MADIBA
JULY 18, 2016 WORLD EDITION MAGAZINE
MANDELAPEDIA, is aTribute
toMadiba, the encyclopedic
Life and Times of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, 1918-2013.
By Femi Alufa
We Hail Madiba!
The Life and Times of
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
(1918-2013)
African
First Legend of the Millennium
PLUS +
· The History of Apartheid in South
Africa
· February 11,1990 -FREEDOM
DAY FOR MANDELA
· Truth and Reconciliation Commission
· The African National Congress(ANC)and the New
South Africa
· TRIBUTES- Mandela belongs to the Ages
TO
OUR OWN DEAR MADIBA
Mr.
Mandela has walked a long road and now stands at the top of the hill. A
traveller would sit down and admire the view. But a man of destiny knows that
beyond this hill lies another and another. The journey is never complete.
-F. W. de Klerk (Former
South African president.
Referring to Nelson Mandela.
Observer (London), "Sayings
of the Week
Your
bounty threatens me, Mandela,
that taut Drumskin of your heart on which our millions Dance. I fear we latch,
fat leeches on your veins.
-Wole Soyinka
Nigerian novelist, playwright, poet, and Nobel Laureate.
Mandela's
Earth and Other Poems, Your
Logic Frightens Me Mandela.
MANDELAPEDIA
Compiled by Femi Alufa
QUOTATIONS FROM NELSON MANDELA
The struggle is my life. I will
continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.
The Struggle is My Life, Press statement
I am not less life-loving than you
are. But I cannot sell my birthright, nor am I prepared to sell the birthright
of the people to be free.
February 1985.
Response to the offer of freedom
from P. W. Botha.
I cannot and will not give any
undertaking at a time when I, and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom
and mine cannot be separated.
Message from prison, read by his
daughter to a rally in Soweto.
Since my release, I have become more
convinced than ever that the real makers of history are the ordinary men and
women of our country; their participation in every decision about the future is
the only guarantee of true democracy and freedom.
The Struggle is My Life
We stand for majority rule, we don't
stand for black majority rule.
Referring to the first meeting
between the government and the African National Congress.
I stand here before you not as a
prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic
sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the
remaining years of my life in your hands.
The Struggle is My Life, Speech on his release from prison
My fellow South Africans, today we
are entering a new era for our country and its people. Today we celebrate not
the victory of a party, but a victory for all the people of South Africa.
Following his election to the
presidency.
There is no easy walk to freedom
anywhere and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of
death again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires.
Adapted from a statement by Nehru.
The
Struggle is My Life, Presidential
address to ANC Conference.
Years of imprisonment could not
stamp out our determination to be free. Years of intimidation and violence
could not stop us. And we will not be stopped now.
Press conference
The past is a rich resource on which
we can draw in order to make decisions for the future, but it does not dictate
our choices. We should look back at the past and select what is good, and leave
behind what is bad. The
Struggle is My Life
Man's goodness is a flame that can
be hidden but never extinguished.
Long Walk to Freedom
The task at hand will not be easy,
but you have mandated us to change South Africa from a land in which the
majority lived with little hope, to one in which they can live and work with
dignity, with a sense of self-esteem and confidence in the future.
At his inauguration as president.
Speech
Let there be work, bread, water and
salt for all.
From his inaugural address as
president.
The Observer (London), "Sayings of the Week"
Only free men can negotiate;
prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Replying to an offer to release him
if he renounced violence.
The soil of our country is destined
to be the scene of the fiercest fight and the sharpest struggles to rid our
continent of the last vestiges of white minority rule.
The Observer (London), "Sayings of the Eighties"
To overthrow oppression has been
sanctioned by humanity and is the highest aspiration of every free man.
The Struggle is My Life
It indicates the deadly weight of
the terrible tradition of a dialogue between master and servant which we have
to overcome.
Referring to the first meeting
between the government and the African National Congress.
The Independent (London)
Between the anvil of united mass
action and the hammer of the armed struggle we shall crush apartheid and white
minority racist rule.
The Struggle is My Life
In South Africa, to be poor and
black was normal, to be poor and white was a tragedy.
Long Walk to Freedom
I have cherished the ideal of a
democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and
with equal opportunities...if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared
to die.
Said after his release from prison.
Mandela was reiterating his words at his trial in 1964.
I have discovered the secret that
after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to
climb.
Long Walk to Freedom
EDITORIAL
We salute you Madiba! The pride of
Humanity
Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
No great man lives in vain. The
history of the world is but the biography of great men.
-Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881)
Scottish historian and
essayist. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, "The
Hero as a Divinity"
The arrival of the year 2000 has
provided much of humanity with cause for reflection on the last millennium.
Scientific, social, and political revolutions during the last 1,000 years have
left an indelible mark on the world that exists today.
Perhaps
one of the best ways to examine the sprawling history of the second millennium
is to consider the most influential people who shaped it. As American poet and
essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “There
is properly no history; only biography.” The British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC), first and biggest broadcasting
organization in the United Kingdom referred Nelson Mandela in 2000 as the
Africa’s first legend of the millennium.
Nelson Mandela
was the first black president of the republic of South Africa (1994-1998) and
one of the most important leaders in World history. His role in gaining
independence for his country by tearing down the wall of Apartheid and later in
unifying them under the new federal government cannot be overestimated through
his Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Labouring against great difficulties,
he spent 27 years in prison and was released in February,1990,he and his
African National Congress (ANC) members fought and won the war against the Apartheid regime in South
Africa, out of what was little more than an armed mob.
After a
long walk to freedom, his design for victory brought final defeat to the Apartheid
and become the first president of the independent and democratic South Africa,
which he served for only one term of four years and provided an inspiration for
humane and democratic leadership across the world. Until his death on 5th
December 2013, he was the most decorated living legend with over 250 awards,
including the Nobel Peace Award, Canadian honourary citizenship honour, and the
most popular brand name of a person in the world after Coke, the most popular
brand product.
The Femi Alufa
Post-WORLD EDITION
is titled We Hail Madiba! To pay
tribute to The Life and Times of Nelson
Rolihlahla Mandela (1918-2013), African First Legend of the Millennium PLUS
+ The History of Apartheid in South Africa, Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
The New South Africa, Mandela belongs to the Ages.
It is a great
work of research on a great prodigy called M-A-D-I-B-A, and it is an archival
material for you our great readers and it will make a magnetic reading.
.
South
African Elections, 1994
In
May of 1994, Nelson Mandela became the president of South Africa after the
first democratic elections in the nation’s history. The voting, held between
April 26 and April 29, mobilized the country’s population and ended centuries
of political oppression.
Worldwide
Television News
LONG WALK TO FREEDOM
BIOGRAPHY
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (1918-2013)
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, born on July 18,1918, South African
activist, winner of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, and the first black president
of South Africa (1994-1999). Born in Umtata, South Africa, in what is now
Eastern Cape Province, Mandela was the son of a Xhosa-speaking Thembu chief. He
attended the University of Fort Hare in Alice where he became involved in the
political struggle against the racial discrimination practiced in South Africa.
He was expelled in 1940 for participating in a student demonstration. After
moving to Johannesburg, he completed his course work by correspondence through
the University of South Africa and received a bachelor’s degree in 1942.
Mandela then studied law at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He
became increasingly involved with the African National Congress (ANC), a
multiracial nationalist movement which sought to bring about democratic
political change in South Africa. Mandela helped establish the ANC Youth League
in 1944 and became its president in 1951.
The National Party (NP) came to power in South Africa in 1948 on a
political platform of white supremacy. The official policy of apartheid, or
forced segregation of the races, began to be implemented under NP rule. In 1952
the ANC staged a campaign known as the Defiance Campaign, when protesters
across the country refused to obey apartheid laws. That same year Mandela
became one of the ANC’s four deputy presidents. In 1952 he and his friend
Oliver Tambo were the first blacks to open a law practice in South Africa. In
the face of government harassment and with the prospect of the ANC being
officially banned, Mandela and others devised a plan. Called the “M” plan after
Mandela, it organized the ANC into small units of people who could then
encourage grassroots participation in antiapartheid struggles.
