After working at the law firm for a few months, Mandela’s career ambitions soared. He no longer aspired to be a civil servant; now he wanted to become a lawyer. This was no simple task in South Africa, even for whites. It required years of work as an “articled clerk” in a law firm and a law degree from a university. There were thousands of black teachers and civil servants in South Africa, but hardly any black lawyers. The 1946 census indicates that there were only thirteen articled clerks and eighteen African lawyers in the entire country.6
Mandela would become one of them. He completed his B.A. by correspondence, got a job as an articled clerk at the law firm, and enrolled as a part-time law student at the University of Witwatersrand, perhaps the top English-speaking university in South Africa. There he finally met many white people his own age.
His political education was overseen by Sisulu, Radebe, and a college acquaintance named Oliver Tambo. These men introduced him to the ANC. Founded in 1912, it was the oldest political organization in the country, committed to securing full citizenship rights for blacks. Mandela soon took a leadership role, helping to launch an ANC youth affiliate. He also searched for a political philosophy and was powerfully drawn to “Africanism,” which emphasized black self-determination and encouraged blacks to think of themselves as Africans first, not members of a particular tribe. For Mandela, the appeal of Africanism was that it was a nationalist movement that sought to restore pride in African culture.
I, too, had been susceptible to paternalistic British colonialism and the appeal of being perceived by whites as “cultured” and “progressive” and “civilized.” I was already on my way to being drawn into the black elite that Britain sought to create in Africa. … But it was an illusion. Like [others,] I came to see the antidote as militant African nationalism.
The year 1948, when Mandela was thirty, was a turning point for South Africa. The political landscape underwent a seismic shift in which apartheid became, for the first time, an explicit national policy. To understand the meaning of this shift, some historical background is important.
South Africa has two distinct white cultures, which have been in conflict since the early nineteenth century. The larger group, about 60 percent of the white population, speaks Afrikaans, a Dutch dia-lect. They descend from European settlers who arrived in the mid-seventeenth century as part of a colony established by the Dutch East India Company. By the late eighteenth century, this group no longer identified with Holland or even Europe. They thought of themselves as Afrikaners—white Africans (or Boers)—with their own special culture and a divine mandate to impose it in this part of Africa. For many, central to that culture was the belief that the white race was inherently superior to the black race and that the proper relationship between the two was that of master and servant.
The second group of whites (about 40 percent) is English-speaking, and most are of British origin. They came much later than the Boers. In 1815, Britain annexed the Cape Colony by military force. Soon British settlers, lured by fertile land (and later the discovery of gold and diamonds), were arriving in droves. Some were reform-minded and had more liberal racial attitudes than the Afrikaners. In 1830, well before the United States did so, Great Britain abolished slavery in the Cape Colony.
The abolishment of slavery sparked intense conflict between the two white cultures. A group of Afrikaners set out on what became known as the “Great Trek,” hoping to establish new farms and settlements far away from the Cape and its British colonists. But the British were reluctant to cede control of this rich territory. What followed was a long period of three-way wars among the British, the Boers, and the native black tribes, particularly the Zulus.
An uneasy “compromise” was reached in 1910 with the creation of the Union of South Africa—a new nation subject to the British Crown but which had its own parliament and considerable autonomy.7 The white minority, of course, controlled the government.8 Blacks made up two-thirds of the population but were not allowed to vote.9
Until 1948, the English-speakers dominated the Afrikaners socially and economically; political power was shared. That political balance radically changed when the National Party came to power.
The NP was a “nationalist” party composed of Afrikaners who were fed up with being second-class citizens to the British. The party was strongly anti-British and had sympathized with the Nazis in World War II. In racial matters, it was an extreme right-wing party committed to preserving white control of South Africa at all costs. Central to its platform was apartheid, or “apartness,” which required the consolidation and expansion of existing racist practices and laws into a unified national code. The party’s key slogans included the swart gevaar, or “black danger,” and Die kaffer op sy plek, which meant “the nigger in his place.”
The NP was so extreme, in fact, that few people expected it to win the 1948 elections. When it prevailed, many in South Africa were shocked.
Apartheid was not built overnight, but over the next ten years it became what Mandela describes as a “monolithic system that was diabolical in its detail, inescapable in its reach, and overwhelming in its power.” It classified everyone into racial groups: black, colored (mixed race, Indian, or Asian), and white. The groups were forcibly separated, physically as well as legally. Beginning in 1950, black and colored neighborhoods began to be moved away from white neighborhoods. Over the next thirty years, millions of nonwhites would be “resettled” to new designated areas.
Blacks, of course, fared horribly under this system. They were essentially stripped of national citizenship, divided into ten tribes, and assigned to tribal “homelands” where they were virtually quarantined. These homelands were small and economically unproductive; the best agricultural land was controlled by whites. This system made blacks akin to guest workers in white South Africa. They could not travel outside their homeland without their “pass books,” which identified them and had to be signed every month by their employers. Black men from rural areas, who were permitted to work in cities, were not allowed for many years even to have their wives and children accompany them. Some were housed in all-male dormitories, others in shantytowns.
