Lekota’s switch provoked an assault which reverberated through the island. He tried to persuade his BC comrades in the cell of the merits of the ANC’s nonracialism; but some of them planned a ferocious revenge. While they played music and watched out for warders, one of them set upon Lekota with a garden fork, hitting him on the head: “I fell like a brick: I nearly died.” His head still shows the bruise. The prison authorities charged the culprits with assault, but Mandela and Sisulu wanted to avoid an open rift, and asked Lekota not to make a complaint. Lekota refused to testify, which undermined the charge and brought him closer both to Mandela and to the younger people. Many other young comrades soon followed Lekota into the ANC—including his attacker. Soon afterward Lekota was transferred to Section B, where he was closer to Mandela and the “old people.” He was sometimes impatient of their slowness, including their leisurely games of tennis, but was deeply influenced by their ideas.42
Sport was a crucial catalyst in the unifying process. It had first been allowed in 1967, and an elaborate system of teams and tournaments had developed, with constitutions, minutes and records, under the supervision of Steve Tshwete, the President of the Robben Island Amateur Athletic Association until he left in 1979. Sport helped to impose discipline, as is revealed in the detailed minutes of meetings. “The unsportsmanlike and ungentlemanly conduct showed by some of our members was discussed,” said a report of February 1972. “Mr. A. Suze left the field in the midst of the play without informing his captain.”43 The organization of sports extended into choirs, musical groups, films and ballroom dancing. The Chairman of the Prisoners’ Record Club, Michael Kahla, thanked the members in his annual report of 1974: “You have given me a schooling in administration, patience and understanding that no formal school could have given.”44 “I learned how to organize and make things happen,” said Raks Seakhoa, who came to the island as “a rural village boy.” “The way we lived on Robben Island, you became an all-rounder.”45
Mandela saw sport primarily as a way to overcome political rivalries. The teams were originally divided into ANC, PAC or other organizations, with a joint committee supervising. But they were later integrated, and sport and culture could avoid political deadlocks: “It was not an uncommon sight to find a group of ANC sitting with PAC, talking earnestly and cracking jokes about everything except politics.”46
But many Black Consciousness prisoners continued to have clashes with the ANC, often coming together with the PAC. The tension came to a head when several ANC members were beaten up in the general cells. The prison authorities again brought charges, this time against the ANC men for provoking the fight. The accused hired a lawyer from the mainland and asked Mandela to give them a character testimonial, but he was embarrassed, dreading a new rift with Black Consciousness, and decided not to testify. This disappointed some ANC supporters, but impressed the BC with his determination to achieve unity.47
Mandela continued to worry about the divisiveness of Black Consciousness prisoners who were still attacking the ANC’s multiracialism and communist influences. Two years after the Soweto revolt he wrote a lucid and eloquent fifty-five-page essay, still unpublished, which analyzed the roots and significance of the Black Consciousness movement. He was very conscious that he had been cut off from crucial events; but he was all the more aware of the theatrical aspect, and the importance of images and performances—as he made clear in a vivid paragraph at the beginning, which throws light on his own view of politics:
It is often desirable for one not to describe events, but to put the reader in the atmosphere in which the whole drama was played out right inside the theatre, so that he can see with his own eyes the actual stage, all the actors and their costumes, follow their movements, listen to what they say and sing, and to study the facial expressions and the spontaneous reaction of the audience as the drama unfolds. Although this privilege is far beyond the reach of a prisoner the matter is sufficiently significant for us to run the risk of daring where the more cautious would hesitate.
In his essay Mandela tried to make a balanced judgment between the extreme views of Black Consciousness, whether as racialist reactionaries or as the only really revolutionary black movement in South Africa. But he provided a hard-hitting critique. He traced the development of black pride back to the eighteenth century, when Africans defended their freedom against whites. The Black Consciousness students, on the other hand, were heavily influenced by the international student revolt of the sixties and the American campaigns against the Vietnam War. Their ideas, he felt, had been imported from America and “swallowed in a lump” without any understanding of the different conditions in South Africa, where whites had joined the liberation movement. By adopting the American concept of black power the Black Consciousness movement “assumed the character of a racialistic sect which blindly bundles a section of the progressive forces with the enemy.”
He was impatient with the arrogance of some BC prisoners: one of them had delivered “an address to the nation” to a meeting of ten people. He was annoyed by their confused theories and their belief in existentialism: “a philosophy of superstition, individualism and chaos.” He was worried that they might in future become collaborators, supported by Western imperialists to counter communism and liberalism in black politics.
He reasserted his belief in “scientific socialism,” and insisted that “the socialist countries are the best friends of those who fought for national liberation.” But the ANC could defend its own policies and freedom of action, he said, and it had been dominated throughout its long history by noncommunists: “We can tame the most ultra-leftist radical just as we can rebuff the rightist elements who glibly warn us of communist danger and who at the same time collaborate with our enemies.” The ANC was “the oak-tree of South African politics.”
