NELSON MANDELA
Jul 29th, 2008 by admin
IF a leader could surrender his life for the interests of his people, he deserves to be honoured. If a leader could forego the comfort of his home, family and of friends or acquaintances to suffer humiliation in the land of his birth, for the freedom of his race, his name must be written in gold. The former South African President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, also a Nobel Laureate, was born on July 18, 1918. That the month of July has not ended, this write-up may be considered to be still timely.
Nelson is a South African lawyer, politician and a statesman. He practised law in Johannesburg and became a leading member of the African National Congress (ANC) which was formed in 1912 in South Africa to fight against racial discrimination and extend the franchise to native black Africans. The phrasal expression “political freedom” may not be fully understood. Some may think that Mandela and the ANC were fighting for political independence from a colonial power. This was not so. What the blacks were actually struggling to achieve was Black Majority Rule.
In reality, South Africa (consisting of Cape of Good Hope; Natal, the Transvall and the Orange Free State) obtained political independence under the Act of Union of 1909, which came into force in 1910. Therefore, there is difference between the agitation for independence and the struggle for black majority rule for which Nelson was the arrow-head. Indeed, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were the foundation members of the Commonwealth, apart from Britain.
What was the background to Nelson’s and the ANC’s struggle? The reader may be interested to know. Right from the outset, the whites had the superiority of power. The government introduced the policy of apartheid, which meant separate development. Coined by the South African Bureau for Racial Affairs in the late 1930s, the policy was brought about by the then ruling Afrikaner National Party in 1948. The Bantu were to have no part in the white man’s life, but to form separate communities under different law, regulations, public services, all defined by the white man to keep the Blacks in an inferior condition. The Bantu race (the Blacks) were in great majority under the white minority – fourteen million black population to three million whites. The situation in the apartheid (separatist) country was dangerously explosive between backward African majority and a white minority (of British and Dutch origins) who then held almost all political and economic power. Africans constituted the Republic’s labour force.
Such dire state of affairs could inevitably trigger off countervailing responses. And indeed so it did. Head-on-clashes and serious disturbances eventually took place. That of Sharpeville in 1960 was the worst. South Africa became a pariah state and was condemned by both Commonwealth and world opinion for its racial policies. On May 31, 1961, it became a Republic and left the Commonwealth.
Before then Nelson Mandela was arrested and tried for treason, a lengthy judicial process which lasted from 1956 to 1961. Although acquitted, he was retried in 1963, found guilty of sabotage and plotting to overthrow the government, and was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island. His former wife, Winnie, became prominent as a spokesperson for the ANC for which she was placed under house arrest on several occasions.
International pressure for the release of Nelson Mandela mounted. That brought about the easing of restrictions. In 1990, Mandela was eventually released after 27 years. Since then, he continued his efforts to see to the dismantling of the apartheid system and the introduction of majority rule in the Republic by dialogue with the authorities and government leaders from all over the world. Oliver Tambo, another ANC leader, was allowed to return to South Africa from exile at the end of 1990 to attend an official meeting of the Congress, the first that was permitted in 30 years by the government. In an interview in 1970, Oliver Tambo remarked: “Nationalists in the diaspora and in incarcerations will survive apartheid, to breathe the air of freedom Mandela won’t die in the prison”.
Oliver Tambo’s predictions are fulfilled. Nelson Mandela did not die in the prison, and today, like the old mythological Phoenix, he has emerged from the ashes of deprivation and confinement to be more popular and more victorious as he attains 90 years of age. What lessons can the other African leaders draw from Nelson Mandela’s political life?
He is a touchstone of many virtues – his unflagging patriotism, Spartan discipline, tolerance, in-depth altruism and rigid consistency – as exemplified in his decision to quit after his brief tenure as the first African President of South Africa. If all African leaders could emulate this quality, the continent would be better for it. Wherever he goes and under whatever circumstance, Nelson is often full of radiant smiles. In the years ahead, therefore, “May all that can please him and amaze, leave lasting smiles on his face.