By the late 1950s Mandela, with Oliver Tambo and others, moved the
ANC in a more militant direction against the increasingly discriminatory
policies of the government. He was charged with treason in 1956 because of the
ANC’s increased activity, particularly in the Defiance Campaign, but he was
acquitted after a five-year trial. In 1957 Mandela divorced his first wife,
Evelyn Mase; in 1958 he married Nomzamo Madikizela, a social worker, who became
known as Winnie Mandela.
In March 1960 the ANC and its rival, the Pan-Africanist Congress
(PAC), called for a nationwide demonstration against South Africa’s pass laws,
which controlled the movement and employment of blacks and forced them to carry
identity papers. After police massacred 69 blacks demonstrating in Sharpeville
(see Sharpeville Massacre), both the ANC and the PAC were banned. After
Sharpeville the ANC abandoned the strategy of nonviolence, which until that
time had been an important part of its philosophy. Mandela helped to establish
the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), in December
1961. He was named its commander-in-chief and went to Algeria for military
training. Back in South Africa, he was arrested in August 1962 and sentenced to
five years in prison for incitement and for leaving the country illegally.
While Mandela was in prison, ANC colleagues who had been operating
in hiding were arrested at Rivonia, outside of Johannesburg. Mandela was put on
trial with them for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy. He was found
guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1964. For the next 18 years
he was imprisoned on Robben Island and held under harsh conditions with other
political prisoners.
Despite the maximum security of the Robben Island prison, Mandela
and other leaders were able to keep in contact with the antiapartheid movement
covertly. Mandela wrote much of his autobiography secretly in prison. The
manuscript was smuggled out and was eventually completed and published in 1994
as Long Walk to Freedom. Later, Mandela was moved to the
maximum-security Pollsmoor Prison near Cape Town. Mandela became an
international symbol of resistance to apartheid during his long years of
imprisonment, and world leaders continued to demand his release.
In response to both international and domestic pressure, the South
African government, under the leadership of President F. W. de Klerk, lifted
the ban against the ANC and released Mandela in February 1990. Soon after his
release from prison he became estranged from Winnie Mandela, who had played a key
leadership role in the antiapartheid movement during his incarceration.
Although Winnie had won international recognition for her defiance of the
government, immediately before Mandela’s release she had come into conflict
with the ANC over a controversial kidnapping and murder trial that involved her
young bodyguards. The Mandelas were divorced in 1996.
Mandela, who enjoyed enormous popularity, assumed the leadership
of the ANC and led negotiations with the government for an end to apartheid.
While white South Africans considered sharing power a big step, black South
Africans wanted nothing less than a complete transfer of power. Mandela played
a crucial role in resolving differences. For their efforts, he and de Klerk
were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. The following year South Africa
held its first multiracial elections, and Mandela became president.
Mandela sought to calm the fears of white South Africans and of
potential international investors by trying to balance plans for reconstruction
and development with financial caution. His Reconstruction and Development Plan
allotted large amounts of money to the creation of jobs and housing and to the
development of basic health care. In December 1996 Mandela signed into law a
new South African constitution. The constitution established a federal system
with a strong central government based on majority rule, and it contained
guarantees of the rights of minorities and of freedom of expression. Mandela,
who had announced that he would not run for reelection in 1999, stepped down as
party leader of the ANC in late 1997 and was succeeded by South African deputy
president Thabo Mbeki. Mandela's presidency came to an end in June 1999, when
the ANC won legislative elections and selected Mbeki as South Africa's next
president.
At the time of his death in December 2013
at a ripe age of 95, however, Nelson Mandela, who was regarded by his tribal
appellation of Madiba (great leader) was widely agreed to have been the most
influential figure in the world and one of the most admired presidents in world
history, he trekked the long walk to freedom and make democracy possible for
his people by tearing down the wall of Apartheid in South Africa. People and
leaders of different nationalities across the world hailed Madiba with a
legendary farewell and celebrated the man who has contributed much to humanity,
and his legacy will continue to linger on as time endures. In his tribute to
Madiba Nelson Mandela by US President Barrack Obama, Mr. Obama said he now
belongs to the ages.
The Life and Times of Madiba Nelson Mandela can be summarized in
the words of Maya Angelou, U.S. writer and Black Scholar, author, poet, performer, and civil rights activist, best known for
portrayals of strong African American women in her writings. She said: something
made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater. Madiba, greater you live and greater will you live in the ages as
you now belong to the ancestors.
ADIEU
THE LEGENDARY ONE! WE HAIL YOU MADIBA!
QUICK
FACTS
|
|
Nelson
Rolihlahla Mandela
|
South
African antiapartheid activist, First President of South Africa
|
Birth
|
July 18, 1918
|
Place of Birth
|
Umtata, South Africa
|
Political Party
|
African National Congress
|
Official Title
|
President
|
Term
|
1994-1999
|
Known for
|
Leading the antiapartheid movement, first through militancy and
later through diplomacy, and symbolizing the struggle of black South Africans
during his long period of imprisonment
|
|
Negotiating the end of apartheid and leading South Africa's
peaceful transition to democratic rule
|
|
Winning the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with F.W. de Klerk
|
Milestones
|
1940 Was expelled from the University of Fort Hare for involvement
in student activism
|
|
1944 Helped to establish the African National Congress (ANC) Youth
League
|
|
1951 Became president of the ANC
|
|
1952 Opened first black-owned law practice in South Africa with his
partner Oliver Tambo in Johannesburg
|
|
1961 Organized Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the military
wing of the ANC, spurred by the 1960 massacre of blacks demonstrating in
Sharpeville
|
|
1964-1990 Was imprisoned under
charges of sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy
|
|
February 11, 1990 Was
released from prison by President F.W. de Klerk
|
|
April 27, 1994 Was
elected president of South Africa in the country's first multiracial
elections
|
|
1996 Led the adoption of a new constitution guaranteeing free speech,
free political activity, and the right to restitution for land seized under
apartheid regime
|
Quote
|
'Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into
contracts.' February 10, 1985, in a statement from prison.
|
Did You Know
|
A song by the band Special AKA titled 'Free Nelson Mandela' was
an international hit in 1984, and a 1988 freedom concert honoring Mandela's
70th birthday attracted a crowd of 72,000 to London's Wembley Arena.
|
|
While imprisoned at Robben Island, Mandela took classes at the
University of London by correspondence.
|
|
Mandela was born into a royal family of the Thembu people and
was expected to become a chief.
|
INTO THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY
Apartheid: A Crime against Humanity
Apartheid, policy of racial segregation formerly followed in South
Africa. The word apartheid means “separateness” in the Afrikaans
language and it described the rigid racial division between the governing white
minority population and the nonwhite majority population. The National Party
introduced apartheid as part of their campaign in the 1948 elections, and with
the National Party victory, apartheid became the governing political policy for
South Africa until the early 1990s. Although there is no longer a legal basis
for apartheid, the social, economic, and political inequalities between white
and black South Africans continue to exist.
The apartheid laws classified people according to three major
racial groups—white; Bantu, or black Africans; and Coloured, or people of mixed
descent. Later Asians, or Indians and Pakistanis, were added as a fourth
category. The laws determined where members of each group could live, what jobs
they could hold, and what type of education they could receive. Laws prohibited
most social contact between races, authorized segregated public facilities, and
denied any representation of nonwhites in the national government. People who
openly opposed apartheid were considered communists and the government passed
strict security legislation which in effect turned South Africa into a police
state.
Before apartheid became the official policy, South Africa had a
long history of racial segregation and white supremacy. In 1910 parliamentary
membership was limited to whites and legislation passed in 1913 restricted
black land ownership to 13 percent of South Africa's total area. Many Africans
opposed these restrictions. In 1912, the African National Congress (ANC) was
founded to fight these unfair government policies. In the 1950s, after apartheid
became the official policy, the ANC declared that “South Africa belongs to all
who live in it, black and white,” and worked to abolish apartheid. After
antiapartheid riots in Sharpeville in March 1960 (see Sharpeville
Massacre), the government banned all black African political organizations,
including the ANC.
From 1960 to the mid-1970s, the government attempted to make
apartheid a policy of “separate development.” Blacks were consigned to newly
created and impoverished homelands, called Bantustans, which were
designed to eventually become petty sovereign states. The white population
retained control of more than 80 percent of the land. Increasing violence,
strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations by opponents of apartheid, and the
overthrow of colonial rule by blacks in Mozambique and Angola, forced the
government to relax some of its restrictions.
From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the government implemented a
series of reforms that allowed black labor unions to organize and permitted
some political activity by the opposition. The 1984 constitution opened
parliament membership to Asians and Coloureds, but it continued to exclude
black Africans, who made up 75 percent of the population. Apartheid continued
to be criticized internationally, and many countries, including the United
States, imposed economic sanctions on South Africa. More urban revolts erupted
and, as external pressure on South Africa intensified, the government's
apartheid policies began to unravel. In 1990, the new president, F. W. de Klerk,
proclaimed a formal end to apartheid with the release of ANC leader Nelson
Mandela from prison and the legalization of black African political
organizations.
FEATURE
STORY
Ugly
Apartheid rear its Head in the 1970’s
23 Killed in Soweto Riots
23 Killed as Thousands of Blacks Riot in S. Africa
Los Angeles Times
June 17, 1976
In 1976 the South African government mandated the use of the
Afrikaans language in schools, sparking student protests that were violently
countered by police. To black students, Afrikaans, the language of South
Africa's Afrikaners, represented the oppression blacks faced under the
white-minority apartheid rule. Riots in the black township of Soweto, described
in this Los Angeles Times report, prompted black South Africans in other
areas to protest apartheid conditions, eventually resulting in at least 575
deaths.
Johannesburg —Black South African
high school students, protesting mandatory use of the despised Afrikaans
language in schools, set off rioting Wednesday that swept through a sprawling
black township near Johannesburg. Police said 23 persons were killed and 220
were injured.
The riots were the worst here in 16
years.
Blacks consider Afrikaans, the
language of this white-ruled nation's dominant Boers, a symbol of white oppression.
Police shot at thousands of
demonstrators, first with tear gas and later with live bullets, but were defied
by bands of rioters that roamed the streets into the night, setting fire to
buildings and automobiles in Soweto, a segregated township housing about 1
million blacks.
Army units were moved into Soweto
and alerted for possible use if the rioting continued.
Police Minister James T. Kruger said
the situation was quieting and returning to normal, but the government
television reported that new riots flared at night after a brief lull.
Among the casualties were two white
motorists dragged from their cars and stoned to death. One of the motorists and
one other white killed were reported to be officials of the government bureau
administering black affairs.
At least 29 of those injured had
bullet wounds, a hospital official said. Four white women welfare workers were
wounded when a mob attacked their car.
Rioters hacked two police dogs to
death and then burned them.
At least 20 buildings and 40 to 50 autos
were set on fire Wednesday night.
Defending the decision of police
officers to fire into the crowd of rockthrowing protesters, Kruger said
officers “tried tear gas, but in the open, tear gas was not very successful.
The police then fired warning shots and this stopped the crowds for a while.
But then they came on again.”
Rioting flared when police used tear
gas to halt a demonstration protesting the government requirement that blacks
be taught half their classes in Afrikaans. The other half are taught in
English, which the blacks prefer. English and Afrikaans are South Africa's two
official languages.
Language was the issue that lit the
fuse, but the riot also reflected discontent over inferior and crowded housing,
lack of electricity and other inequalities in the teeming black township about
12 miles outside Johannesburg.
Hundreds of police with guns, dogs,
tear gas and helicopters converged during the day trying to herd the rioters
onto a hill in Soweto.
A senior police officer told
newsmen, “We fired into them. It's no good firing over their heads.”
Estimates of the number of rioters
ranged to 10,000, most of them young students. At regular intervals, army
Alouette helicopters passed over the hill to dump tear gas.
The riots began as a march by Soweto
pupils to the Phefeni secondary school, located atop the hill, to support
pupils there who had been boycotting classes for five weeks to protest
mandatory use of Afrikaans.
The language, derived from Dutch, is
used by South Africa's Boers, who dominate the 4 million-strong white minority
that rules over the country's 18 million blacks. The blacks regard English as
the language of progress and a link to the outside world.
The march quickly turned violent as
pupils began taunting and stoning police, and police loosed a volley of tear
gas.
A black reporter on the scene said a
white policeman pulled out his revolver and fired. Other police then began
shooting.
Source:
Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1976.
African
National Congress
African National Congress (ANC), South African
political organization that has been the country’s ruling party since 1994.
That year, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, the ANC won South Africa’s
first election in which the black majority could vote. Mandela was elected the
nation’s first black president. In 1997 veteran leader Thabo Mbeki replaced
Mandela as ANC president. The ANC was returned to power in 1999 elections and
selected Mbeki to succeed Mandela as SouthAfrica’s president. Jacob Zuma succeeded
Mbeki as ANC president in 2007.
The ANC was founded in 1912 as a nonviolent
civil rights organization that worked to promote the interests of black
Africans. With a mostly middle-class constituency, the ANC stressed
constitutional means of change through the use of delegations, petitions, and
peaceful protest. In 1940 Alfred B. Xuma became ANC president and began
recruiting younger, more outspoken members. Among the new recruits were
Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Walter Sisulu, who helped found the ANC Youth League
in 1944 and soon became the organization’s leading members.
ANC membership greatly increased in the 1950s after
South Africa’s white-minority government began to implement apartheid, a policy
of rigid racial segregation, in 1948. The ANC actively opposed apartheid and
engaged in increasing political combat with the government. In 1955 the ANC
issued its Freedom Charter, which stated that “South Africa belongs to all who
live in it, black and white.” ANC members who believed South Africa belonged
only to black Africans formed a rival party, the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC),
in 1959. Seeking to displace the ANC, the PAC organized mass demonstrations
that led to the massacre of black protesters in Sharpeville in March 1960. In
response to the demonstration, the government declared a state of emergency and
banned all black political organizations, including the ANC and PAC.
In 1961, after the government had banned the
organization, the ANC formed a military wing called Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear
of the Nation”), which began a campaign of sabotage against the government.
During the unrest of the next several years, Mandela and Sisulu were sentenced
to life in prison for their ANC activities, and Tambo left South Africa to
establish an external wing of the ANC. For the next 30 years the ANC operated
as an underground organization, with its principal leaders imprisoned or living
outside South Africa. In 1976 a revolt in Soweto, a black community outside
Johannesburg, led to a reawakening of black African politics and a renewed
assault on apartheid. ANC membership continued to grow throughout this time.
In 1990 the government lifted its ban on the ANC
and other black African organizations. In that same year Mandela was released
from more than 27 years in prison as the recognized leader of the ANC. No
longer forced to work underground, the ANC evolved into a political party
seeking power through the ballot.
In 1993 the ANC and the government agreed
to a plan that would form a transitional government to rule for five years
after the country’s first all-race elections scheduled for April 1994. In the
months before the election, violence erupted between the ANC and supporters of
the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Zulu nationalist movement. Nevertheless, from
April 27 to 30, 1994, millions of South Africans of all races participated in
the country’s first democratic elections. On May 2, after the ANC’s victory,
President F. W. de Klerk conceded the presidency to Mandela, who promised a
new, multiracial government for South Africa.
Once in power, the ANC pursued policies to
establish a fully multiracial South Africa, within constraints dictated by
free-market economic policies and the need to retain the loyalty of white South
Africans. Within the government of national unity the party suffered from a
deterioration in its relations with Inkatha, led by Mangosuthu Gatsha
Buthelezi, and with the National Party of de Klerk. Inkatha and the National
Party left the government in 1995 and 1996, respectively.
