1. a decision to take up armed struggle cannot be taken lightly
2. reconciliation is never a soft option; it is hard work
3. the importance of every person
When he became prominent in the ANC, it had been conducting non-violent resistance for nearly 50 years. He was prominent among those who advocated armed struggle as part of the overall strategy. This was a big break with the non-violent tradition, which went back to Mahatma Gandhi’s stay in South Africa. It led to the formation of Umkhonto weSizwe and Mandela’s mission to independent African countries to learn from their experience and seek support. That led to his arrest and 27 years in prison. He suffered a lot for that decision
That suffering would have made many men bitter, but when victory came he did not just mouth fine words about reconciliation; he “walked the walk” on the difficult path to harmony among former enemies.
In prison, he held firm to his uncompromising confrontation with racist oppression but never forgot that his oppressors were as human and as worthy of respect as himself. His published diaries “Conversations with myself” show us how he could reach out to the humanity of his jailers. He records his reflections on the personal problems of some Afrikaaner warders and his attempts to relate to them.
Towards the end of the book he records discussion as President with fellow former detainees how to invite some of their jailers to a braai; not only those who had learned some sympathy for their prisoners, but also not all. He admitted that one notoriously sadistic warder would not appreciate or benefit from that friendly gesture. But he admits this with sadness, almost as if it was his own failure.
His dedication to the struggle for his own people’s freedom did not blind him to the sufferings and grievances of other peoples. The Afrikaaners had their own memories of oppression. Many of their forebears settled in South Africa to escape from religious wars and persecution in Europe. More recently, British troops during the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer war had subjected Afrikaaner women and children to brutality, inadequate food and bad sanitation in concentration camps where many of them died. This left a deep resentment which drove the Afrikaaners to seek security in domination.
Madiba reflects in his diary on the strength of the Boer sense of identity and of their special history. His encounter with the Afrikaaner tribal consciousness led him to seize the opportunity offered by the 1995 Rugby World Cup to affirm that they were, even though they had been led to seek security in apartheid, still one of the ethnic groups whose home is South Africa and which have no other.
Reaching out to embrace old enemies ensured peace in the critical early years of democracy. We can forget now how frail a plant that young democracy was in the early ‘90s. There were strong elements in the army and police who tried to provoke a violent backlash that would have stopped the 1994 elections and came very close to staging a coup against the democratically elected ANC government in the first years of his presidency. Reaching out to accept Afrikaaners as citizens and not enemies to be punished cut away the roots of popular Boer support for a military coup.
And, unlike many of Africa’s nationalist leaders, he never forgot leaders are elected to serve the people. He resigned when he could not serve as he would have liked.
The peaceful transition to democracy was his unique achievement. The new South Africa could easily, in less delicate hands, have collapsed into chaos. He prepared the ground for an economic struggle to close the massive gap between rich and poor. One old man could do no more than that. Others need to fight that battle.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis