The Long Walk to Freedom

by Nelson Mandela

  The meeting with Dr. Moroka proved far less eventful than my journey there. He approved of the letter and I made my way back to Johannesburg without incident. The letter to the prime minister noted that the ANC had exhausted every constitutional means at our disposal to achieve our legitimate rights, and that we demanded the repeal of the six “unjust laws” by February 29, 1952, or else we would take extra-constitutional action. Malan’s reply, signed by his private secretary, asserted that whites had an inherent right to take measures to preserve their own identity as a separate community, and ended with the threat that if we pursued our actions the government would not hesitate to make full use of its machinery to quell any disturbances.

  We regarded Malan’s curt dismissal of our demands as a declaration of war. We now had no alternative but to resort to civil disobedience, and we embarked on preparations for mass action in earnest. The recruitment and training of volunteers was one of the essential tasks of the campaign and would in large part be responsible for its success or failure. On April 6, preliminary demonstrations took place in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, Durban, and Cape Town. While Dr. Moroka addressed a crowd at Freedom Square in Johannesburg, I spoke to a group of potential volunteers at the Garment Workers Union. I explained to a group of several hundred Africans, Indians, and Coloureds that volunteering was a difficult and even dangerous duty, as the authorities would seek to intimidate, imprison, and perhaps attack the volunteers. No matter what the authorities did, the volunteers could not retaliate, otherwise they would undermine the value of the entire enterprise. They must respond to violence with nonviolence; discipline must be maintained at all cost.

  On May 31, the executives of the ANC and the SAIC met in Port Elizabeth and announced that the Defiance Campaign would begin on June 26, the anniversary of the first National Day of Protest. They also created a National Action Committee to direct the campaign and a National Volunteer Board to recruit and train volunteers. I was appointed national volunteer-in-chief of the campaign and chairman of both the Action Committee and the Volunteer Board. My responsibilities were to organize the campaign, coordinate the regional branches, canvass for volunteers, and raise funds.

  We also discussed whether the campaign should follow Gandhian principles of nonviolence, or what the Mahatma called satyagraha, a nonviolence that seeks to conquer through conversion. Some argued for nonviolence on purely ethical grounds, saying it was morally superior to any other method. This idea was strongly affirmed by Manilal Gandhi, the Mahatma’s son and the editor of the newspaper Indian Opinion, who was a prominent member of the SAIC. With his gentle demeanor, Gandhi seemed the very personification of nonviolence, and he insisted that the campaign be run along identical lines to that of his father’s in India.

  Others said that we should approach this issue not from the point of view of principles but of tactics, and that we should employ the method demanded by the conditions. If a particular method or tactic enabled us to defeat the enemy, then it should be used. In this case, the state was far more powerful than we, and any attempts at violence by us would be devastatingly crushed. This made nonviolence a practical necessity rather than an option. This was my view, and I saw nonviolence in the Gandhian model not as an inviolable principle but as a tactic to be used as the situation demanded. The principle was not so important that the strategy should be used even when it was self-defeating, as Gandhi himself believed. I called for nonviolent protest for as long as it was effective. This view prevailed, despite Manilal Gandhi’s strong objections.

  The joint planning council agreed upon an open-ended program of noncooperation and nonviolence. Two stages of defiance were proposed. In the first stage, a small number of well-trained volunteers would break selected laws in a handful of urban areas. They would enter proscribed areas without permits, use Whites Only facilities such as toilets, Whites Only railway compartments, waiting rooms, and post office entrances. They would deliberately remain in town after curfew. Each batch of defiers would have a leader who would inform the police in advance of the act of disobedience so that the arrests could take place with a minimum of disturbance. The second stage was envisioned as mass defiance, accompanied by strikes and industrial actions across the country.