In late 1997 the aging Mandela, who had
announced that he would not be seeking another term as president, formally
stepped down as head of the ANC. The party’s convention chose ANC veteran
leader Thabo Mbeki as the new party
president. In June 1999 elections the ANC won close to two-thirds of the seats
in the legislature and selected Mbeki as South Africa’s second black president.
Despite the country’s high levels of crime and unemployment, the ANC retained its
dominance in 2004 elections, winning almost 70 percent of the seats in the
legislature. At a tumultuous party convention in 2007, Jacob Zuma, a former deputy president of South Africa, defeated
Mbeki to be elected leader of the ANC.
FREEDOM DAY FOR MANDELA
FROM THE ARCHIVES
South Africa to Free Black Leader Mandela Today
February 11, 1990
The Los Angeles Times published the following article about
the release of South African antiapartheid leader Nelson Mandela from prison,
where he had spent nearly three decades. Mandela went on to become the Republic
of South Africa's first black president. Since the article was published at the
time the event took place, it may contain information that has been
subsequently revised or updated.
By Scott Kraft
Johannesburg, South Africa—President
Frederik W. de Klerk announced Saturday that 71-year-old Nelson R. Mandela, who
personifies nearly a century of black struggle to end white minority rule, will
walk free today after more than 27 years in prison, putting South Africa on a
dramatic new course toward ending one of the bloodiest racial conflicts in
history.
“This will bring us to the end of a
long chapter,” De Klerk told a news conference. “There can no longer be any
doubt about the government's sincerity in seeking to create a just dispensation
based on negotiations.”
The president's surprise
announcement followed a meeting Friday night with Mandela, in which De Klerk
said he was convinced that the man jailed for plotting to overthrow the
government is “committed to a peaceful solution.”
Mandela, convicted in 1964 of
sabotage for launching the African National Congress' armed guerrilla war
against Pretoria, is one of the world's most celebrated prisoners. His
incarceration has been the main impediment to negotiations with the 27 million
blacks in South Africa, and his release is the latest in a succession of steps
De Klerk has taken to remove restrictions to black political activity and lure
black leaders to the table.
De Klerk said that Mandela will be
freed at 3 p.m. (5 a.m. PST) today from the Victor Verster prison farm near
Paarl. Anti-apartheid leaders said that he will address a rally this evening in
Cape Town before returning to his home in Soweto, a township of 2.5 million
outside Johannesburg that he last saw in 1962.
The government also released the first
photograph of Mandela in 27 years. It showed a smiling, trim Mandela, dressed
in a gray suit, standing beside De Klerk in the presidential offices in Cape
Town.
Thousands of blacks took to the
streets of Soweto and other townships Saturday night as news of the impending
release spread, and joyous throngs celebrated Mandela's return with dancing,
singing and blaring car horns. Some held aloft Sunday morning newspaper posters
that read, simply: “He's Free!”
Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, upon
hearing the news, got out of his car in Soweto and leaped into the air,
shouting “Hooray!”
“F. W. [de Klerk], you have done
well,” Tutu said. “Today is not a day to be churlish. It is a time to say,
‘Yeah!’ It is a time to celebrate.
“Nelson is going to be the focus of all
our aspirations,” added Tutu, the black clergyman who won the 1984 Nobel Peace
Prize for his anti-apartheid work. “He will unite us.”
The announcement drew swift,
unreserved praise from government supporters as well as critics around the
world. President Bush called it a “significant step” on the road to an end of
apartheid. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher congratulated De Klerk for
his “wise decision.”
The previously banned ANC, which was
legalized by De Klerk last week, welcomed the news at its exile headquarters in
Lusaka, Zambia.
“It's a great victory for our
people,” said James Stuart, a member of the ANC's executive committee. “I can
hardly believe it.”
“This is a moment we've waited
nearly 28 years for,” said Popo Molefe, general secretary of the United
Democratic Front, a 2-million-member anti-apartheid coalition. “His release is
the result of the struggle of our people.”
De Klerk's decision went most of the
way toward meeting preconditions for negotiations set down by the ANC and other
anti-apartheid groups. The president said that he and Mandela discussed the two
major remaining conditions—the release of all political prisoners and the
lifting of a 3 y-year-old state of emergency.
De Klerk said he would lift the
state of emergency if there was no upsurge of violence after Mandela's release.
He also told Mandela that the matter of activists on trial and serving time for
politically motivated violent crimes “should be dealt with in negotiations,”
but he offered to enter “exploratory discussions” on the issue in the meantime.
“The eyes of the world are presently
focused on all South Africans,” De Klerk told a news conference attended by
some of the more than 2,000 journalists that the government has allowed into
the country in recent weeks. “All of us now have an opportunity and the
responsibility to prove that we are capable of a peaceful process in creating a
new South Africa.”
Freeing Mandela was a calculated
risk by the government. The swift decision, and the sweeping measures that De
Klerk announced last week, caught the ANC and other leading anti-apartheid
groups temporarily off balance.
But the government will now come
under increasing pressure from blacks, through rallies and marches, to move
quickly to remove the remaining legal pillars of apartheid, the system that
segregates residential areas, schools and hospitals and inhibits black
ownership of land.
In recent days, police have forcibly
broken up several peaceful anti-apartheid demonstrations, and Mandela has said
that, once free, he will refuse to obey any apartheid laws.
But Mandela will be faced with the
task of healing deep divisions in black politics, including differences within
his own ANC over whether to negotiate with the government now or continue the
armed struggle. He also will be called on to help end fighting in Natal
province, where three years of internecine clashes between supporters of the
ANC and the moderate Inkatha movement have resulted in more than 1,500 deaths.
Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, leader
of South Africa's 2 million Zulu people said the conflict between his Inkatha
movement and Mandela's more radical ANC “must be now set aside so that we put
the good of the state before the good of political parties.”
“I am overjoyed that the man
Mandela, the husband and the father and the friend, is now free,” said
Buthelezi, the chief minister of a self-governing homeland created by the South
African government. “Nothing will ever take away South Africa's shame for
keeping this man in jail for over 25 years.”
Buthelezi split with the ANC 30
years ago over the armed struggle, but he has exchanged letters with Mandela in
prison and refused to negotiate with the government until the ANC leader was
free.
The lone criticism of De Klerk's
decision came from right-wing whites. The Conservative Party, which won 31% of
the vote in last September's elections, said the release of a “dangerous
criminal” like Mandela is evidence that the government plans to hand over power
to the black majority.
“Mr. Mandela has won a knockout,”
said Conservative spokesman Koos van der Merwe. “Mr. de Klerk has capitulated
completely.”
And, as De Klerk spoke, right-wing
extremists from the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, known by its Afrikaans
initials, AWB, marched in the capital of Pretoria and chanted: “Hang Mandela!”
Police said that AWB supporters scuffled with several bystanders and that two
people were injured.
De Klerk stunned South Africans on
Feb. 2 by lifting the 30-year ban on the ANC, the Pan-Africanist Congress, the
South African Communist Party, and 60 other anti-apartheid groups. He also
lifted restrictions on hundreds of government opponents, removed several
state-of-emergency regulations and declared a moratorium on hangings until
Parliament can consider legislation giving judges more latitude to spare
defendants.
The president has said that he wants
to create a climate for negotiations for power sharing between blacks and
whites. Black leaders are seeking majority rule for the country, in which
blacks outnumber whites 5-to-1, while De Klerk envisions a constitution that
will prevent domination of the white minority by the black majority.
“The government is committed to
bringing about, through negotiation, a new constitution which is fair and just
for all the people of South Africa,” De Klerk said Saturday. “I hope that now
that this chapter has ended, the world and more especially the people of South
Africa will grasp the opportunity and play whatever supportive role can be
played toward a peaceful conclusion.”
De Klerk said that his actions were
not specifically designed to end economic sanctions against his country.
