Mandela, Nelson Rolihlahla

I

Introduction

Mandela, Nelson Rolihlahla (1918- ), South African statesman, a leader in the struggle against apartheid, who for more than 25 years was the world's most famous political prisoner and then became the first black president of the Republic of South Africa (1994-1999).

II

Early Life

Mandela was born in Umtata (now Mthatha), Transkei; his father was the main councillor to the paramount chief of the Thembu and Mandela was groomed to be a chief. He attended Fort Hare College, where he first became involved in politics and met Oliver Tambo, who became a lifelong friend: both took part in a student strike in 1940 leading to their expulsion. Mandela left the Transkei—in part to avoid a tribal marriage—and became a mine policeman in Johannesburg. He met Walter Sisulu, who helped him obtain articles in a legal firm. This led in due course to his founding, with Tambo, of the first black law practice in South Africa. In 1944 he became a founder member, with Sisulu, Tambo, and Anton Lembede, of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League; he became its national secretary in 1948.

In 1944, Mandela had met and married Evelyn Mase, a nurse from the Transkei and a friend of Sisulu. Over the next ten years she bore him two sons and a daughter, but by 1954 they had become increasingly estranged. She resented his increasing involvement in politics, to the neglect of her and their children. She became a Jehovah’s Witness and felt that religion and politics should not mix. They divorced in 1958.

III

The Struggle Against Apartheid

In 1950, Mandela became president of the Youth League. At this time he shared the strongly “Africanist” views of the Youth League, namely that Africans should “go it alone” in their struggle against apartheid and should not work with other racial groups, in particular the Indian and Coloured Congresses and the mainly white-dominated Communist Party. It was not until his involvement in the Defiance Campaign of 1952 and 1953 that Mandela fully came round to the non-racial approach to the struggle that was already espoused by Sisulu and the mainstream of the ANC. With the Defiance Campaign the ANC was transformed from an elite organization into a mass movement, and Mandela, who played a leading role in it, became a national figure. On the day it started, June 26, 1952, Mandela faced his first arrest and imprisonment: two nights for breaking a curfew.

During the Defiance Campaign selected volunteers from the ANC and the Indian Congress deliberately flouted apartheid laws, courting arrest and, above all, eschewing violence. In the first five months of the campaign 8,000 volunteers were arrested. Mandela’s turn came in December 1952. He was arrested under the Suppression of Communism Act but his nine-month sentence was suspended. More importantly, he was served with a banning order that prevented him attending meetings or leaving the Johannesburg district—the ban was to be repeatedly renewed over the next nine years. During the Defiance Campaign, ultimately crushed by mass arrests and banning orders, Mandela and others in the ANC learned to work with sympathetic whites. The campaign had inspired concerned whites to form the Congress of Democrats.

Despite the banning order Mandela continued to work with the ANC leaders and organizers, and was responsible for the “M” Plan under which ANC branches were divided into separate cells ready to work in secret. Mandela played a leading role in the Congress of the People, held at Kliptown (near Soweto) in June 1955. This mass meeting of 3,000 delegates representing the ANC, the Indian Congress, the Congress of Democrats and, secretly, the Communist Party, adopted the Freedom Charter that committed the Congress to a strongly socialist programme for future government. In recommending the Freedom Charter to a special conference of the ANC in March 1956, Mandela described it as “a beacon to the Congress movement and an inspiration to the people of South Africa”. In December 1956 he was among 156 people charged with treason, the charges being based largely upon the contents of the Freedom Charter. The subsequent trial lasted until 1961, when they were all acquitted. He married Nkosikazi Nomzamo Madikizela, better known as Winnie Mandela, in 1958. They had two daughters, born in 1959 and 1960.

IV

Radicalization and Imprisonment

Following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, when 67 blacks were killed by South African security forces during a demonstration against apartheid laws, the ANC and the Pan-African Congress were banned. In March 1961, to evade arrest and further banning, Mandela went underground, and then, with Sisulu, travelled secretly round the country organizing a three-day strike. He was nicknamed the Black Pimpernel. In June 1961 the ANC leadership decided to launch an armed struggle and formed Umkhonto we Sizwe (Zulu, “Spear of the Nation”) as its armed wing, with Mandela as commander-in-chief. In January 1962, Mandela left South Africa secretly and travelled to a Pan-African conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Algeria, where he received some guerrilla training, and then to London, where he met opposition leaders. He returned to South Africa in July of that year and was captured on August 5. Convicted subsequently on charges of incitement and illegally leaving the country, he was sentenced to five years in prison.

While he was in prison the police raided the ANC headquarters at Lilliesleaf farm, Rivonia (north of Johannesburg); most of the leading members of the ANC were arrested and seized documents included Mandela’s diary of his overseas trip. He and several other activists were put on trial, which came to be known as the Rivonia treason trial. It lasted from October 1963 to June 1964 and Mandela represented himself and his co-defendants. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and his subsequent statement from the dock became one of the most quoted indictments of apartheid. He spent 18 years on Robben Island before being transferred to Pollsmoor Prison, Cape Town, in 1982, when a worldwide “Release Mandela” campaign was launched. In 1985, Mandela turned down the offer of conditional release by President P. W. Botha on the grounds that he was not prepared to compromise his position over the issue of apartheid.