In the twentieth century, and especially since the end of the war, the processes which gave birth to the nation-states of Europe have been repeated all over the world. We have seen the awakening of national consciousness in peoples who have for centuries lived in dependence on some other power.
Fifteen years ago this movement spread through Asia. Many countries there, of different races and civilizations, pressed their claim to an independent national life. Today the same thing is happening in Africa. The most striking of all the impressions I’ve formed since I left London a month ago is of the strength of this African national consciousness. In different places it may take different forms, but it is happening everywhere.
The wind of change is blowing through the continent.
Whether we like it or not this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact. Our national policies must take account of it.
There was a more palatable message for Macmillan’s hosts in his insistence that the Western powers, including South Africa, unite against the rising threat of communism. But the sting was in the tail, when he said, “As a member of the Commonwealth it is our earnest desire to give South Africa our support and encouragement, but I hope you won’t mind my saying, frankly, that there are some aspects of your policies which make it impossible to do this without being false to our deep convictions about the political destinies of free men, to which, in our own territories, we are trying to give effect.”
The speech was said to have left Dr. Verwoerd and others in his government seething with anger. While it was an inspiring message for Mandela and the ANC, it also created within the liberation movement a false, misguided optimism that the apartheid regime would soon fall. If that was the hope behind the message of Macmillan’s speech, the effect was tragically the opposite.
The Union decided it did not want to remain in the Commonwealth and began an independence movement of its own, calling a national referendum on becoming a republic. Naturally, the black, Indian and colored population was excluded from the vote, which was overwhelmingly in favor of cutting the cord with the mother country. The date set for becoming a republic was May 1961.
The Sharpeville incident took place within a few weeks of Macmillan’s speech, and, in response, the ANC scheduled an All-In Conference in Pietermaritzburg for March 1961, at which the plan was to call for a national convention, with no exclusions of any races this time, to discuss and plan a new non-racial constitution. Mandela had been banned for five years from public speaking but the order was about to expire and he could, briefly, legally speak at the conference.
The ANC had decided to reconstitute itself as a secret organization. At a committee meeting that he attended in Johannesburg the night before he left for the conference, it was decided that Mandela should become the new underground figurehead, to evade any attempts to impose new banning orders and to be free to organize the national convention. Surprise appearances, like his speech at the Pietermaritzburg conference, would maximize the impact of publicity. Mandela would not return home from the conference.
In a very real sense, the ANC wanted a martyr, and the fall guy was Mandela. Among those at the committee meeting was Mandela’s closest colleague, Walter Sisulu, who said later, “When we decided that he should go underground I knew that he was stepping into a position of leadership… we had got the leadership outside, but we must have a leader in jail.”
Everyone seemed to understand and accept that Mandela’s freedom was now finite, that he was bound to end up in jail, either on conviction at the Treason Trial, or later. That, of course, was not a decision in which Mandela’s family had participated or had any say.
He said, later, “This would be a hazardous life and I would be apart from my family, but when a man is denied the right to lead the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.”
According to Mandela in his memoir, he went to say goodbye to the children from his first marriage on the afternoon before he left for the conference. His eldest son, Thembi, was by then in school in the eastern Cape, but his son Makgatho and his daughter Makaziwe were both still living with their mother Evelyn at the home of her brother Samuel Mase in Orlando East. He described taking the two of them out on the veld, talking, walking and playing, and finally saying goodbye, not knowing when he would see them again. “The children of a freedom fighter also learn not to ask their father too many questions, and I could see in their eyes that they understood that something serious was occurring.”
Behind the scenes of the liberation movement there were ongoing tensions, notably between the PAC Africanists, who wanted no co-operation with white activists, and Mandela and the ANC, who were committed to the Congress Alliance of black, Indian, colored and white organizations. The PAC were initially scheduled to be a part of the Pietermaritzburg conference but then withdrew, along with the white liberals and a church group that cited ANC domination as the problem.
As Drum magazine reported, the odds were all against success,
and yet the outcome was a triumph, an indication of a new spirit of resolve which was emerging among the African people. 1400 delegates from all over the Union got to Maritzburg and many of them slept out in the veld because there was no other place for them to stay. They came by train, by car, by food, by bicycle. They came carrying bundles of food which they shared out as if on a family picnic. Could the [ruling] National Party have achieved this in the face of a banning order, with few cars and very little money to spend?
Mandela came to the microphone on Saturday night, impeccably turned out as ever in a well-cut houndstooth three-piece suit. He was sporting a new, neatly clipped revolutionist’s beard. It was his first free speech in public since his original banning order in 1952. Back then he had been one among the many young leaders of the ANC, but in recent months his status had grown significantly and was still rising. Now his appearance was met with “thunderous applause,” much punching of the air and long call-and-response cries of Amandla! Ngawethu! He was reported to cut a heroic figure as his “familiar boom” filled the hall. Drum’s reporter heard a delegate say it was like a state of the nation address by an American president.