  Prior to the inauguration of the Defiance Campaign, a rally, called the Day of the Volunteers, was held in Durban on June 22. Chief Luthuli, president of the Natal ANC, and Dr. Naicker, president of the Natal Indian Congress, both spoke and committed themselves to the campaign. I had driven down the day before and was the main speaker. About ten thousand people were in attendance, and I told the crowd that the Defiance Campaign would be the most powerful action ever undertaken by the oppressed masses in South Africa. I had never addressed such a great crowd before, and it was an exhilarating experience. One cannot speak to a mass of people as one addresses an audience of two dozen. Yet I have always tried to take the same care to explain matters to great audiences as to small ones. I told the people that they would make history and focus the attention of the world on the racist policies of South Africa. I emphasized that unity among the black people — Africans, Coloureds, and Indians — in South Africa had at last become a reality.

  All across the country, those who defied on June 26 did so with courage, enthusiasm, and a sense of history. The campaign began in the early morning hours in Port Elizabeth, where thirty-three defiers, under the leadership of Raymond Mhlaba, entered a railway station through a Whites Only entrance and were arrested. They marched in singing freedom songs, to the accompanying cheers of friends and family. In a call and response, the defiers and the crowd yelled, “Mayibuye Afrika!” (Let Africa come back!)

  On the morning of the twenty-sixth, I was in the ANC office overseeing the day’s demonstrations. The Transvaal batch of volunteers was scheduled to go into action at midday at an African township near Boksburg, east of Johannesburg. Led by Reverend N. B. Tantsi, they were to court arrest by entering the township without permission. Reverend Tantsi was an elderly fellow, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the acting president of the Transvaal ANC.

  It was late morning, and I was waiting for Reverend Tantsi to arrive from Pretoria, when he telephoned me at the office. With regret in his voice, he told me that his doctor advised him against defying and going to prison. I assured him that we would provide him with warm clothing and that he would spend only a night in jail, but to no avail. This was a grave disappointment, for Reverend Tantsi was a distinguished figure and had been selected in order to show the authorities that we were not just a group of young rabble-rousers.

  In place of Reverend Tantsi, we quickly found someone equally venerable: Nana Sita, the president of the Transvaal Indian Congress, who had served a month in jail for his passive resistance during the 1946 protest campaign. Despite his advanced age and acute arthritis, Sita was a fighter and agreed to lead our defiers.

  In the afternoon, as we were preparing to go to Boksburg, I realized that the secretary of the Transvaal branch of the ANC was nowhere to be found. He was meant to accompany Nana Sita to Boksburg. This was another crisis, and I turned to Walter and said, “You must go.” This was our first event in the Transvaal, and it was necessary to have prominent figures lead the defiers, otherwise the leaders would appear to be hanging back while the masses took the punishment. Even though Walter was one of the organizers and was scheduled to defy later, he readily agreed. My main concern was that he was wearing a suit, impractical dress for prison, but we managed to find him some old clothes instead.

  We then left for Boksburg, where Yusuf Cachalia and I planned to deliver a letter to the Boksburg magistrate, advising him that fifty of our volunteers would enter the African township in his area that day without permits. When we arrived at the magistrate’s office, we found a large contingent of pressmen and photographers. As I handed the envelope to the magistrate, the photographers went into action. The magistrate shielded himself from the camera flashes and then invited Yusuf and myself into
his chambers to discuss the matter privately. He was a reasonable man, and said his office was always open to us, but that excessive publicity would only worsen matters.

  From the magistrate’s office, we went straight to the township where the demonstration was taking place, and even from half a mile away we heard the robust singing of our volunteers and the great crowd of supporters who had come to encourage them. At the scene, we found the high metal gates to the township locked and our volunteers waiting patiently outside, demanding entrance. There were fifty-two volunteers in all, both Africans and Indians, and a crowd of several hundred enthusiastic spectators and journalists. Walter was at the head of the defiers; his presence was evidence that we meant business. But the guiding spirit of the demonstrators was Nana Sita, who, despite his arthritis, was moving among the demonstrators in high spirits, clapping them on the back, and bolstering their confidence with his own.