But Mandela accepted the historical importance of Black Consciousness: “The black student had found his feet, his slogans appealed to the black man’s emotions, flattered his national pride and inspired him to assert his identity with confidence.” And he remained hopeful that it would become part of a united liberation movement. “Realists amongst them,” he concluded, “accepted that the enemy would not be defeated by fiery speeches, mass campaigns, bare fists, stones and petrol bombs; and that only through a disciplined freedom army, under a unified command using modern weapons and backed by a united population, will the laurels be ours.”48
20
Prison Charisma
1976–1982
BY THE late seventies, after the Soweto rebels had subsided, Robben Island was a calmer place. Conditions were less brutal than when the Rivonia prisoners had first arrived, and Mandela had acquired a quiet authority over the younger inmates.
The journalist-prisoner Thami Mkhwanazi, who came to the island in 1980, gave a vivid description of Mandela’s style. He walked slowly, wearing the prison-issue fawn trousers and green shirt, looking straight ahead as if in deep thought. He now had a slight stoop and a lick of gray hair, but no paunch. He was often deep in conversation, giving legal or personal advice to other prisoners, who might have made an appointment a long time ahead. He took their problems very seriously, sometimes preparing a lengthy paper in tiny handwriting. He could speak fly-taal, the township slang with phrases like okau boy. Mandela, said Mkhwanazi, was “a gentleman through-and-through.” He never seemed to be angry, and would persuade other prisoners to cool off before they reacted to crises. The prison officials called him “Mandela,” or sometimes “Mr. Mandela,” but his fellow-prisoners called him by his clan name, “Madiba.”
His tiny cell was always neat, with legal documents piled on his cupboard and boxes of books under his bed, a sculpture made by a prisoner and a color photograph from National Geographic magazine of a tribal African woman: it would, he joked, make Winnie jealous. When other prisoners came to his cell he would offer them “niceties” from the prison shop, while he himself would chew dry bread. He knew a lot about the other inmates and their family histories, a
nd was also well informed about world events, closely following the struggles in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere.1
Michael Dingake was amazed by Mandela’s indefatigable concern with human rights: “Every day, but every day, in addition to his organisation’s programs, he had numerous appointments with individuals, always on his own initiative, to discuss inter-organisational relations, prisoners’ complaints, joint strategies against prison authorities and general topics.”2
Mandela still maintained his streak of stubborn rebelliousness and independence. Just when the Soweto upheavals had subsided and the prison atmosphere had become relatively peaceful, he proposed a provocative new confrontation. The ANC prisoners, he argued, should behave more like leaders of a movement: they should defy prison regulations, refusing to stand up in the presence of warders or to let them call them by their first names. His closest friends in Section B were taken aback: “I said it was unacceptable, it could lead to a massacre,” Sisulu recalled, and Kathrada was equally opposed.3 Only Toivo ja Toivo, the SWAPO leader, and Mandela’s loyal friend Eddie Daniels were in agreement. The prisoners in the general cells were also against it: Laloo Chiba, whom Mandela always respected, even went on hunger strike in protest. Eventually, after weeks of feverish debate, Mandela dropped the idea, to general relief.4
The warders’ treatment of the prisoners was anyway becoming less provocative. They were overstretched by the number of new inmates, and had become more relaxed. The diet was also improving, and political prisoners were allowed to work in the kitchens, which reduced the food smuggling. Africans were now allowed the same food as Indians and Coloureds, including a spoon and a half of sugar for breakfast. The Red Cross’s confidential reports still included many complaints about food, censorship, lack of access to lawyers, abusive warders and inconsiderate treatment: prisoners without teeth were unable to eat mealies; and one prisoner who refused to shave because he had acne was put into a straitjacket and forcibly shaved.5
But the pressure from the Red Cross and elsewhere was gradually taking effect. Many prisoners were now allowed the opportunity for serious study; and Robben Island was looking more like an austere but intense university. Scores of prisoners were doing courses with the correspondence college the University of South Africa (UNISA), and some took several degrees: Eddie Daniels, Billy Nair and Michael Dingake each took two degrees, Kathrada four. Beyond the formal courses, the senior prisoners would provide their own seminars and lectures, as well as basic education for barely literate recruits. Raks Seakhoa owed his whole education to the island: “We would write papers about anything, not just politics: literature, art, sport, religion, philosophy. They would respond to our papers.”6 Murphy Morobe called the island “a boiling cauldron of ideas.”7
They staged their own plays. They obtained a copy of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and performed it, wondering about its message for the liberation movement: “Is the tramp trying to show us that we can go on hoping against hope?” asked Mkalipi.8 They could see old movies in an improvised cinema in Section B, mostly safely non-political films like The Ten Commandments, The King and I and Cleopatra: Mandela was enchanted by Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, though some of the comrades complained that she did not look like an African queen. He also loved Mary Queen of Scots, with Vanessa Redgrave as Mary and Glenda Jackson as Queen Elizabeth. He saw a political message, he told his daughter Zindzi: “It marks the end of feudalism and the beginning of the contemporary era of capitalism.”9 Another film led to more serious political argument: The Wild One (long banned in Britain), in which Marlon Brando played the leader of a lawless motorbike gang. The ANC leaders were firmly on the side of law and order, and many of the young comrades also saw the bikers as villains, like the white South African biker gangs who enjoyed beating up blacks.10 But one of the militants from Black Consciousness, Strini Moodley, insisted that the bikers really stood for the defiant spirit of the Soweto revolt. Mandela disapproved of the bikers, but defended Moodley’s argument.11