“We are not working against
checklists,” he said. “We are doing what we believe is in the best interests of
South Africa.”
In recent days, the government has
expressed fears about threats to Mandela from right- and left-wing extremists.
While De Klerk said that his officials are discussing security matters with
Mandela's colleagues, he added: “When he is released, he becomes a free man. He
doesn't owe it to me to inform me about his program.”
De Klerk said that Mandela's release
will be unconditional. Six years ago, Mandela had spurned offers from De
Klerk's predecessor, Pioter W. Botha, to renounce violence in exchange for
freedom. Asked if Mandela had repudiated violence, De Klerk said Saturday that
the black leader would have to speak for himself.
The government hopes that Mandela
will become a facilitator for talks by persuading the ANC to publicly move away
from its guerrilla war and accept the government as participant in the
negotiations. For months, key government figures have been talking with Mandela
in the three-bedroom prison home he occupies, and De Klerk has met the prisoner
twice since December.
De Klerk said that Friday night's
talks between the two men “took place in a good spirit.”
“He is a friendly man. I like to
think I am also a friendly man,” De Klerk said with a smile, “He's an elderly
man, he's a dignified man, he's an interesting man.” De Klerk declined,
however, to comment on Mandela's reaction to the news that he would be freed.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, on a 12-day
visit to South Africa, called De Klerk's actions courageous, but he said that
the United States and other countries must maintain pressure on the government
until apartheid is abolished.
“He is out of jail, but not free,”
Jackson said. “Not free to move to the neighborhood of his choice, not free to
send his grandchildren to the school of his choice, not free to vote, not free
to run for office in his own country.”
Source:
Los Angeles Times, February 11, 1990.
1993 Nobel Prizes
Nobel Prizes, annual monetary awards granted
to individuals or institutions for outstanding contributions in the fields of
physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, international peace,
and economic sciences. The Nobel prizes are internationally recognized as the
most prestigious awards in each of these fields. The prizes were established by
Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Bernhard Nobel, who set up a fund for
them in his will. The first Nobel prizes were awarded on December 10, 1901, the
fifth anniversary of Nobel’s death.
F.W de Klerk and Mandela shared Nobel Peace Prize
F. W. de Klerk of South Africa and African National Congress
President Nelson Mandela shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for 'great political
courage' in working together to negotiate an end to apartheid in their country
and the birth of a nonracial democracy.
President
F. W. de Klerk of South Africa and African National
Congress President Nelson Mandela
shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for 'great political courage' in working
together to negotiate an end to apartheid in their country and the birth of a
nonracial democracy. The other Nobel awards, which were valued in 1993 at
$825,000 in each category, went mainly to North Americans; all of the awards
were bestowed as usual on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
Peace.
Nelson
Mandela, born in 1918, was the key leader
of the ANC in its long campaign to end apartheid in South Africa. Convicted of
treason and sentenced to life in prison in 1964, he became the most famous
political prisoner in the world. Frederik
Willem de Klerk, born in 1936 of Afrikaner lineage, became president of
South Africa in 1989 and soon after moved toward the dismantling of apartheid.
He released Mandela from prison in 1990; subsequently the two, in an uneasy
alliance, moved precariously through the minefields of South African politics
toward the goal of universal suffrage and a representative government.
Literature.
Toni
Morrison was the first African-American, and
eighth woman, to become a Nobel laureate in literature. Born in 1931 in Lorain,
OH, to onetime sharecroppers, she graduated from Howard University and earned a
master's degree in English from Cornell. While an editor at Random House she
published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, in 1970; five others
followed. Morrison has drawn upon her experience as a black woman in the United
States to produce work with great storytelling power. Her novel Beloved
won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988. Sales of her books reportedly at
least doubled after the Nobel announcement.
Economics.
Robert
W. Fogel of the University of Chicago and
Douglass C. North of Washington University in St. Louis shared the Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Science. The first economic historians to be so
honored, they were praised for their rigorous use of modern statistical
techniques as a tool to study the past.
Fogel, born in New York City in 1926
to Russian immigrants, earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. Time
on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, a book he coauthored
in 1974, triggered controversy with its thesis that slavery was an efficient
system for growing cotton and that slaves were treated as economic assets
rather than as concentration camp inmates. A later book clarified his findings
and emphasized his moral opposition to slavery. He was the fourth consecutive
University of Chicago economist to win the Nobel award.
North, born in Cambridge, MA, in
1920, received his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. He
has taught at Washington University since 1983. A theoretician concerned with
the evolution of institutions, he emphasizes that free-market forces are not
sufficient to generate growth but need a strong legal and political framework.
Physiology or Medicine.
For their independent discoveries in
1977 of a form of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) dubbed junk DNA, Richard J. Roberts, a research director
of New England Biolabs, and Phillip A.
Sharp, who heads the biology department of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
They found that most genes in cells of higher organisms are not arranged in a
continuous strand, as previously thought, but are interrupted by introns,
so-called nonsense segments of DNA that contain no genetic codes. They also
found that in protein building only the meaningful DNA sections are copied and
then spliced together. Their discoveries led to new understanding of genetic
disease.
Roberts, born in Derby, England, in
1943, did his doctoral work at the University of Sheffield and his postdoctoral
work at Harvard. Sharp, born in Falmouth, KY, in 1944, earned his doctorate at
the University of Illinois.
Physics.
The physics award honoured Joseph H. Taylor and his then-graduate student
Russell A. Hulse for their discovery
in 1974 of a double pulsar, two stars rotating around a mutual axis. Further
study of gravitational forces exerted by the pair of pulsars help support
Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.
Taylor, a professor of physics at
Princeton University, was born in Philadelphia in 1941 and earned his doctorate
in astronomy from Harvard. Hulse, who conducts research in hydrogen fission at
Princeton University's Plasma Physics Laboratory, was born in New York City in
1950; he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts.
Chemistry.
Kary
B. Mullis cowinner of the Nobel Prize in
chemistry, did his prizewinning work at the Cetus Corporation of Emeryville,
CA, where he invented the polymerase chain reaction, a technique enabling
scientists to take bits of DNA from a cell and make huge numbers of copies
quickly. Use of the technique revolutionized biology, medical diagnostics, and
criminal investigation. Michael Smith,
who shared the 1993 award, discovered a way to mutate and reprogram specific
pieces of DNA strands; potential applications of his findings range from cures
for genetic diseases to methods for increasing crop resistance to pests.
Mullis, born in 1944 in Lenoir, NC,
received his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California at
Berkeley. Smith, a Canadian, was born in Blackpool, England, in 1932 and earned
his doctorate at the University of Manchester in England; he is director of the
biotechnology laboratory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Nelson
Mandela became president of South Africa in May 1994 after winning the
country’s first democratic elections. The voting, held between April 26 and
April 29, mobilized the country’s population and ended centuries of political oppression.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
Nelson Mandela's Inaugural Address as
the First Black President of South Africa
Nobel Peace Prize winner and former political prisoner, Nelson
Mandela, was elected president of the Republic of South Africa in April 1994 in
the country’s first multiracial elections. Previously, South Africa had been
ruled under the restrictions of apartheid, a policy of racial
segregation. Mandela delivered the following inaugural address on May 10, 1994,
in Pretoria, South Africa, in front of more than 100,000 people.
Nelson
Mandela's Inaugural Address
Your majesties, your royal
highnesses, distinguished guests, comrades and friends:
Today, all of us do, by our presence
here, and by our celebrations in other parts of our country and the world,
confer glory and hope to newborn liberty.
Out of the experience of an
extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long must be born a society of
which all humanity will be proud.
Our daily deeds as ordinary South
Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce
humanity's belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the
human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.
All this we owe both to ourselves
and to the peoples of the world who are so well represented here today.
To my compatriots, I have no
hesitation in saying that each one of us is as intimately attached to the soil
of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the
mimosa trees of the bushveld. Each time one of us touches the soil of this
land, we feel a sense of personal renewal. The national mood changes as the
seasons change.