  For the first hour there was a standoff. The police were uncharacteristically restrained and their behavior baffled us. Was their restraint a strategy to exhaust the volunteers? Were they waiting for the journalists to depart and then stage a massacre under the cover of darkness? Or were they faced with the dilemma that by arresting us — which is what they would have normally done — they would be doing the very thing we wanted? But even while we were wondering, the situation suddenly changed. The police ordered the gates opened. Immediately the volunteers surged through the gates, thus breaking the law. A police lieutenant blew a whistle and seconds later the police surrounded the volunteers and began arresting them. The campaign was under way. The demonstrators were carted off to the local police station and charged.

  That same evening, the leaders of the Action Committee, which included Oliver Tambo, Yusuf Cachalia, and myself, attended a meeting in the city to discuss the day’s events and to plan for the week ahead. It was near the area where the second batch of defiers, led by Flag Boshielo, chairman of the central branch of the ANC, were courting arrest. Shortly after eleven o’clock, we found them marching in unison in the street; at eleven, curfew regulations went into effect and Africans needed a permit to be outside.

  We emerged from our meeting at midnight. I felt exhausted and was thinking not of defiance but of a hot meal and a night’s sleep. At that moment, a policeman approached Yusuf and me. It was obvious that we were going home, not protesting. “No, Mandela,” the policeman called out. “You can’t escape.” He pointed with his nightstick to the police wagon parked nearby and said, “Into the van.” I felt like explaining to him that I was in charge of running the campaign on a day-to-day basis and was not scheduled to defy and be arrested until much later, but of course, that would have been ridiculous. I watched as he arrested Yusuf, who burst out laughing at the irony of it all. It was a lovely sight to see him smiling as he was led away by the police.

  Moments later, Yusuf and I found ourselves among the more than fifty of our volunteers led by Flag Boshielo who were being taken in trucks to the red-brick police station known as Marshall Square. As the leaders of the Action Committee, we were worried that the others would wonder at our absence and I was concerned about who would be running the campaign. But spirits were high. Even on the way to prison, the vans swayed to the rich voices of the defiers singing “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” (God Bless Africa), the hauntingly beautiful African national anthem.

  That first night, in the drill yard, one of us was pushed so violently by a white warder that he fell down some steps and broke his ankle. I protested to the warder about his behavior, and he lashed out at me by kicking me in the shin. I demanded that the injured man receive medical attention and we initiated a small but vocal demonstration. We were curtly informed that the injured man could make a request for a doctor the next day if he so wished. We were aware throughout the night of his acute pain.

  Until then I had spent bits and pieces of time in prison, but this was my first concentrated experience. Marshall Square was squalid, dark, and dingy, but we were all together and so impassioned and spirited that I barely noticed my surroundings. The camaraderie of our fellow defiers made the two days pass very quickly.

  * * *

  On that first day of the Defiance Campaign, more than 250 volunteers around the country violated various unjust laws and were imprisoned. It was an auspicious beginning. Our troops were orderly, disciplined, and confident.

  Over the next five months, 8,500 people took part in the campaign. Doctors, factory workers, lawyers, teachers, students, ministers, defied and went to jail. They sang, “Hey, Malan! Open the jail doors. We want to enter.” The campaign spread throughout the Witwatersrand, to Durban, to Port Elizabeth, East London, and Cape Town, and smaller towns in the eastern and western Cape. Resistance was beginning to percolate even in the rural areas. For the most part, the offenses were minor, and the penalties ranged from no more than a few nights in jail to a few weeks, with the option of a fine which rarely exceeded ten pounds. The campaign received an enormous amount of publicity and the membership of the ANC shot up from some 20,000 to 100,000 with the most spectacular increase occurring in the eastern Cape, which contributed half of all new members.

  During the six months of the campaign I traveled a great deal throughout the country. I generally went by car, leaving at night or very early in the morning. I toured the Cape, Natal, and the Transvaal, explaining the campaign to small groups, sometimes going from house to house in the townships. Often, my task was to iron out differences in areas that were about to launch actions or had recently done so. In those days, when mass communication for Africans was primitive or nonexistent, politics were parochial. We had to win people over one by one.

