Nelson Mandela was born on 18th July 1918 in Mvezo, a small village endowed with the ‘richness’ of maize, cows and thatched huts surrounded by the rolling hills in Transkei, which used to be the protectorate of British earlier. This region of South Africa had the signs of a pastoral life bustling with the shepherds and herd-boys giving the vision of a biblical life. His father was the chieftain of the tribe Thimbu and during Mandela’s infancy he was stripped of his headship for insubordination exhibiting a strong character of persistence which Mandela readily inherited from him. He had his schooling from Methodist school and it’s here that the English name of Nelson got added to his name. Then he went to Fort Hare’s University College and University of Witwatersrand where he did his law degree and it’s in the same phase he forayed into the liberation ‘struggle’ against subjugation and colonial excesses witnessed around, and got once arrested too in 1940 for carrying out protests.
Revolutionary Struggle
On returning home he got into contact with Walter Sisulu, main face of African National Congress then, and other activists. They were all impressed by the confidence and composure of Mandela. Sisulu remarked, on seeing the Mandela for the first time; “My prayers are answered”. After he joined the African National Congress in 1943 Mandela and other young faces of ANC like Sisulu, Tambo etc., got disillusioned with tactics of elder leadership in ANC. They decided to launch a Youth League of ANC in 1944. Co-founded by Mandela, Youth League issued a manifesto charged with the pan-African nationalism and revolutionary spirit of resistance against ‘racial divide’. In the year 1948 that saw the legalisation of ‘Apartheid’ by the National Party, a generational takeover of ANC was orchestrated. Apartheid, literally meaning “apartness” in the Afrikaans, was an inhuman formalised policy structure of racial gerrymandering relegating ‘blacks’ to second class citizens, stripping them of their basic rights and downgrading them to segregated “homelands” and settlements. After becoming the President of ANC in Transvaal in 1955 he urged for the non-violent anti-apartheid protests across the country which later transformed into violent protests as the ruling majoritarian government cracked down heavily on the protestors.
The Trial of Audacity
The year 1960 saw the liberation movement that Mandela guided reaching a snapping point as 69 unarmed and peaceful demonstrators were killed by the police at Sharpeville. This event, also known as ‘Sharpeville massacre’ turned into the tipping point of armed insurrection. Mandela justified ‘strategic violence’ by saying, “There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and non-violence against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenceless people”, and “The attacks of the wild beast cannot be averted with bare hands only”. Following Che Guevara’s ‘Guerrilla Warfare,’ Mr. Mandela became the first commander of a liberation army, named Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the Nation. 1961 heralded a new chapter in the young nation of South Africa; the time for a historic trial of a man who was to become the ‘political messiah’ for generations to come. The Rivonia trial was named after a farm where the ‘accused’ defendants had schemed besides leaving the trove of incriminating documents supposedly against the apartheid regime. When he was arrested and came to the premises for proceedings he was in the ‘tribal skins’ symbolising a black man’s hearing in the white man’s court. During the hearing Mandela flashed the foreshadows of a personality the country needed, with the historic eloquence in his ‘four hour speech’ which established him as a leader, not only of ANC but also of international struggle against apartheid as remarked by his biographer Anthony Sampson. The highlight of the speech was these rousing lines: “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination,” he stated in the court. “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realized. But my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
Prisoner of Hope
Nelson Mandela was manacled and shifted to the ‘notorious’ Robben Island’s prison which had seen the transitions from being a leper colony to a prison. Mandela and his comrades from ANC were received with these words from warder: “This is the Island. This is where you will die.” The routine in the cellblock was one of seclusion, dullness and frequent humiliations, with occasional shows of resistance. After couple of months Mandela embraced onto the odyssey of perseverance, soul-craft, solidarity, harmony and universal brotherhood in the prison, reading from John Steinbeck, Shakespeare to Cornel West. It seems clear now that prisoners had managed to smuggle in a copy of Mediations by Marcus Aurelius for braving and battling through the spells of anger. Mandela transformed Robben Island, where he spent 18 years of his 27 year long life as a prisoner, into an academy where debates were being held from one cellblock to another. The prison was also called as ‘university behind the bars’. Prisoner 46664, as he was branded – the 466th prisoner to land in 1964 – turned out to be the first to complain over maltreatment; he would often be thrust into solitary confinement as punishment. He learnt the Afrikaans- the language of the dominating whites and urged fellow prisoners to do the same, and also studied Islam there. The prison experience steeled his willpower and self-control. Speaking in the collective spirit of liberation, he also learnt the ‘art of negotiations’ there. Nelson Mandela once commented on his prison days as, “I went for a long holiday for 27 years.” All the contemplative and philosophical rumination of Mandela is compiled in a book namely “The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela,” in which some letters have been paralleled with Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’.