We are moved by a sense of joy and
exhilaration when the grass turns green and the flowers bloom.
That spiritual and physical oneness
we all share with this common homeland explains the depth of the pain we all
carried in our hearts as we saw our country tear itself apart in terrible
conflict, and as we saw it spurned, outlawed, and isolated by the peoples of
the world, precisely because it has become the universal base of the pernicious
ideology and practice of racism and racial oppression.
We, the people of South Africa, feel
fulfilled that humanity has taken us back into its bosom, that we, who were
outlaws not so long ago, have today been given the rare privilege to be host to
the nations of the world on our own soil.
We thank all our distinguished
international guests for having come to take possession with the people of our
country of what is, after all, a common victory for justice, for peace, for
human dignity.
We trust that you will continue to
stand by us as we tackle the challenges of building peace, prosperity,
nonsexism, nonracialism, and democracy.
We deeply appreciate the role that
the masses of our people and their democratic, religious, women, youth,
business, traditional, and other leaders have played to bring about this
conclusion. Not least among them is my second deputy president, the Honorable
F. W. de Klerk.
We would also like to pay tribute to
our security forces, in all their ranks, for the distinguished role they have
played in securing our first democratic elections and the transition to
democracy, from bloodthirsty forces which still refuse to see the light.
The time for the healing of the
wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The
time to build is upon us. We have, at last, achieved our political
emancipation. We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the
continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender, and other
discrimination.
We succeeded to take our last steps
to freedom in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the
construction of a complete, just, and lasting peace. We have triumphed in the
effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter
into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans,
both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their
hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity—a rainbow nation at
peace with itself and the world.
As a token of its commitment to the
renewal of our country, the new interim government of national unity will, as a
matter of urgency, address the issue of amnesty for various categories of our
people who are currently serving terms of imprisonment.
We dedicate this day to all the
heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in
many ways and surrendered their lives so that we could be free. Their dreams
have become reality. Freedom is their reward.
We are both humbled and elevated by
the honor and privilege that you, the people of South Africa, have bestowed on
us, as the first president of a united, democratic, nonracial, and nonsexist
South Africa, to lead our country out of the valley of darkness.
We understand it still that there is
no easy road to freedom. We know it well that none of us acting alone can
achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for
national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world.
Let there be justice for all. Let
there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water, and salt for all. Let
each know that for each the body, the mind, and the soul have been freed to
fulfill themselves.
Never, never, and never again shall
it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by
another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. The sun shall
never set on so glorious a human achievement. Let freedom reign. God bless
Africa.
HEALING FOR THE UGLY PAST
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created in 1995 to
help uncover some of the injustices and abuses that occurred in South Africa
under apartheid, the country’s former policy of racial segregation. In
uncovering the country’s past, the commission hopes to begin the process of
healing.
Hard Truths
By Tina Rosenberg
On April 15, 1996, in the town hall
of East London, a candle burned on stage as Archbishop Desmond Tutu led a crowd
of about 400 people in prayer and the singing of South Africa's new national
anthem. He welcomed Nohle Mohapi to the witness chair. She told the hushed
audience of her husband's death in police custody in 1976, which had been
reported as a suicide. She also talked of her own six months in solitary
confinement for her work as secretary to Stephen Biko, the charismatic head of
the Black Consciousness Movement, who was killed by police in 1977. South
Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was underway.
The commission grew out of South
Africa's transition to democracy. It has two goals: to help heal the victims of
political violence of the apartheid years, and to help heal society and create
a new culture of respect for human rights, where such things could never happen
again. It is supposed to uncover the large truth about violence, the patterns of
abuses, and how they were ordered. But it is also responsible for telling the
small truths: the sewing machines wrecked, the shacks burned, the bullet that
cost the peaceful protester his eye. In mid-1998 the commission is scheduled to
present a report on the violence to President Nelson Mandela, who will then
make it public. But even prior to the final report, the commission's hearings,
which are conducted in public and in many cases televised nationally, have had
a huge impact.
There are 17 commissioners, and they
are black, white, Indian, and Coloured and represent the whole political
spectrum in South Africa. One group of commissioners was charged with listening
to the stories of victims like Nohle Mohapi. These commissioners spent over a
year traveling to a different city each week, taking testimony. Any victim of
political violence committed between March 1960 and May 1994—whether it is the
black maid whose son was taken away by the police and never seen again, or the
white country-club woman whose arm was injured by a bomb set by a guerrilla of
the African National Congress—could come and testify.
Their cases were investigated by the
commission's 60-person staff and their testimony covered by dozens of
journalists. Each person who testified sat at the witness stand with a friend
or relative on one side and a Truth Commission staff member on the other. The
staff member was there to put an arm around the witness' shoulder and provide
tissues when the crying began. During the first day's hearing, Archbishop Tutu
broke down in tears twice. These commissioners completed their task in 1997
after reviewing more than 15,000 victims’ statements, hundreds in public
hearings like Nohle Mohapi’s.
A second group of commissioners is
responsible for thinking of ways to heal the victims. They have made
recommendations for emergency reparations, such as scholarships for the
children of victims who cannot attend school. They have identified hundreds of
people as victims of gross human rights abuses who will receive generous
reparations for a number of years. In the final report they will make
recommendations for more ambitious reparations—for example, a community health
clinic named for a murdered victim.
The third group of commissioners is
the most controversial and original. It is the commission that listens not to
the victims, but to those who have murdered, tortured, or planted bombs.
Even before the elections of 1994
that brought Nelson Mandela to the presidency, people in South Africa were
thinking about how to heal the wounds of the apartheid regime. As a condition
for elections, apartheid leaders wanted an amnesty, to ensure that the new
government would not prosecute them for the thousands of assassinations they
had committed to keep power. Mandela did not want to tear the country apart and
risk the destruction of the transition by whites, who still ran the police and
military. He and other ANC leaders agreed to an amnesty.
Other countries in transition from
dictatorship to democracy had done the same thing, for much the same reasons.
But some, notably in Latin America, had hit on the consolation prize of a truth
commission—a group of respected citizens from across the political spectrum who
interviewed thousands of victims of the dictatorship to write the true story.
Amnesty robs society of justice. But with a truth commission, at least society
would know about the dictatorship's crimes. Victims would have the satisfaction
of seeing a state that had always denied any involvement in torture or murder
acknowledge that, yes, we tortured and murdered.
What South Africa did that was new
was combine the idea of trials and the truth commission. Amnesty has not been
granted in blanket fashion, but only to individuals who have earned it by
telling the truth. Anyone who committed a politically motivated crime could
tell his story to the Truth Commission—and, through the television cameras that
filmed each hearing, to South Africa as a whole. The criminal had to tell all
the details, including the names of other participants. If he did that, he
could win amnesty. Those who did not apply for amnesty by May 10, 1997, can be
prosecuted.
By the closing date, more than 7000
people had applied, more than a third of them on the last day. According to the
Amnesty Committee's chairman, the vast majority are frivolous ploys from
criminals desperate to get out of jail. Such applicants will certainly be turned
down. But those who confess to serious crimes will get a hearing, conducted
before an audience and television cameras. By February 1998, the committee had
reviewed 3515 applications. Only 195 applicants had received hearings, 140 of
whom were granted amnesty. Most rejected cases were turned down because the
crime was not deemed politically motivated.
People guilty of political violence
have applied for amnesty because they know amnesty has lured others to come
forward and talk. The evidence those applicants provide means that political
criminals who chose not to apply stand a much greater chance of going to jail.
Many people, especially relatives of
some prominent victims of apartheid, have criticized the amnesty provision.
They feel it removes the possibility of justice in many crimes. Others feel
that South Africa's justice system is so weak right now that justice could only
have been done in a handful of cases. Only a few people have been tried, and
some have been acquitted. In the most notorious case, apartheid-era Defense
Minister Magnus Malan and 15 other defendants were acquitted for their
participation in a massacre. However, there have been convictions.