  On one occasion I drove to the eastern Cape to resolve a dispute involving Alcott Gwentshe, who was running the campaign in East London. Gwentshe had been a successful shopkeeper and had played an important role in organizing East London for the stay-at-home of June 26, two years before. He had briefly gone to jail at the beginning of the Defiance Campaign. He was a strong and able man, but he was an individualist who ignored the advice of the executive and took decisions unilaterally. He was now at odds with his own executive, which was mainly populated with intellectuals.

  Gwentshe knew how to exploit certain issues in order to discredit his opponents. He would speak before local members who were workers not intellectuals, and say — in Xhosa, never English, for English was the language of the intellectuals — “Comrades, I think you know that I have suffered for the struggle. I had a good job and then went to jail at the beginning of the Defiance Campaign and I lost that job. Now that I am out of prison, these intellectuals have come along and said, ‘Gwentshe, we are better educated than you, we are more capable than you, let us run this campaign.’ ”

  When I investigated the situation I found that Gwentshe had indeed ignored the advice of the executive. But the people were behind him, and he had created a disciplined and well-organized group of volunteers who had defied in an orderly fashion even while Gwentshe was in prison. Although I thought Gwentshe was wrong for disregarding the executive, he was doing a good job and was so firmly entrenched that he could not easily be dislodged. When I saw the members of the executive, I explained that it was impractical to do anything about the situation now, but if they wanted to remedy it, they must defeat him at the next election. It was one of the first times that I saw that it was foolhardy to go against the masses of people. It is no use to take an action to which the masses are opposed, for it will then be impossible to enforce.

  The government saw the campaign as a threat to its security and its policy of apartheid. They regarded civil disobedience not as a form of protest but as a crime, and were perturbed by the growing partnership between Africans and Indians. Apartheid was designed to divide racial groups, and we showed that different groups could work together. The prospect of a united front between Africans and Indians, between moderates and radicals, greatly worried them. The Nationalists insisted that the campaign was instigated and led by Communi
st agitators. The minister of justice announced that he would soon pass legislation to deal with our defiance, a threat he implemented during the 1953 parliamentary session with the passage of the Public Safety Act, which empowered the government to declare martial law and to detain people without trial, and the Criminal Laws Amendment Act, which authorized corporal punishment for defiers.

  The government tried a number of underhanded means to interrupt the campaign. Government propagandists repeatedly claimed that the leaders of the campaign were living it up in comfort while the masses were languishing in jail. This allegation was far from the truth, but it achieved a certain currency. The government also infiltrated spies and agents provocateurs into the organization. The ANC welcomed virtually anyone who wanted to join. In spite of the fact that our volunteers were carefully screened before they were selected to defy, the police managed to penetrate not only our local branches but some of the batches of defiers. When I was arrested and sent to Marshall Square, I noticed two fellows among the defiers, one of whom I had never seen before. He wore unusual prison garb: a suit and tie with an overcoat and a silk scarf. What kind of fellow goes to jail dressed like that? His name was Ramaila, and on the third day when we were due to be released, he simply vanished.

  The second fellow, whose name was Makhanda, stood out because of his military demeanor. We were out in the courtyard and we were all in high spirits. The defiers would march in front of Yusuf and myself and salute us. Makhanda, who was tall and slender, marched in a soldierly manner and then gave a crisp, graceful salute. A number of the fellows teased him that he must be a policeman to salute so well.

  Makhanda had previously worked as a janitor at ANC headquarters. He was very industrious and was popular among the fellows because he would run out and get fish and chips whenever anyone was hungry. But at a later trial we discovered that both Makhanda and Ramaila were police spies. Ramaila testified that he had infiltrated the ranks of the defiers; the trusty Makhanda was actually Detective-Sergeant Motloung.