Mandela applauded the ANC as the “sword and shield of the African people.” Now that it had been suppressed they had two alternatives: either to accept discrimination and humiliation, or to stand firm for their rights. They could remain disunited in the face of the government’s arrogance, or they could stand united to ensure that the government’s discriminatory legislation did not work.
“Africans,” said Mandela, “must feel, act and speak in one voice.”
His speech over, Mandela seemed to vanish, as suddenly and unexpectedly as he had appeared. In those brief moments could be found the origins of the romantic legend that would envelop him in the coming months as he remained hidden—while emerging as the ANC’s natural figurehead.
The conference appointed him to lead the organizing council for the proposed three-day strike in May 1961, timed to coincide with the declaration of the Republic of South Africa. Mandela wrote a letter to Prime Minister Verwoerd threatening action if the government failed to call a convention of all races to draft a new constitution. Then he returned for the final days of the Treason Trial in Pretoria, which came to an abrupt end in the middle of that same week, with a complete acquittal for the defendants. Mandela now disappeared from public view.
In his memoir Mandela gave an eloquent summary of the outlaw life, describing it as not unlike the shadow world inhabited by any black man under apartheid, dodging between “legality and illegality, openness and concealment.” He became a creature of the night, he said, keeping to his hideout during the day and emerging only in darkness. The secrecy that surrounded his underground life was not merely to avoid arrest, though that of course was part of it. The purpose was also to enhance the myth as well as to protect those who had helped him from being sent to jail. One Indian doctor in Port Elizabeth was apparently
imprisoned for two years, merely for hosting a meeting between Mandela and fellow African activists Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba.
The trick was to be invisible—not easy for a man who is blessed with a commanding physique and a regal air. He learned to slump his frame and to speak more gently and with less assurance. He became more passive, less obtrusive, and never asked for anything, but waited—like a good African “boy”—to be told what to do. He abandoned the elegant suits and wore working clothes, overalls and chauffeur’s coats.
Mandela went to a safe house in Johannesburg briefly at the end of the Treason Trial and then began a small tour of the western Cape and Natal, taking the opportunity of disguise to gauge the mood among ordinary people—Muslims in the Cape, sugar workers in Natal and factory workers in Port Elizabeth.
He had secret meetings with leading journalists to promote the strike cause and called others from public payphones, using “tickeys”—threepence pieces. It was a strategy that, along with energetic leafleting by supporters, was intended to widen the impact of the strike—but of course the Mandela myth was also being promoted too. Soon he was becoming known as the Black Pimpernel, which he saw as a “somewhat derogatory” reference to the fictional hero of the French Revolution, the Scarlet Pimpernel, created by Baroness Orczy.
For a long time, the strategy seemed to work, though the effect of the stay at home, made necessary when the government ignored Mandela’s letter, was less impressive. The South African Sunday Express reported in May 1961 that the leader behind “the proposed May demonstrations” had called the newspaper from a public telephone box and told its reporter he did not think he would be arrested before the stay at home began: “So far we have been able to anticipate every move the police have made. I have so much work that I don’t even think about arrest. We emphatically deny reports that violence will take place or that the three-day stay-away strike will be extended.”
In fact, at an earlier meeting in Durban, Mandela had argued against more militant comrades who wanted to transform the stay at home into a full-blown strike with pickets and demonstrations. A stay at home was an essentially passive device that had been in use since the early 1950s as part of the non-violent strategy of campaigning in the spirit of Gandhi. Some felt the time had come for a more aggressive response, short of actual violence. Mandela argued—perhaps a purposeful criticism of his PAC rivals—that the mass demonstration at Sharpeville had allowed the enemy to shoot down their people. The ANC and its allies had the confidence of the people because it was not reckless with their lives.
Mandela had so much contact with such a wide range of people while he was underground that it seems remarkable he was not betrayed and caught sooner. Not everyone had the keen sense of security exhibited by comrade Wolfie Kodesh. Fatima Meer remembered Mandela arriving at her home in Durban early one morning after a long journey in those early weeks. As she wryly put it, this “underground” business was a new concept and had only one member.
Later, while Mandela was in the bathroom, the Meers’ phone rang. “Has Nelson arrived?”
Fatima was shocked—it was highly likely the phone was bugged. “What Nelson? No such person has arrived here.”
“We dropped him at your house a few hours ago,” the caller insisted—it was an Indian comrade well known to Fatima.
“No one has come here,” said Fatima and put the phone down.
Mandela swore under his breath when she told him and said, “Has he never heard of such a thing as tapped telephones?” He briefly worried, wondering whether he should move on, but was tired and decided to stay put for a few days, having yet more meetings, including one with the writer Alan Paton, who was active in the Liberal Party.
Mandela had made the long journey from Cape Town, where he had spoken to an assembly of African church ministers from the townships. He had been much taken by the opening prayer, which thanked the Lord for His bounty and goodness while taking the liberty of reminding Him that some of His flock were more downtrodden than others and it sometimes seemed as if He was not paying attention. If He did not take the initiative in leading the black man to salvation, the black man would have to take matters into his own hands.
There had also been a meeting with SACPO—the South African Colored People’s Organisation—when he had addressed a businessman’s fears that a black African government would oppress “colored” people just as much as the whites had done. It is extraordinary that the realistic prospect of a black government was being discussed in mid-1961, some thirty-three years ahead of its time. No doubt that was a tribute to the African independence movement and the Macmillan speech, but it was also a reflection on Mandela’s own growing credibility as a potential future leader. Mandela had reassured the colored businessman of the ANC’s commitment to non-racial policies and to equality for all, as expressed in the Freedom Charter of 1955.
Mandela began using more militant turns of phrase in his speeches. The future of non-violent tactics was open to question and very much in his thoughts. In his talks with ordinary people he had sensed their frustration and impatience that past tactics had not led to breakthroughs. He characterized the May stay at home as a war with the government, a government that was raiding leaders of the liberation movement, banning meetings, seizing printing presses, passing new laws for detention without trial and mobilizing police and troops.
By mid-May he was back in Johannesburg and was persuaded to give his first ever television interview to Brian Widlake, a reporter for ITN. The interview was arranged by Ruth First and took place—in secret of course—in the sitting room of the home of a white comrade, Julius Lewin, in one of the leafy, white suburbs of the city. Ahmed Kathrada was deputed to collect Widlake and deliver him to the interview. Kathrada got lost on the way and ended up taking a hopelessly roundabout route. When they finally arrived, Widlake congratulated Mandela on the security measures he was taking, not apparently realizing the circuitous journey was unplanned.
The interview betrayed Mandela’s inexperience in front of a camera. He was stiff and awkward and his answers did not always have clarity. But the overall message was plain enough: Mandela and his colleagues were determined to secure a vote for the African people.
A week later, on the eve of the strike, Mandela had a near-miss as he drove into a police roadblock, heading to a meeting of ANC leaders in Orlando. He was dressed as a chauffeur and sat calmly while an officer briefly searched the car. When asked for his pass, he said he had left it at home but gave a made-up pass number and was waved through.
Other leaders also went into hiding to avoid arrest during the strike. Amina Cachalia remembered Mandela being with her husband, Yusuf, at her sister’s home in an Indian neighborhood. They sat playing snakes and ladders, ludo and cards, to pass the time. Mandela helped create a small garden in her sister’s backyard for her young children.
The first day of the strike began with every appearance of success but, as the hours went on, it became apparent that the number of people staying at home was not as high as hoped. “Most go to work: all quiet” was one newspaper headline. The next day, with an even poorer turnout, Mandela announced that the strike had been called off. The government had done its best to suppress it, with a heavy police presence on the streets, while the PAC and the liberals had also played some part in undermining the ANC’s plans. But as one Indian comrade, Mosie Moolla, later said, the strike had fizzled out because you can’t keep calling people out on political issues. What they are really interested in is putting food on their table.
Bob Hepple, the young white advocate who was also a trade union activist, remembered discussing the failure with Mandela, who had put a brave face on it. Hepple did not believe the issue—South Africa becoming a republic—had really touched the workers’ lives. They might take action on bread-and-butter issues that affected them but this was just kind of, oh, well…
Mandela gave another round of press interviews. The journalist Mary Benson remembered the “excitingly co
nspiratorial” feeling as she and two male reporters were driven by Ruth First to an apartment block in the less prosperous white suburb of Yeoville. There they were ushered into Mandela’s presence in a “sparsely furnished room dimmed by drawn yellow curtains with a single electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling.” It was around this time that Mandela went to stay with Wolfie Kodesh at his secret flat in Yeoville-Berea so this might well have been his apartment, which was certainly under-decorated and had minimal furniture.
Benson said Mandela, in a striped sports shirt and gray trousers, was far from conspiratorial and seemed very relaxed, his eyes closing to slits “as laughter reverberated through his huge frame.” He tried to spin the strike as a success, given the government’s efforts to thwart them. One of the journalists—they were all white—spoke of the moderation of the Africans and was firmly put right: “Moderation is not the appropriate word! Our feeling against imperialism is intense. I detest it!”
But weren’t his supporters worried about co-operating with whites? (This was a question that haunted him.) “Once the average African is convinced that this co-operation is genuine and that whites support his claims and aspirations, he gives full support to this policy.” He gave some examples such as the priest activists Michael Scott and Trevor Huddleston. “Unfortunately, other countries in Africa misunderstand this co-operation. But I think this will soon be cleared up.”
It was time to go, as Benson relates, but at the door Mandela turned to face them and his face was suddenly somber. “If the government reaction is to crush by naked force our non-violent demonstrations, we will have to seriously reconsider our tactics. In my mind we are closing a chapter of a non-violent policy.”
The beginnings of violence? There had not yet been any discussion about this within the ANC and Mandela would later be reprimanded for these comments spoken out of turn. But this was Mandela’s initiative. He was ready to start the armed struggle.
Young Mandela Page 24