who advised them to see
Tambo in Lusaka because he was the head of the movement.
Mandela
proposed that if the government withdrew its soldiers and police
from the townships, the ANC might suspend the armed struggle to
prepare for talks.
More than a hundred thousand blacks had been
arrested for pass violations
the previous year; but in April the
pass laws were repealed,
and those people were released.
However,
Botha ordered air raids on ANC bases in Botswana, Zambia,
and
Zimbabwe, and on June 12 he declared a state of emergency.
Mandela
contacted the head of the prisons and asked to see Coetsee again.
Mandela wrote to Tambo that he was negotiating only to set up
a meeting
between the ANC executive committee and the South African
government.
Mandela had meetings for months with government officials,
discussing such issues as giving up the armed struggle and socialism.
He explained that the ANC was only defending itself from violence
and that
they would prefer to use peaceful methods if the state
renounced violence.
He believed that the Freedom Charter called
for "African-style capitalism"
and that he had not changed
his mind.
He did not want to drive the whites into the sea
but
promised to respect the rights of the minority.
Mandela complained about dampness in his cell, and in 1988
he was taken to a hospital to be treated for tuberculosis.
In
December he was moved to a comfortable
warder's house and was
allowed a cook.
In January 1989 P. W. Botha suffered a stroke;
the next month he resigned
as head of the National party but continued
as state president.
By the beginning of 1989 more than 30,000
political activists
had been jailed in the last two and a half
years.
In February they went on a nationwide hunger strike,
and
most of those detained were released.
The UDF allied with the
COSATU to form the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM)
and began planning
civil disobedience to challenge apartheid.
F. W. de Klerk became
president of South Africa in August 1989
and in September he
allowed Tutu and Boesak to lead a big march in Cape Town.
In October
he released all the ANC leaders except Mandela,
and they were
not banned from speaking.
Early in 1990 the ANC secretary general Alfred Nzo admitted
that
they could no longer depend on Soviet support for a war against
Pretoria.
On February 2 de Klerk announced in Parliament the lifting
of the bans
against the ANC, the PAC, the Communist Party, and
31 other organizations.
Nelson Mandela was released at Cape Town
on February 11 to jubilant crowds.
At a press conference he expressed
his loyalty to the African National Congress (ANC).
Reflecting
on his 27 years in prison, he said that his anger toward whites
diminished while his hatred of the apartheid system increased.
He noticed that poverty and conditions had worsened in many ways.
At a Soweto stadium he asked students to return to school, pleaded
for less crime,
and said there could be no freedom without civility
and peace.
Rivalry between Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)
and the ANC
caused violence between Zulus, killing 230 people
in March.
Mandela asked them to end the war.
On March 26 the police
killed twelve demonstrators,
and Mandela suspended the talks with
de Klerk.
Mandela met with African leaders at Lusaka and toured
Africa.
He visited Robben Island to persuade 25 MK
prisoners to
accept the government's pardon.
Preliminary talks with the government began in May 1990, and
Joe Slovo
of the Communist Party and MK commander Joe Modise were
allowed to participate.
The state of emergency was lifted except
in Natal.
Mandela traveled abroad to promote continuation
of the
sanctions against apartheid South Africa.
He met with British
prime minister Margaret Thatcher,
and in New York city he was
cheered by a million people.
He addressed a joint session of the
United States Congress,
talked with President George H. W. Bush,
spoke before
Canada's Parliament and met with Prime Minister
Mulroney.
The death toll in South Africa from political violence
reached a high of 3,460 in 1990,
and in July about forty ANC members
were arrested.
Slovo suggested that the ANC suspend the armed
struggle
for the negotiations, and Mandela supported that.
On
August 6 the ANC and the government agreed on the Pretoria Minute.
Mandela learned of collusion between the Inkatha Party
and the
security forces that had caused many murders.
In December the
ANC held a conference in Johannesburg
with more than fifteen hundred
delegates.
Mandela met with Buthelezi to reduce the violence,
but neither
the Inkatha party nor the ANC members kept the accord.
The ANC
asked de Klerk to dismiss two ministers, ban the carrying
of weapons
in public, dismantle secret counterinsurgency units,
and investigate
misconduct by security forces;
when he refused, the ANC suspended
the talks in May 1991.
In July at their first annual conference
inside South Africa
in thirty years Mandela was elected ANC president.
Winnie Mandela had become an aggressive activist,
and she was
convicted of kidnapping and accessory to assault.
Nelson believed
she was innocent, but they separated the next year.
In December
1991 the government, the ANC, and other parties in South Africa
began the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA).
Observers
from the United Nations, the British Commonwealth,
the European
Community, and the Organization of African Unity also attended.
On the first day Mandela and the ANC agreed to let de Klerk speak
last;
but his negative criticism provoked a reply from Mandela
in which he stated
that they would not turn in their weapons until
they were
part of the government that was collecting them.
He
complained that the government had been financing covertly the
Inkatha violence.
While attending the world economic forum at Davos in February
1992 Mandela
renounced economic nationalization, though the ANC
still wanted to do some state planning.
De Klerk put his reform
process before the white voters on March 17,
and 69% approved
of the negotiations.
On April 10 the popular Chris Hani, who was
general secretary
of the Communist party, was shot dead near Johannesburg;
but an Afrikaner woman identified the assassin's car, and he was
captured.
To calm the rioting that killed seventy people in the
Cape and Natal,
Mandela made a crucial speech praising the white
woman's action.
Two weeks later Tambo died of a stroke.
The second CODESA began in May 1992,
but the white minority
was trying to hang on to a veto power.
The ANC planned "rolling
mass actions."
On June 17 an Inkatha raid killed 46 people
at Biopatong.
In July the United Nations Security Council
heard
arguments from Pik Botha and Mandela.
The UN passed a resolution
calling for those responsible
for the Biopatong massacre to be
held accountable,
and they sent Cyrus Vance as an envoy to encourage
the resumption of talks.
The ANC called a general strike, and
on August 3 and 4
more than four million people stayed home.
When
70,000 marched to Bisho's stadium on September 7,
troops killed
29 people and wounded more than two hundred.
Later that month
Mandela and de Klerk signed a Record of Understanding
as a basis
for the negotiations, agreeing on a single elected assembly
to
serve as a transitional legislature to adopt a new constitution.
Chief Buthelezi rejected it and withdrew from the negotiations.
De Klerk insisted on a two-thirds majority for deciding crucial
issues;
but Mandela held out for majority rule,
and on November
18 they agreed on an interim constitution.
The ANC executive committee decided to support the government's
demand
for proportional representation in the cabinet, and both
agreed on a five-year
government of national unity in February
1993.
The next month de Klerk announced that South Africa had
secretly manufactured
six atomic bombs; but they had joined the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1991,
and now the weapons
and their technology were dismantled.
The ANC was opposed to nuclear
weapons,
and Mandela repudiated all weapons of mass destruction.
The ANC favored making Africa a nuclear-free zone.
Thus South
Africa became the first nation to renounce
nuclear weapons after
having obtained them.
In June a forum with 26 parties, which included Inkatha, the
Pan African Congress,
and the Conservative party, set the first
one-person-one-vote
election in South Africa for April 27, 1994.
President Clinton awarded Mandela and de Klerk the Philadelphia
Liberty Medal
and promised generous aid after the election.
Mandela
and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1993.
Mandela donated the money from his prize to children's charities;
later he would give a third of his salary to similar charities.
In March 1994 Inkatha members tried to sabotage the election and
killed 53 people.
Ten days before the election Mandela and de
Klerk debated each other on television.
Mandela later admitted
that he asked twenty businessmen for at least
one million rands
each for his campaign, and only one did not comply.
The voting
was by party, and the ANC got 63%,
the National Party 20%, and
Inkatha 11%.
