The Long Walk to Freedom

by Nelson Mandela

  Because the WNLA was a way station for visiting chiefs, I had the privilege of meeting tribal leaders from all over southern Africa. I recall on one occasion meeting the queen regent of Basutoland, or what is now Lesotho, Mantsebo Moshweshwe. She was accompanied by two chiefs, both of whom knew Sabata’s father, Jongilizwe. I asked them about Jongilizwe, and for an hour I seemed to be back in Thembuland as they told colorful tales about his early years.

  The queen took special notice of me and at one point addressed me directly, but she spoke in Sesotho, a language in which I knew few words. Sesotho is the language of the Sotho people as well as the Tswana, a large number of whom live in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. She looked at me with incredulity, and then said in English, “What kind of lawyer and leader will you be who cannot speak the language of your own people?” I had no response. The question embarrassed and sobered me; it made me realize my parochialism and just how unprepared I was for the task of serving my people. I had unconsciously succumbed to the ethnic divisions fostered by the white government and I did not know how to speak to my own kith and kin. Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs. I again realized that we were not different people with separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues.

  Less than six months after the regent’s visit, Justice and I learned of his father’s death in the winter of 1942. He had seemed weary when last I saw him, and his death did not come as a great surprise. We read of the regent’s death in the newspaper because the telegram that had been sent to Justice had gone astray. We hastened down to the Transkei, arriving the day after the regent’s funeral.

  Though I was disappointed to miss the regent’s burial, I was inwardly glad that I had reconciled with him before his death. But I was not without stabs of guilt. I always knew, even when I was estranged from the regent, that all my friends might desert me, all my plans might founder, all my hopes be dashed, but the regent would never abandon me. Yet I had spurned him, and I wondered whether my desertion might have hastened his death.

  The passing of the regent removed from the scene an enlightened and tolerant man who achieved the goal that marks the reign of all great leaders: he kept his people united. Liberals and conservatives, traditionalists and reformers, white-collar officials and blue-collar miners, all remained loyal to him, not because they always agreed with him, but because the regent listened to and respected all different opinions.

  I spent nearly a week in Mqhekezweni after the funeral and it was a time of retrospection and rediscovery. There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. The Great Place went on as before, no different from when I had grown up there. But I realized that my own outlook and worldviews had evolved. I was no longer attracted by a career in the civil service, or being an interpreter in the Native Affairs Department. I no longer saw my future bound up with Thembuland and the Transkei. I was even informed that my Xhosa was no longer pure and was now influenced by Zulu, one of the dominant languages in the Reef. My life in Johannesburg, my exposure to men like Gaur Radebe, my experiences at the law firm, had radically altered my beliefs. I looked back on that young man who had left Mqhekezweni as a naive and parochial fellow who had seen very little of the world. I now believed I was seeing things as they were. That too, of course, was an illusion.

  I still felt an inner conflict between my head and my heart. My heart told me that I was a Thembu, that I had been raised and sent to school so that I could play a special role in perpetuating the kingship. Had I no obligations to the dead? To my father, who had put me in the care of the regent? To the regent himself, who had cared for me like a father? But my head told me that it was the right of every man to plan his own future as he pleased and choose his role in life. Was I not permitted to make my own choices?

  Justice’s circumstances were different from my own, and after the regent’s death he had important new responsibilities thrust upon him. He was to succeed the regent as chief and had decided to remain in Mqhekezweni and take up his birthright. I had to return to Johannesburg, and I could not even stay to attend his installation. In my language there is a saying: “Ndiwelimilambo enamagama” (I have crossed famous rivers). It means that one has traveled a great distance, that one has had wide experience and gained some wisdom from it. I thought of this as I returned to Johannesburg alone. I had, since 1934, crossed many important rivers in my own land: the Mbashe and the Great Kei, on my way to Healdtown; and the Orange and the Vaal, on my way to Johannesburg. But I had many rivers yet to cross.

  At the end of 1942 I passed the final examination for my B.A. degree. I had now achieved the rank I once considered so exalted. I was proud to have achieved my B.A., but I also knew that the degree itself was neither a talisman nor a passport to easy success.

  At the firm, I had become closer to Gaur, much to Mr. Sidelsky’s exasperation. Education, Gaur argued, was essential to our advancement, but he pointed out that no people or nation had ever freed itself through education alone. “Education is all well and good,” Gaur said, “but if we are to depend on education, we will wait a thousand years for our freedom. We are poor, we have few teachers and even fewer schools. We do not even have the power to educate ourselves.”

  Gaur believed in finding solutions rather than in spouting theory. For Africans, he asserted, the engine of change was the African National Congress; its policies were the best way to pursue power in South Africa. He stressed the ANC’s long history of advocating change, noting that the ANC was the oldest national African organization in the country, having been founded in 1912. Its constitution denounced racialism, its presidents had been from different tribal groups, and it preached the goal of Africans as full citizens of South Africa.