They were allowed to buy and play their own musical instruments: the authorities did not realize, said Tokyo Sexwale, who played the classical guitar, “that in allowing us these instruments they were giving us another avenue to conduct our struggle. We sang songs against apartheid.” Mkhwanazi recalled listening to Govan Mbeki strumming Afrikaans folk songs on a guitar, Zeph Mothopeng humming Mozart, and Mandela singing Handel’s “For unto us a child is born,” waving his hands about like a conductor.12
Mandela was prevented from formally studying for four years until 1980, but before then he spent still more time discussing, writing letters, providing legal advice for his colleagues, tending his garden and above all reading voraciously. Most of the books in the small prison library were trivial: when the Red Cross donated funds for thirty books in 1976, twenty-five of those purchased by the prison authorities were by Daphne du Maurier.13 But Mandela found more serious novels which broadened his political knowledge, like those of Nadine Gordimer, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the great Russian writers, who provided parallels with South Africa. He admired Dostoyevsky’s novels, but they left him depressed, and he preferred Tolstoy: he read War and Peace in three days, and sent a copy to his daughter Zeni for her twenty-first birthday. He realized that Tolstoy was more interested in aristocrats than in the common people, but he enjoyed his jibes against them (“dripping jewels and venom”); and he would partly identify with General Kutuzov, who allowed Napoleon to capture Moscow but thus encompassed his defeat, and who understood the Russian soul.14
Mandela also read Afrikaans writers, in order to understand their language and culture: he enjoyed the poetry of Opperman and the novels of Langenhoven. But he read mainly in English. He read Dickens and the English poets, including Wordsworth, Tennyson and Shelley, reviving his own mission education: he could quote from In Memoriam or “Daffodils.” Most of all, he enjoyed political biographies. “While the comrades were reading Das Kapital,” said Eric Molobi, “Madiba was reading Churchill’s war memoirs, or biographies of Kennedy or Vorster.” He loved Churchill’s style—“just like music”—and his humor. He also read biographies of Lincoln, Washington, Disraeli and several Boer War leaders, including Smuts and Koos de la Rey; but the one who really fascinated him was Christiaan de Wet, who led the 1914 rebellion.15 While the Afrikaner government was accusing Mandela of being a communist, he was studying not Marx but their own heroes.
He became more comfortable with English than Xhosa, which he regretted.16 He had The Oxford Book of English Verse by his bedside, but nothing (he complained) by the Xhosa poets “who gave expression to my own aspirations and dreams, who flatter my national pride, and who give me a sense of destiny and achievement.”17 But he promised that “Western culture has not entirely rubbed off my African background.”18
By 1977 the government felt confident enough about the relaxed atmosphere on the island to invite twenty-five South African journalists to visit, in the hope that this would dispel rumors about the harsh treatment of the political prisoners.19 They were taken around by Major General Jannie Roux, the Deputy Commissioner of Prisons, a psychiatrist with a degree in criminology. Roux was a persuasive tour guide, but the prisoners resented being stalked like big game in a political zoo. Eventually the journalists spotted Mandela, wearing dark glasses and a floppy hat, clearing weeds from a gravel path with a shovel, but he hid behind a bush as they passed. “We have located him for you,” said General Roux, “but he doesn’t want to see you, and we won’t drag him.” The cameras followed Mandela around the bush, where (the Star reported) “with spade in hand he looks unsmilingly at the intruders and then bends to scoffle a weed.” The Reuters correspondent looked inside Mandela’s cell, where he found “a small pile of prison clothing lay neatly folded beside a picture of three young children. Books included the New English Bible, an economic history of Europe and Great Stories of Mystery and Suspense.”20 The journalists were easily impressed. The Natal Mercury reporter found that Robben Island was “run in
a humane and enlightened manner that bears comparison with the best penal institutions in the world.”21 But none had been allowed to talk to a prisoner; and none revealed that they had to submit their reports to the Commissioner.22 Foreign correspondents, who had not been invited, were more skeptical; and Mac Maharaj, now in London, complained to the British Press Council about the misreporting, and asked for the press to publish a factual description, but without success.23
With all the improvements, the conditions remained grim, and the monastic lifestyle, cut off from wives, girlfriends and children, caused many psychological strains. “You long for children more than anything else,” said Sisulu. “It makes you happy just to hear the voice of a child.”24 Neville Alexander heard a child’s voice only once in ten years: “We stood dead still and everyone was waiting for the moment when we would glimpse that child. And of course it wasn’t allowed.”25 “There would be a sudden anxiety,” said Lekota, “that one could die on Robben Island without ever being able to make contact with one’s child.”26 Many of the veterans, including Mandela, worried that their children would never forgive them for their absence. “Their deepest fear,” wrote Lekota to his daughter, “was that their own children might grow up to look with bitterness and contempt upon a struggle so dear to themselves.”27
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