The assembly elected the president, and on May 10
Mandela
was inaugurated as president with de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki
as his deputies.
During the Government of National Unity (GNU),
President Mandela
had a cabinet that represented all the major parties,
and he handled
most issues in a non-partisan manner.
He appointed Winnie Mandela
minister of Arts;
but her diamond deals and large expenses led
to scandal,
and Nelson Mandela dismissed her from the government.
He appeared in court in March 1996 to ask her for a divorce.
During
the ANC conference at the end of 1994,
Mandela asked for fiscal
discipline to avoid waste and inefficiency.
Sometimes he let his
deputies Thabo Mbeki
or de Klerk preside at cabinet meetings,
but Mandela could take over whenever he wanted.
Buthelezi had
been appointed minister of Home Affairs,
but his relationship
with Mandela was still stormy.
Mandela wanted to abolish capital
punishment,
and the new court declared it unconstitutional.
The
court over-ruled two of Mandela's proclamations affecting elections
in the Western Cape, and he quickly accepted their judgment.
Joe
Slovo was minister of Housing, but he died.
Lack of experience
and education made it difficult to find many black managers.
Mandela
treated black and white civil servants
with special attention
and often won their support.
In May 1996 de Klerk announced that he and
his National party were withdrawing from the government.
He wanted the Inkatha party
to leave also, but Buthelezi stayed.
Mandela acted more as head
of state, and he let Thabo Mbeki preside over
most cabinet meetings
and take over more of the governmental administration.
In December
1997 Mandela gave up his presidency of the ANC,
and Mbeki was
elected without opposition.
Mandela spoke for four hours about
the problems of the government
in a wide-ranging and controversial
assessment.
By then the ANC's moderate economic policy was even
endorsed
by the trade unionists and communists.
Mandela was still
attracted to women and began to travel
and live with Graça
Machel, widow of Mozambique's former president.
They got along
very well and married on the day before his 80th birthday.
Two
thousand people were invited to the celebration, and some conservatives
criticized the extravagance and his pardoning of nine thousand
prisoners.
The ANC's Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) was
designed
to meet basic needs, improve human resources, strengthen
the economy,
democratize society, and reorganize the public sector.
They had ambitious goals and problems,
but some of the accomplishments
were remarkable.
By the year 2000 nearly five million people had
access to clean water
for the first time from 236 water projects
completed since 1994.
Five million people were also accommodated
by the 1,129,612 houses that were
given
government subsidies as
the government spent R40 billion on housing over six years.
Rural
homes with electricity increased from 12% to 42%.
By the end of
1998 about five hundred new health clinics
were serving an additional
five million people.
President Mandela immediately doubled the
annual HIV/Aids budget from
R21 million to R42 million, and by
1997 it was up to R80 million.
They increased the number of condoms
distributed
from five million in 1994 to 140 million in 1997.
More than ten thousand secondary school teachers had been trained
by 1998.
The economy had its challenges.
The price of gold was down;
labor became more expensive;
and capitalists avoided Africa to
invest in Southeast Asia.
In May 1998 speculators gambled with
the currency, and the rand lost
a quarter of its value against
the US dollar in two months.
Archbishop Tutu criticized the salary
increases for the members of Parliament
who were making thirty
times the average income, but he believed
that Mandela's leadership
saved the country from destruction.
Mandela reminded them that
corruption was a problem
that South Africa and the ANC had to
face.
Allan Boesak was charged with embezzlement,
and in 1999
he was convicted and sentenced to six years.
Although the number
of murders leveled off after 1994,
other serious crimes continued
to rise.
A quarter of the previously all-white police force quit;
874 policeman were murdered; and three hundred committed suicide.
Mandela accused the right-wing newspapers of giving crime
extra
publicity in order to discourage foreign investors.
The more conservative policy of Growth, Employment, and Redistribution
(GEAR)
was announced in 1996 and emphasized deficit reduction,
limited government,
tariff reduction, privatization, and linking
productivity to wages.