  Despite Gaur’s lack of formal education, he was my superior in virtually every sphere of knowledge. During lunch breaks he would often give impromptu lectures; he loaned me books to read, recommended people for me to talk to, meetings for me to attend. I had taken two courses in modern history at Fort Hare, and while I knew many facts, Gaur was able to explain the causes for particular actions, the reasons that men and nations had acted as they did. I felt as though I was learning history afresh.

  What made the deepest impression on me was Gaur’s total commitment to the freedom struggle. He lived and breathed the quest for liberation. Gaur sometimes attended several meetings a day where he featured prominently as a speaker. He seemed to think of nothing but revolution.

  I went along with Gaur to meetings of both the Township Advisory Board and the ANC. I went as an observer, not a participant, for I do not think I ever spoke. I wanted to understand the issues under discussion, evaluate the arguments, see the caliber of the men involved. The Advisory Board meetings were perfunctory and bureaucratic, but the ANC meetings were lively with debate and discussion about Parliament, the pass laws, rents, bus fares — any subject under the sun that affected Africans.

  In August 1943, I marched with Gaur, and ten thousand others, in support of the Alexandra bus boycott, a protest against the raising of fares from fourpence to five. Gaur was one of the leaders and I watched him in action. This campaign had a great effect on me. In a small way, I had departed from my role as an observer and become a participant. I found that to march with one’s people was exhilarating and inspiring. But I was also impressed by the boycott’s effectiveness: after nine days, during which the buses ran empty, the company returned the fare to fourpence.

  Gaur’s views were not the only ones I paid attention to at the firm. Hans Muller was a white estate agent who did business with Mr. Sidelsky and would engage me in discussion. He was the prototypical businessman who saw the world through the prism of supply and demand. One day, Mr. Muller pointed out the window. “Look out there, Nelson,” he said. “Do you see those men and women scurrying up and down the street? What
is it that they are pursuing? What is it they are working for so feverishly? I’ll tell you: all of them, without exception, are after wealth and money. Because wealth and money equal happiness. That is what you must struggle for: money, and nothing but money. Once you have enough cash, there is nothing else you will want in life.”

  William Smith was a Coloured man involved in the African real estate trade who was often around the office. Smith was a veteran of the ICU (the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union), South Africa’s first black trade union, founded by Clements Kadalie, but his views had shifted dramatically since those days. “Nelson,” he said, “I have been involved in politics for a long time, and I regret every minute of it. I wasted the best years of my life in futile efforts serving vain and selfish men who placed their interests above those of the people they pretended to serve. Politics, in my experience, is nothing but a racket to steal money from the poor.”

  Mr. Sidelsky did not join these discussions. He seemed to regard discussing politics as almost as much of a waste of time as participating in it. Again and again, he would counsel me to avoid politics. He warned me about Gaur and Walter Sisulu. These men will poison your mind, he said. “Nelson,” he asked, “you want to be a lawyer, don’t you?” I said yes. “And if you are a lawyer, you want to be a successful lawyer, do you not?” Again, I said yes. “Well, if you get into politics,” he said, “your practice will suffer. You will get into trouble with the authorities who are often your allies in your work. You will lose all your clients, you will go bankrupt, you will break up your family, and you will end up in jail. That is what will happen if you go into politics.”

  I listened to these men and weighed their views carefully. All of the arguments had some merit. I was already leaning toward some type of political involvement, but I did not know what or how, and I lingered on the sidelines, uncertain what to do.

  As far as my profession was concerned, it was Gaur who did more than just offer advice. One day in early 1943, when I had been at the firm for less than two years, Gaur took me aside and said, “My boy, as long as I am here at the firm, they will never article you, whether or not you have a degree.” I was startled, and told Gaur that it could not be true, as he was not even in training to be a lawyer. “That does not make a difference, Nelson,” he continued. “They will say, ‘We have Gaur, he can speak law to our people, why do we need someone else? Gaur is already bringing in clients to the firm.’ But they will not tell you this to your face; they will just postpone and delay. It is important to the future of our struggle in this country for you to become a lawyer, and so I am going to leave the firm and start my own estate agency. When I am gone, they will have no choice but to article you.”

  I pleaded with him not to resign, but he was immovable. Within a few days, he gave Mr. Sidelsky his resignation, and Mr. Sidelsky eventually articled me as promised. I cannot say whether Gaur’s absence had anything at all to do with it, but his resignation was another example of his generosity.

  Early in 1943, after passing my examination through UNISA, I returned to Fort Hare for my graduation. Before leaving for the university, I decided to outfit myself in a proper suit. In order to do so, I had to borrow the money from Walter Sisulu. I had had a new suit when I went up to Fort Hare, purchased for me by the regent, and now I would have a new suit when I went down. I borrowed academic dress from Randall Peteni, a friend and fellow alumnus.