This rigid system of “political partition” controlled every aspect of life. Marriages between persons of different races were prohibited. Restaurants, restrooms, and swimming pools were segregated. There were separate universities for blacks, coloreds, and Indians. To enforce these laws, the government built up a massive, heavily armed security force.
It took Mandela several years to figure out his own approach to this evil regime. The ANC leadership favored peaceful protest. But as Mandela rose through the leadership ranks,10 he began to believe that this approach was far too timid and would never force the government to change. In 1953, long before his colleagues were ready to consider tougher measures, Mandela publicly advocated armed resistance for the first time—without seeking prior clearance. The ANC’s National Executive Committee censured him for departing from its policy. Mandela loyally fell in line, but privately he believed that the ANC would eventually have to agree with him. As long as the government could repress all peaceful forms of protest, he felt, there was “no alternative to armed and violent resistance.”
What ultimately helped Mandela make his case was the rise of a rival black organization known as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which was willing to use much more assertive and headline-grabbing tactics. In 1960, the PAC organized a mass rally at Sharpeville to protest the pass book laws. Protesters left their pass books at home, marched en masse to the local police depot, and demanded to be arrested. The tiny police force was overwhelmed and called in reinforcements. In the melee that followed, the police killed sixty-nine blacks, most of whom were shot in the back while fleeing. The “Sharpeville Massacre” made headlines around the world.
Not to be outdone, the ANC orchestrated a national strike and pass-burning demonstrations. The escalating rivalry between the two black organizations created so much disorder that the governm
ent quickly declared a state of emergency and banned them both.
Tambo went into exile, set up ANC headquarters in Lusaka, and began to organize foreign support. Mandela and other leaders stayed in the country and went underground. Mandela popped up from time to time, making well-publicized appearances to demonstrate that the ANC was still alive and well.
Mandela proved to be a master at generating publicity. In 1961, appearing at a conference before some fourteen hundred delegates, he issued a public challenge to Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. He demanded that Verwoerd call for a national constitutional convention in which representatives of all races would “sit down in brotherhood” and create a “new nonracial democratic constitution.” If the prime minister failed to act, Mandela said, he would call for a three-day national strike. To make sure he got his point across, Mandela put his challenge in writing—better for the press to quote accurately from it—in a follow-up letter to Verwoerd. Verwoerd never acknowledged Mandela’s letter, but the government responded on a scale never seen before in South Africa. To inhibit the strike, police arrested and detained some ten thousand black people.
This massive display of repressive force shocked even some leaders of the ANC, and it was precisely the evidence Mandela needed to persuade them that they had to permit some forms of violence or risk becoming irrelevant. Finally, with the leadership’s blessing, Mandela established a military arm of the ANC: Umkhonto we Sizwe, “The Spear of the Nation.” Its initial policy was to carry out acts of sabotage against government installations and facilities, and not target people. But if sabotage proved not to be enough, Mandela was prepared to “move on to the next stage: guerrilla warfare and terrorism.”
Where all this would lead, he didn’t know. If Spock had asked him, “What’s the end game? A civil war?” Mandela probably would have answered, “I hope not. But without armed resistance, the regime will never change.”
He spent the next year learning how to lead a guerrilla army. He read about Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung, and Menachem Begin. He studied guerrilla armies in Kenya, Algeria, and the Cameroons. He traveled across Africa to meet freedom fighters and to learn how to secure arms. He also went to London to meet with Tambo—and perhaps to acquire some tailored English suits. As Mandela wrote:
I confess to being something of an Anglophile. When I thought of Western democracy and freedom, I thought of the British parliamentary system. In so many ways, the very model of the gentleman for me was an Englishman. Despite Britain being the home of parliamentary democracy, it was that democracy that had helped inflict a pernicious system of iniquity on my people. While I abhorred the notion of British imperialism, I never rejected the trappings of British style and manners.
As a gentleman-terrorist, however, Mandela’s days were numbered. He never had a chance to engage personally in any guerrilla attack or terrorist activity. Shortly after he returned to South Africa in 1962, he was arrested and ultimately linked to terrorist activities. He and several colleagues were charged with treason.
Mandela’s trial attracted international attention and helped make him a star. The fact that he faced the death penalty only heightened the interest of the media, which he used skillfully. In a remarkable address to the court, Mandela practically pleaded guilty to treason. He admitted that he was one of the founders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, that it was a guerrilla organization, and that he had played a “prominent role” in its activities, including planning acts of sabotage. He also offered a powerful justification of his decision to lead a violent movement. Because it is so characteristic of his thinking and personal style, it is worth quoting at length.
I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by whites.
We of the ANC … shrank from any action which might drive the races further apart than they already were. But the hard facts were that fifty years of nonviolence had brought the African people nothing but more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.