GEAR was aimed at helping the economy grow
quickly
in order to provide jobs for those seeking work.
Mandela became a diplomatic peacemaker and had come
to rely
on brains more than blood for thinking.
The apartheid regime had
developed its own arms industry to counteract the sanctions,
and
by 1989 the Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor)
employed
130,000 people and gave work to a thousand subcontractors.
In
the 1990s South Africa's defense spending decreased by more than
fifty percent.
In 1993 de Klerk had the moral restraint not to
sell arms to Rwanda
and Burundi for R45 million because of their
civil wars.
In 1994 the sanctions against South Africa's arms
sales ended,
and Denel tried to promote arms manufacturing and
sales.
They were selling $40 million in weapons to Zaire that
were probably headed for Rwanda,
and in September 1994 the new
government discovered they were sending guns
to Yemen and appointed
a commission under Justice Cameron to investigate.
Three Armscor
executives were charged with fraud and resigned.
After receiving Cameron's report the government formed
the
National Commercial Arms Control Committee (NCACC).
Some wanted
to create jobs by increasing exports,
and Denel planned to expand
exports by 300% over five years.
The government discerned which
nations could buy arms based on their
human rights, adherence
to international law, and internal considerations.
In 1995 the
NCACC rejected a R2.1 billion arms deal with Turkey,
but chairman
Kadar Asmal lifted the ban two years later.
Arms became South
Africa's second largest exporting industry in 1997, a year
when
the exports were more than double the average of the previous
five years.
In July 1997 Mandela visited Indonesia and urged President
Suharto to grant
democratic rights to East Timor, and he also
agreed to supply him with weapons.
Mandela rationalized the sale
of arms to other countries for their national defense,
and in
1998 South Africa sold weapons (in decreasing order of magnitude)
to Algeria, United States, Thailand, Switzerland, Rwanda,
Peru,
Denmark, Colombia, Brazil, and Australia.
The South Africa National Defense Force (SANDF) combined the
previous army with the ANC's liberation movement and the homelands'
forces.
At first the Foreign Affairs department still had mostly
Afrikaners,
but in 1998 Mandela appointed Jackie Selebi director-general.
The cautious Alfred Nzo was foreign minister,
but Thabo Mbeki
took a more influential role.
In November 1995 at the Commonwealth
Summit in New Zealand,
President Mandela was using "quiet
diplomacy" in regard to Nigeria
until General Sani Abacha
had Ken Saro-Wiwa executed.
Mandela accused Abacha of judicial
murder and called for sanctions;
but he could not convince British
prime minister John Major,
and his appeal to the UN Security Council
also failed.
Nigeria had valuable oil but was eventually suspended
from the Commonwealth until Abacha died in 1998.
In the region
Mandela worked with the eleven other nations
of the Southern African
Development Community (SADC).
In 1998 Mandela and Mbeki were traveling
when acting president Buthelezi
approved a force of 600 South
African peacekeepers to intervene in Lesotho.
Mandela approved
the policy, and his relations with Buthelezi improved.
Taiwan had contributed $10 million to the ANC in 1993 for their
election campaign,
and later they donated one billion rands for
South Africa's RDP;
in November 1996 Mandela recognized the
People's Republic of China (PRC).
Early in 1997 the United States
objected to South Africaselling Syria tanks
for $650 million,
and senators threatened to cut off aid to South Africa;
Mandela
resented the interference and also met
with Libya's Qaddafi and
Cuba's Fidel Castro.
When Qaddafi showed him how American bombers
had destroyed his
presidential palace, Mandela criticized nations
that try to be police for the world.
Mandela argued that those
suspected of bombing the Lockerbie flight should be tried
in a
neutral country because the same country should not be prosecutor
and judge.
In March 1999 Mandela was able to persuade Qadaffi
to turn over
the two suspects in exchange for the lifting of UN
sanctions against Libya.