  My nephew, K. D. Matanzima, who had graduated several years before, drove my mother and No-England, the regent’s widow, to the ceremony. I was gratified to have my mother there, but the fact that No-England came made it seem as though the regent himself had blessed the event.

  After the graduation, I spent a few days with Daliwonga (K.D.’s clan name, which is what I called him), at his home in Qamata. Daliwonga had already chosen the path of traditional leadership. He was in the line of succession to become the head of Emigrant Thembuland, which lies in the westernmost part of the Transkei, and while I was staying with him he pressed me to return to Umtata after qualifying as an attorney. “Why do you stay in Johannesburg?” he said. “You are needed more here.”

  It was a fair point; there were certainly more professional Africans in the Transvaal than in the Transkei. I told Daliwonga that his suggestions were premature. But in my heart, I knew I was moving toward a different commitment. Through my friendship with Gaur and Walter, I was beginning to see that my duty was to my people as a whole, not just a particular section or branch. I felt that all the currents in my life were taking me away from the Transkei and toward what seemed like the center, a place where regional and ethnic loyalties gave way before a common purpose.

  The graduation at Fort Hare offered a moment of introspection and reflection. I was struck most forcefully by the discrepancy between my old assumptions and my actual experience. I had discarded my presumptions that graduates automatically became leaders and that my connection to the Thembu royal house guaranteed me respect. Having a successful career and a comfortable salary were no longer my ultimate goals. I found myself being drawn into the world of politics because I was not content with my old beliefs.

  In Johannesburg, I moved in circles where common sense and practical experience were more important than high academic qualifications. Even as I was receiving my degree, I realized that hardly anything I had learned at university seemed relevant in my new environment. At the university, teachers had shied away from topics like racial oppression, lack of opportunities for Africans, and the nest of laws and regulations that subjugate the black man. But in my life in Johannesburg, I confronted these things every day. No one had ever suggested to me how to go about removing the evils of racial prejudice, and I had to learn by trial and error.

  When I returned to Johannesburg at the beginning of 1943, I enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand for an LL.B., a bachelor of laws degree, the preparatory academic training for a lawyer. The University of the Witwatersrand, known to all as “Wits,” is located in Braamfontein in north-central Johannesburg, and is considered by many to be the premier English-speaking university in South Africa.

  While working at the law firm brought me into regular contact with whites for the first time, the university introduced me to a group of whites my own age. At Fort Hare we had occasional contacts with white students from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, but at Wits, I was attending classes with white students. This was as new to them as it was to me, for I was the only African student in the law faculty.

  The English-speaking universities of South Africa were great incubators of liberal values. It was a tribute to these institutions that they allowed black students. For the Afrikaans universities, such a thing was unthinkable.

  Despite the university’s liberal values, I never felt entirely comfortable there. Always to be the only African, except for menial workers, to be regarded at best as a curiosity and at worst as an interloper, is not a congenial experience. My manner was guarded, and I met both generosity and animosity. Although I was to discover a core of sympathetic whites who became friends and later colleagues, most of the whites at Wits were not liberal or color-blind. I recall getting to a lecture a few minutes late one day and taking a seat next to Sarel Tighy, a classmate who later became a member of Parliament for the United Party. Though the lecture had already started and there were only a few empty seats, he ostentatiously collected his things and moved to a seat distant from me. This type of behavior was the rule rather than the exception. No one uttered the word kaffir; their hostility was more muted, but I felt it just the same.

  Our law professor, Mr. Hahlo, was a strict, cerebral sort, who did not tolerate much independence on the part of his students. He held a curious view of the law when it came to women and Africans: neither group, he said, was meant to be lawyers. His view was that law was a social science and that women and Africans were not disciplined enough to master its intricacies. He once told me that I should not be at Wits but studying for my degree through UNISA. Although I
disagreed with his views, I did little to disprove them. My performance as a law student was dismal.

  At Wits, I met many people who were to share with me the ups and downs of the liberation struggle, and without whom I would have accomplished very little. Many white students went out of their way to make me feel welcome. During my first term at Wits I met Joe Slovo and his future wife, Ruth First. Then as now, Joe had one of the sharpest, most incisive minds I have ever encountered. He was an ardent Communist, and was known for his high-spirited parties. Ruth had an outgoing personality and was a gifted writer. Both were the children of Jewish immigrants to South Africa. I began lifelong friendships with George Bizos and Bram Fischer. George, the child of Greek immigrants, was a man who combined a sympathetic nature with an incisive mind. Bram Fischer, a part-time lecturer, was the scion of a distinguished Afrikaner family: his grandfather had been prime minister of the Orange River Colony and his father was judge-president of the Orange Free State. Although he could have been a prime minister of South Africa, he became one of the bravest and staunchest friends of the freedom struggle that I have ever known. I befriended Tony O’Dowd and Harold Wolpe, who were political radicals and members of the Communist Party, and Jules Browde and his wife, who were liberal champions of the anti-apartheid cause.