Eugene de Kock, who headed a
notorious death squad, was sentenced to two life terms for murder and other
crimes. Some of the trials are being helped by the evidence collected by the
Amnesty Committee. And in turn, the fact that trials are taking place
encouraged more criminals to apply for amnesty.
Most governments have the resources
to try only the most high-profile crimes. Few ordinary victims, therefore,
would have seen justice done. At least the Truth Commission offers them the
chance to tell their story and to hear their own torturers or the murderers of
their loved ones confess.
The Truth Commission has had mixed
success. The amnesty provision has helped uncover the truth about many of South
Africa's best-known crimes. When Stephen Biko died in police custody in 1977,
the official inquest said he died in a scuffle with police. Now, five policemen
have confessed they beat him to death. They also have confessed to four other
famous unsolved crimes. Fifty high-level policemen and the former minister of
law and order have applied for amnesty for several famous bombings that the
white government had previously blamed on the African National Congress (ANC).
In addition, 460 members of the ANC, including South African deputy president
Thabo Mbeki, Mandela's likely successor, applied for amnesty for acts they
ordered or committed in the struggle against apartheid. Top officials of the
apartheid-era governments have been less interested. F. W. de Klerk, the last
apartheid-era president, apologized for apartheid's crimes but said his
government had not condoned the alleged crimes. He later said he and other
National Party members would no longer cooperate with the Truth Commission.
Except for the families of a few
victims, black South Africans seem to have given the Truth Commission strong
support. Its hearings are daily front-page news in the black newspapers. Many
of the victims who testified say the act of telling their stories in front of
the nation was therapeutic and allowed them to move on with their lives. Many
did not ask for prosecution. “All I want is the security policemen to give me
back the photograph they took away 20 years ago,” said Ncediwe Mfeti,
testifying about the disappearance of her husband, Phindile.
Even this heartbreaking forgiveness
has failed, however, to touch many whites. It has had the most impact among the
whites who were always aware of and opposed to apartheid's crimes. But most of
those who closed their eyes for decades either ignore the commission, refuse to
believe what they hear, or simply continue to tell themselves that if police
killed student leaders, they must have had good reason. The commission has not
succeeded in persuading many whites to take responsibility for the crimes
committed in their name. But it is likely that nothing could.
About the Author: Tina Rosenberg is the author of The Haunted Land:
Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism, winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize
for general nonfiction.
Nobel
Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu heads Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Mandela,
then president of South Africa, selected Archbishop Tutu to serve as head of
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The purpose of the commission was to
investigate and collect testimony on human rights violations and other crimes
during the period from 1960 through 1994 and to consider amnesty for those who
confessed their participation in atrocities.
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu, born in 1931, South African clergyman, civil rights
activist, and Nobel laureate. Born in Klerksdorp, in what is now North-West
Province, Tutu was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1960. He was named dean of
Johannesburg in 1975 and bishop of Lesotho in 1977; the following year, he
became the first black general secretary of the South African Council of
Churches. In 1984 Bishop Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition
of “the courage and heroism shown by black South Africans in their use of
peaceful methods in the struggle against apartheid.” Apartheid, South Africa's
system of racial separatism, has since been dismantled. Tutu was elected bishop
of Johannesburg in 1984; in 1986 he was made archbishop of Cape Town and
titular head of the Anglican church in South Africa.
In November 1995 Nelson Mandela, then president of South Africa,
selected Archbishop Tutu to serve as head of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. The purpose of the commission was to investigate and collect
testimony on human rights violations and other crimes during the period from
1960 through 1994 and to consider amnesty for those who confessed their
participation in atrocities. In June 1996 Tutu retired from his positions as
archbishop of Cape Town and head of the Anglican church in South Africa so that
he could devote himself to his role on the commission. For more than two years
he presided over the testimony from hundreds of perpetrators and victims of
apartheid-era violence. The commission issued its final report in October 1998.
Tutu wrote of the insights he gained from his work on the commission in No Future Without Forgiveness (1999).
SOUTH AFRICA LEADERSHIP AFTER MADIBA’S
SINGLE TERM
Thabo Mbeki succeeds Mandela as
President
On May 10, 1994, Mbeki was sworn in as first deputy
president in the new government headed by Nelson Mandela. Mandela, who
announced in 1996 that he would not seek another term as president, groomed
Mbeki to succeed him.
In late 1997 Mbeki succeeded Mandela as president of
the ANC. Following the ANC’s victory in June 1999 elections, Mbeki was selected
as the next president of South Africa.
Thabo Mbeki, born in 1942, South African activist, leader of the
African National Congress (ANC) from 1997 to 2007, and president of South
Africa since 1999. The son of Govan Mbeki, a prominent ANC leader, Mbeki was
born in Idutywa, in a region of southeastern South Africa then known as the
Transkei. Mbeki joined the ANC Youth League as a young teenager in 1956. He attended
Lovedale secondary school near Alice until a strike closed the school. Mbeki
then returned to the Transkei region and graduated from St. John’s High School
in Umtata in 1959. He moved to Johannesburg and enrolled as a correspondence
student in economics with the University of London.
While in Johannesburg, Mbeki was elected national secretary of the
African Students’ Association. The organization eventually collapsed following
the arrest of many of its members by the South African government. In 1960 the
South African government banned the ANC and other organizations that were
active in opposition to apartheid, the government’s system of forced
segregation of the races. Mbeki then worked underground as an opposition
organizer. He left South Africa illegally in 1962, on instructions from the
ANC. He went first to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), then to Tanzania, and
finally to Britain. There Mbeki studied at the University of Sussex where he
received a master’s degree in economics in 1966. He worked for the ANC out of
London from 1966 until 1970 when he went to the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) for military training.
In 1971 Mbeki served as assistant secretary of the ANC’s
Revolutionary Council in Lusaka, Zambia. He undertook missions for the ANC to
Botswana, Swaziland, and Nigeria during the 1970s. In 1975, at the age of 33,
Mbeki became the youngest member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee.
Three years later he became political secretary to ANC president Oliver Tambo.
In the early 1980s Mbeki assumed the position of director of the ANC’s
information office where he played a significant role in focusing the
international media’s attention on apartheid. In 1989 he was named head of the
ANC’s department of international affairs.
After the ban on the ANC was lifted in 1990, Mbeki returned to
South Africa to participate in negotiations with the government over the future
of the country. He succeeded Oliver Tambo as national chair of the ANC in 1993
(Tambo had been elected national chair after relinquishing the presidency to
Nelson Mandela in 1991). Free multiracial elections were held for the first
time in South Africa in 1994, with the ANC gaining the support of the majority
of voters. On May 10, 1994, Mbeki was sworn in as first deputy president in the
new government headed by Nelson Mandela. Mandela, who announced in 1996 that he
would not seek another term as president, groomed Mbeki to succeed him.
In late 1997 Mbeki succeeded Mandela as president of the ANC.
Following the ANC’s victory in June 1999 elections, Mbeki was selected as the
next president of South Africa. Under Mbeki, the government supplied
electricity and power to millions of South Africans and built thousands of
houses for the poor. In 2004 the ANC again dominated legislative elections and
Mbeki was reelected the country’s president. However, he lost the presidency of
the ANC at a party conference in December 2007. ANC delegates overwhelmingly
supported Mbeki’s charismatic rival, Jacob
Zuma. Zuma’s image as a champion of the rights of ordinary people
contrasted with that of Mbeki, whom the rank and file of the party viewed as
aloof.
FACTS ABOUT… South Africa
South Africa, southernmost country in Africa, a land of
diversity and division in its geography, people, and political history.
Physically, tall mountain ranges separate fertile coastal plains from high
interior plateaus. The grassland and desert of the plateaus hide pockets of
amazing mineral wealth, particularly in gold and diamonds.