Mandela supported the effort to ban landmines.
In February
1997 South Africa imposed a complete ban on anti-personnel mines,
and in May they promoted the Ottawa process
by hosting an OAU
conference on banning landmines.
Jackie Selebi became chairman
of the negotiations for the
Landmine Treaty that began at Oslo
in September.
By December 1997 the Ottawa Convention had been
signed by 120 nations,
though the United States, China, and Russia refused.
Mandela spoke to the United Nations General Assembly on September
21, 1998.
He expressed his concern for the dire poverty in the
world and the many challenges
to fulfilling the promises of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
He noted that South Africa
was working with Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico,
New Zealand,
Slovenia, and Sweden to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the
world.
Mandela did not run for re-election in 1999.
In his last annual
speech to Parliament he reflected on how equality, the right to
vote,
and freedom of speech had come to be taken for granted in
a nation
where most people did not have those rights before 1994.
In a farewell speech on March 29 Mandela was naturally proud of
how they had
achieved democracy and revolution by a "profoundly
legal path."
In June 1999 the ANC received 66% of the votes,
and Thabo Mbeki was elected president.
In the 2004 elections the
National Party received less than
two percent of the vote and
dissolved itself the next year.
The interim Constitution for South Africa ended with a section
called
"National Unity and Reconciliation," which began
as follows:
This Constitution provides a historic bridge
between the past of a deeply divided society
characterised by strife, conflict, untold suffering and injustice,
and a future founded on the recognition of human rights,
democracy and peaceful co-existence
and development opportunities for all South Africans,
irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex.
The pursuit of national unity,
the well being of all South African citizens and peace
require reconciliation between the people of South Africa
and the reconstruction of society.
The adoption of this Constitution
lays the secure foundation for the people of South Africa
to transcend the divisions and strife of the past,
which generated gross violations of human rights,
the transgression of humanitarian principles in violent conflicts
and a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt and revenge.
These can now be addressed on the basis
that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance,
a need for reparation but not for retaliation,
a need for ubuntu (humanity) but not for victimisation
In order to advance such reconciliation and reconstruction,
amnesty shall be granted in respect of acts, omissions and offenses
associated with political objectives
and committed in the course of the conflicts of the past.9
The ANC had already appointed commissions in 1991 and 1993
to investigate
abuses of human rights in ANC detention camps,
and the executive committee
publicly apologized for its collective
responsibility.
Those in the ANC believed that most of the violations
were by the apartheid regime,
and law professor Kadar Asmal suggested
a truth commission.
Alex Boraine of Justice in Transition studied
prior truth commissions
and lobbied with thirty South African
organizations.
De Klerk wanted amnesty for those in the apartheid
regime,
but the ANC would not let them grant amnesty to themselves.
Jose Zalaquett had served on the Chilean National Commission
for
Truth and Reconciliation, and he recommended that amnesty should
be
based on
acknowledgements of truth so that people will know
for what one is being pardoned.
He also suggested that democratic
approval of the amnesty process enables
the nation
to forgive,
and the purposes of amnesty should included reparations and prevention.
After three hundred hours of debate, the new Parliament of
South Africa
passed the National Unity and Reconciliation Act.
Individuals could apply for amnesty for their politically motivated
acts,
but the pardon depended on their full disclosure.
Unlike
many of the previous truth commissions, in South Africa detailed
accounts
from perpetrators and institutions would make public
much information
so that it would be difficult in the future for
people to deny what had happened.
Those not applying for amnesty
or not qualifying could still be prosecuted.
Confessions before
the commission could not be used as evidence in court cases,
but
they might help prosecuting attorneys do their own investigations.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) would give amnesty
to perpetrators who confessed what they did and could show that
their motives were political for actions between 1960 and December
6, 1993.
The TRC soon got this deadline extended to May 10, 1994.