Art of Negotiation
Mandela’s decision to kick-start negotiations with the white government was one of the most significant events of his life, and he went through it like a master negotiator. With an approach to Kobie Coetsee, the justice minister, and a visit to President P. W. Botha, Mr. Mandela, in 1986, ushered into what would be rounds of negotiations on the future of South Africa. He believed in the spirit of ‘attrition’ as once playing chess with a medical student for two days, the young chap then said to him ” You win, just take your victory’. He carried out this ideal in his political life by winning over his opponents and showed this attitude throughout his life from the networking in Youth League to heading the Country into reconciliation that sustained the values of political and emotional maturity for the times to come. The evening before his release from 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela was escorted into a secret meeting with South African President F.W. de Klerk; a chat that turned dramatic as seismic and joyous outpouring was expected to hit the streets of Cape Town. Mandela’s journey from prison to City Hall came to a near standstill mode as his car advanced towards downtown Cape Town and for this explosion of joy Mandela wrote, “Inside it sounded like a massive hailstorm. Then people began jumping on the car in their excitement. Others began to shake it and at that moment I began to worry. I felt as though the crowd might very well kill us with their love.”
Reconciliation and Madiba’s Magic
Mandela’s release from the prison started his another chapter of life that world had not witnessed in the political history of nations – an unparalleled example of reconciliation that too after the collective memory of ‘wrongs’ deeply engraved on the community. In the modern times there is a widespread internalization of ‘anger’, vengeance and intolerance in the realm of ‘body politic’ which has spiralled into the nations metamorphosing into rigid ‘monoliths’. Mandela used the conduit of soul-craft instead of the ‘prevalent’ statecraft for reaching a consensus on social justice, transcending beyond the definitions of Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. Mehmood Mamdani has written a striking commentary on the unique positioning of Truth and Reconciliation measures adopted by Mandela in the realm of moral and political canons of justice in relation to Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. Mandela was peerless in his politico-spiritual stance. Cornel West tags him as ‘democratic saint’ who adopted the transcendent ingredients apart from existing meta-political pathways towards social and racial justice. As soon as Mandela became first black President of South Africa, he magnanimously looked the other way on the ‘doings’ of the apartheid perpetrators and absorbed them in his political functioning of the country. His making F.W.de Klerk, the former President, as his deputy, and sharing Nobel Peace prize with him in 1993 is a shining example of reconciliation. He even invited one of his white wardens to the inaugural ceremony. During his presidential term from 1994-1999, he worked on reducing acrimony of the black community and reassured the whites. The often cited and most iconic moments in the history of ‘political gestures’ was donning the Springbok jersey of South African union Rugby team that was playing 1995 final in Johannesburg. Mandela lifted the trophy with Pienaar just like an innocent child. Francois Pienaar who captained the team said then; “When the whistle blew, South Africa changed forever”. This moment also called as ‘Madiba’s Magic’ was adapted into a movie ‘Invictus’ meaning ‘Unconquerable’ which Mandela personified all his life making him the ‘The Unconquerable Soul”.
Tailpiece
Nelson Mandela always led like a shepherd as he famously said of a leader as “A leader . . . is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.” He is ever relevant in the current political climate as the values of compassion, understanding and reconciliation are much needed elements in re-invigorating and re-imagining the contours of the current anarchic bells, across the world. At the age of 95 Mandela left for the eternal ‘long walk to freedom’ and left behind the culture of politicking which always has the potential to mould the arch-enemies into all-weather friends
Mir Sajad is a researcher at Department of Geography and Regional Development University of Kashmir