He issued no calls to battle. He did not demonize the regime. Instead he made a “calm and sober assessment.” In fact, he sounded a bit like Spock. As long as the government used violence to repress peaceful protest, he continued, he and his comrades saw only two choices: outright civil war, which would be a complete bloodbath; or guerrilla warfare, which would risk fewer lives on both sides. This was the language of cost-benefit analysis.
But his oratory could also soar.
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.
Mandela instructed his lawyers that no matter what the verdict—even the death penalty—he would refuse to appeal it, because in his view the South African court system had no legitimacy. In June 1964, along with several of his comrades, Mandela was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. True to his word, he took no appeal.
Mandela would be imprisoned for twenty-six years. For the first eighteen, which he calls the “Dark Years” in his autobiography, he was held on Robben Island, a hellhole which, like Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, now stands as a gloomy tourist attraction. I visited the place in 2005. About a thirty-minute boat ride from Cape Town’s harbor, the island lies in the far reaches of a beautiful bay. The prison itself is appalling. I saw Mandela’s cell, so small that a man his size could not lie down without touching two of the four dank walls. There was one small window at eye level. My guide, a former political prisoner who served time on Robben Island with Mandela, showed me the courtyard where the prisoners had crushed rocks.
How did Mandela survive?
He got into the habit of “negotiating with the enemy”—the guards and prison authorities. This was a radical departure from the Sharansky mode of prison survival. From the very beginning, he became the leader of Robben Island’s political prisoners, and he told them that the “struggle” in prison was no different from the struggle outside. With characteristic dignity, he insisted on proper treatment from his jailers and taught the other political prisoners to do the same. He complained about the inadequacies of the prison blankets, clothing, and food, but not in an adversarial spirit. He and his fellow prisoners “adopted a policy of talking to the wardens and persuading them to treat us as human beings. And a lot of them did, and there were lots of things we could talk about. And the lesson was that one of our strongest weapons is dialogue. Sit down with a man [and] if you have prepared your case very well, that man … will never be the same again.”11
By getting to know his jailers, Mandela also had a longer-term motive: preparing for future negotiations with the white power structure. In college he had learned how to box, and he remembered this training as he sparred with the wardens. “This is a boxing match that I know how to handle,” he thought. “I know how to fight against these fellows. I know how they feint, I know how they move, and I feel confident in this arena.”
Meanwhile, outside the prison walls, violent confrontations between blacks and the government were escalating. In 1976, a protest in Soweto had left more than six hundred dead.12 By the early 1980s, the ANC was setting off bombs at government facilities. People were dying.13 Mandela was prepared for this. He knew it was the price of the armed struggle he had insisted on launching. On the bright side, the ANC was increasingly popular among blacks and well-known internationally. World support for the anti-apartheid movement was growing. The government was under pressure. All these were promising signs.
In 1982 the government moved Mandela and three of his comrades to a new facility, Pollsmoor Prison, near Cape Town. The government never e
xplained this move, but it was the subject of much speculation. The four senior ANC prisoners received special treatment from the beginning—they were separated from the other prisoners and housed in a spacious room with real beds and other amenities. Because it was situated on the top floor of the prison, Mandela called it the “penthouse.”
He didn’t think it was a pure coincidence that the government seemed to be sending him more serious “feelers” during the next three years. The new minister of justice, Kobie Coetsee, began to allow prominent foreign visitors to meet with him in prison, where they freely discussed politics with him, fell under his spell, and presumably reported back to the government.
This was the context in which Mandela decided that it was time to send out a feeler of his own. He thought he finally had enough bargaining power to start talking directly with the government.
Coetsee did not initially respond to Mandela’s secret letter sent in 1985. But a few weeks later, when Mandela underwent routine surgery at a local hospital, he received a surprise visit from Coetsee. The minister simply “dropped by the hospital unannounced as if he were visiting an old friend who was laid up for a few days,” Mandela writes. They discussed little of substance; it was a social visit. “Though I acted as though this was the most normal thing in the world, I was amazed,” Mandela recalls. “The government, in its slow and tentative way, was reckoning that they had to come to some accommodation with the ANC. Coetsee’s visit was an olive branch.”
Mysterious events continued to happen. When Mandela returned to prison, he was not led back to his old cell. Instead he was escorted to a “palatial” three-room suite several floors away from his ANC comrades, where he was told that he would now live alone. No explanation was given. At first Mandela resented the separation from his comrades, but then he realized the freedom it gave him to negotiate with the government without being observed. “If we did not start a dialogue soon, both sides would be plunged into a dark night of oppression, violence and war. My solitude would give me an opportunity to take the first steps in that direction, without the kind of scrutiny that might destroy such efforts,” he wrote. “I would have to adopt a strategy that would enable me to confront people with a fait accompli. I was convinced that was the only way.”14
Bargaining with the Devil Page 14