The commissioners were to direct the work of the three committees
on human rights violations, on reparations and rehabilitation,
and on amnesty, plus the investigation unit.
The President was
to select the commissioners,
and Mandela invited the public
to
make suggestions and set up
a panel that reduced three hundred
names to 25 nominations.
From these on December 15, 1995 Mandela
chose fifteen and
appointed Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu as
chairman
with the Methodist leader Boraine as his deputy.
Later
two more commissioners were added
to make the commission more
representative.
Mandela stated that he did not approve all fifteen
but selected them for the sake of national unity.
The commission
had ten men and seven women;
they were seven blacks, six whites, two colored, and two Indians.
The National Party was successful
in
making the Amnesty Committee independent.
The hearings on human rights violations were held in civic
centers,
town halls, and churches throughout South Africa.
A candle
was lit to remember the victims, and hearings
often began with
prayer and the singing of hymns.
The South African Broadcasting
Corporation (SABC) covered TRC hearings
on radio daily and on
television in a weekly report.
When ANC leaders said they would
not apply for amnesty because their fight
against the apartheid
regime was a "just war," Tutu threatened to resign from
the TRC.
However, the ANC decided to encourage its members
to
apply for amnesty, and Tutu remained as chairman.
Early in the
process 37 ANC leaders (including Thabo Mbeki) were given a
general
amnesty based on their assuming collective responsibility for
any
human rights violations committed by ANC members in the anti-apartheid
struggle.
This was criticized for going against the requirement
of full disclosure,
and the TRC challenged the Amnesty Committee
in court
before the National party could do so.
In March 1999
the Amnesty Committee cancelled its amnesty
of the 37 ANC leaders
as an application outside their scope.
They also denied amnesty
to the murderers of Chris Hani and Steve Biko.
In August 1995 Eugene de Kock, a hit-squad commander for the
South African Police (SAP) was convicted on 89 charges
and was
sentenced to life imprisonment, plus 212 years.
Several of the
SAP officers and former cabinet officials he implicated,
such
as General Johan van der Merwe, applied for amnesty.
The Defense
minister General Magnus Malan had a controversial trial for
ordering
the murder of thirteen people in KwaMakutha in 1987, but he was
acquitted.
Based on these cases, those in the police were more
in danger than those in the army.
The SANDF delayed investigations
by resisting requests from the TRC
research department for information
from the military archives.
Merwe's testimony led to Adriaan Vlok,
the former minister of law and order,
and he implicated former
president P. W. Botha, who was head of the notorious
State Security
Council (SSC) and defied a subpoena to testify before the Commission.
After the National Party left the government of national unity,
they stopped
cooperating with the TRC and often tried to block
its work in court.
Other legal challenges against the amnesty
process were brought by the
Azanian People's Organization (AZAPO)
and by the
relatives of Steve Biko and other murdered activists.
Before the report was published, the TRC notified those
who
were going to be receiving derogatory findings.
De Klerk used
this warning to get the findings on him blacked out of the report.
The ANC objected to its liberation struggle being criminalized
by the TRC.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission published
its five-volume report in October 1998.
Mandela approved of the
TRC and declined to grant a general amnesty.
Buthelezi and the
IFP had boycotted the TRC altogether, and controversy surrounded
the question of whether prosecutions of them would cause more
harm than good.
Eventually they settled out of court, and the
TRC amended many passages on Inkatha
from the report that originally
had blamed them for 30% of all the violations.
The TRC was criticized
by many for providing more amnesty than reparations.
The reparations
cases were divided into two classes - the victims of gross
human
rights violations and those who suffered generally from the apartheid
system.
As of November 2001 the Reparations and Rehabilitation
Committee processed
17,016 applications, and the total amount
paid for reparations was R50 million;
but the final TRC report
of March 2003
indicated that reparations were still being delayed.
Out of nearly 22,000 applications only ten percent testified orally
in public.
About 850 human rights violators received amnesty.
For many the process of reconciliation came to be symbolized
by chairman Desmond Tutu.
He was born on October 7, 1931 to Xhosa
and Tswana parents.
His father was a schoolmaster; because they
were unable
to afford a medical school, Desmond became a teacher
as well.
After three years of teaching, he rebelled against the
inferior Bantu education system and decided to study religion.
Tutu was ordained an Anglican priest in 1961.
He earned a bachelor's
and a master's degree from King's College
in London and then taught
theology in South Africa.
Returning to England, he was an assistant
director
of the World Council of Churches from 1972 to 1975.
After
speaking at the funeral of Steve Biko, as the new bishop of Lesotho,
Tutu took a more active political role in the struggle to overthrow
the apartheid regime.
He was appointed general secretary of the
South African Council of Churches in 1978,
but the next year the
Government revoked his passport because of his criticism.
Tutu
emerged as one of the leaders of the United Democratic Front (UDF).
His four main political objectives were equal civil rights for
all,
abolishing the passport laws, better public education,
and
an end to the deporting of Africans to the "homelands."
In 1984 he was given the Nobel Peace Prize as a representative
of the black South Africans' nonviolent struggle for brotherhood
and democracy.
In 1986 Tutu was elected archbishop of Capetown.
He promoted the international economic sanctions against South
Africa's apartheid regime;
he castigated President Reagan for
calling them a "historic act of folly,"
but in October
the US Congress enacted mandatory sanctions against South Africa.
During the 1989 elections Tutu led a protest march
that police
using whips chased off a whites-only beach.
When Tutu became chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
he hoped that by opening the wounds to cleanse them the commission
could stop the festering so that past evils would no longer haunt
them.
He noted that reconciliation depends on forgiveness,
which
must be based on acknowledging what was done wrong.
Instead of
the retribution of punishment, Tutu recommended
restorative justice
that corrects imbalances and heals broken relationships.
He had
compassion even for those who had imposed the apartheid system
because no one was diminished more by it than the violators of
human rights.
He was happy to see people repenting because it
restored not only their own decency
but also helped to revive
the integrity of the whole nation.
Whites who had hated him during
the struggle against apartheid
were won over by his kindness.
He forgave white perpetrators and had so much empathy for white
victims
that many blacks began to resent him.
He knew that the
therapeutic process of reconciliation would take a long time.
Tutu applied the traditional Xhosa concept of ubuntu (humanity)
in his Christian theology.
He saw African communitarian values
as "delicate networks of interdependence."
Tutu described
those who have ubuntu.
They are generous, hospitable, friendly, caring, and compassionate.
They share what they have.
It also means my humanity is caught up,
is inextricably bound up, in theirs.
We belong to a bundle of life.
We say, “A person is a person through other people.”10
Tutu advocated terminating South Africa's weapons industry,
and he criticized President Thabo Mbeki for stifling political
debate.
He condemned Israel's treatment of Palestinians as a form
of apartheid,
and he favored the West Papuans' movement for independence
from Indonesia.
He denounced the dictatorial Robert Mugabe of
Zimbabwe
and the timidity of South Africa's quiet diplomacy.
Tutu
has stood up for the rights of homosexuals in the Anglican Church
because he believes their contributions are valuable.
He protested
the US invasion of Iraq and the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo
Bay,
and he has called for restorative justice in Iraq.
Tutu spoke
out against Pope Benedict XVI's policy against condoms
that affects
the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
1. Quoted in Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela,
p. 151-152.
2. Ibid., p. 152.
3. Ibid., p. 191.
4. Ibid., p. 238.
5. Ibid., p. 322.
6. I Write What I Like by Steve Biko, p. 49.
7. Quoted in Millard Arnold's introduction to Black Consciousness
in South Africa
by Steve Biko, p. xxvii.
8. Black Consciousness in South Africa by Steve Biko, p.
40.
9. Quoted in Commissioning the Past, p. 222.
10. No Future without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu, p. 34.
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