Black Africans comprise more than three quarters of
South Africa’s population, and whites, Coloureds (people of mixed race), and
Asians (mainly Indians) make up the remainder. Among the black population there
are numerous ethnic groups and 11 official languages. Until the 1990s, whites
dominated the nonwhite majority population under the political system of racial
segregation known as apartheid. Apartheid ended in the early 1990s, but South
Africa is still recovering from the racial inequalities in political power,
opportunity, and lifestyle. The end of apartheid led to a total reorganization
of the government, which since 1994 has been a nonracial democracy based on
majority rule.
South Africa is bordered on the north by Namibia,
Botswana, and Zimbabwe; on the east by Mozambique, Swaziland, and the Indian
Ocean; and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. The nation of Lesotho forms an
enclave in the eastern part of the country.
The country is divided into nine provinces. These
provinces are Gauteng, Limpopo Province (formerly Northern Province),
Mpumalanga, North-West Province, Free State, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape,
Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal. The country has three capitals: Cape Town is
the legislative capital; Pretoria, the executive capital; and Bloemfontein, the
judicial capital.
South Africa stretches for some 1,500 km (900 mi) from
east to west and 1,000 km (600 mi) from north to south. It has an area of
1,219,090 sq km (470,693 sq mi). A mountainous ridge called the Great
Escarpment forms a boundary between the interior plateaus and the coastal
regions.
The interior plateaus occupy about two-thirds of South
Africa, reaching their greatest height in the southeastern Drakensberg
Mountains, part of the Great Escarpment. Njesuthi, a peak of the Drakensberg,
is the highest point in the country at 3,446 m (11,306 ft). The plateau region
consists of three main areas: the High Veld, the Middle Veld, and the Bush
Veld. The High Veld, the largest of the three areas, is the southern continuation
of the great African plateau that stretches north to the Sahara. In South
Africa it ranges in elevation from about 1,200 to 1,800 m (about 4,000 to 6,000
ft) and is characterized by level or gently sloping terrain. Land use varies
from cattle grazing in the west to mixed farming (both crops and livestock) in
the center to growing grain, especially maize (corn), in the east. The northern
boundary of the High Veld is marked by the gold-bearing reef of the
Witwatersrand, which became the industrial heartland of South Africa in the
20th century.
West of the High Veld is the Middle Veld,
which lies mainly at an elevation of 600 to 1,200 m (2,000 to 4,000 ft). The
Middle Veld is part of the larger Kalahari Basin that extends north to Botswana
and Namibia and contains the southernmost portion of the Kalahari Desert.
Surface water is rare in the Middle Veld because the soils, which consist
largely of unconsolidated sand, quickly absorb rainfall. Plant life in this
arid place is limited to drought-resistant grasses, bushes, and shrubs. Much of
the area is used for sheep grazing. North of the High Veld is the Bush Veld
(also called the Transvaal Basin). This region averages less than 1,200 m
(4,000 ft) in elevation. It is broken into basins by rock ridges, and slopes
downward from the Transvaal Drakensberg in the east to the Limpopo River in the
west. The Bush Veld receives more rain than the High Veld or Middle Veld and
includes large areas of intensive cultivation as well as mixed-farming and
cattle-grazing districts.
Between the edge of the high central plateau
region and the eastern and southern coastline the land descends in a series of
abrupt steps. In the east an interior belt of hill country gives way to a
low-lying plain known as the Eastern Low Veld. In the south, two plateaus, the
Great, or Central, Karoo and the Little, or Southern, Karoo, are situated above
the coastal plain. The plateau of the Great Karoo is separated from the lower
Little Karoo by the Swartberg mountain range. A second range, the Langeberg,
separates the Little Karoo from the coastal plain. Both the plateaus and the
coastal plain are areas of mixed farming.
The southwestern edge of the central plateau region is
marked by irregular ranges of folded mountains which descend abruptly to a
narrow coastal plain, broken by the isolated peak of Table Mountain. The lower
parts of this southwestern region are the centers of wine and fruit industries.
The dominant South African political party is the
African National Congress (ANC). Major opposition parties include the
Democratic Alliance and the Inkatha Freedom Party. Other opposition parties
include the United Democratic Movement, Independent Democrats, African
Christian Democratic Party, and Freedom Front Plus.
The ANC, founded in 1912, spearheaded the
liberation struggle against apartheid. Nelson Mandela led the ANC from the
early 1950s until the late 1990s. The ANC was based within the country until it
was banned in 1960 and forced to operate from outside South Africa. As a broad
coalition of interests and a liberation movement, its membership overlapped
substantially with the South African Communist Party (SACP, founded in 1921 as
the Communist Party of South Africa). The ANC entered the 1994 elections in
alliance with the SACP and the main trade union federation, COSATU. In the 1994
election the ANC won the support of most black constituents, except in
KwaZulu-Natal, and about one-third of Asian and Coloured votes, but few white
votes. The ANC has dominated each subsequent legislative election. Its policies
are nonracial and seek to redress the injustices of the apartheid years.
The Democratic Party (DP), found;ed in 1989, was
the successor to the relatively liberal white traditions of the earlier
Progressive Party. The DP played an important mediating role in the
negotiations leading to agreement on the interim constitution. Support for the
DP increased markedly prior to the 1999 elections. The DP joined forces with
several other parties in 2000 to form a coalition called the Democratic
Alliance.
The Inkatha Freedom Party, founded in 1975, is an
ethnically based party commanding the support of most Zulu in KwaZulu-Natal. It
is more conservative on most issues than the ANC and seeks to maximize
provincial power.
Mandela Asserts New Era
It's a
‘New Era,’ Asserts Officially Elected Mandela
Los Angeles Times
May 10, 1994
The following report describes Nelson Mandela's inauguration as
South Africa's first black president. His election marked the beginning of
majority rule in South Africa.
By Bob Drogin
Cape Town, South Africa—Nelson
Mandela brought three centuries of bitter white rule to a dramatic close
Monday, here in the colonial city where it all began, when he was unanimously
elected South Africa's first black president by its first all-race Parliament.
“Today we are entering a new era,”
he told a wildly cheering crowd outside City Hall. He spoke from the same
balcony where he addressed the world four years ago after his release from more
than a quarter of a century in prison.
Moments later, Desmond Tutu, the
Anglican archbishop and Nobel laureate, appeared beside him with a smile as
dazzling as his bright magenta cassock.
As always, Tutu was less restrained.
“We are free today!” he shouted gleefully, waving his arms to the tens of
thousands who packed the Grand Parade. “We are free today! All of us, black and
white together!”
This historic day, which will be
followed today by the formal inauguration in Pretoria, began with an emotional
swearing-in ceremony for the 400 new legislators. They convened in what was
once the inner sanctum of apartheid: the great hall of Parliament, where a
handful of whites enshrined racism and hatred into law.
The opening prayer paraphrased
another hero of black liberation, Abraham Lincoln: “For the first time in
history, we have a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Outgoing President Frederick W. de
Klerk, Africa's last white ruler, showed Mandela to De Klerk's old green
leather seat in the government front bench. It was from there that De Klerk
rose in February, 1990, to repudiate apartheid and announce the reforms that
freed Mandela and legalized his African National Congress and other black
opposition groups.
Mandela walked slowly down the
benches, shaking hands and smiling. Then, in a show of reconciliation, he
beamed broadly and crossed the floor to embrace his most bitter black rival,
Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi. The room erupted in applause.
Then came the oath of office.
Mandela, his estranged wife, Winnie, his new deputy president, Thabo Mbeki, and
seven other senior members of the ANC were in the first group called to raise
their right hands and swear allegiance to what long seemed an impossible dream:
a democratic South Africa.
Next to sign the oath were De Klerk
and nine of his National Party ministers and deputies. De Klerk, 58, now
becomes the second deputy president; six of his followers have been named to the
new coalition Cabinet.
Then came the rest: former ANC
guerrillas, political prisoners and exiles, current political rivals and
aspirants, as well as many of the whites who once passed the legal rules of
racial oppression—and later renounced them.
They changed the color and face of
South Africa's power elite in just more than an hour.
Albertina Sisulu, wife of
80-year-old Walter Sisulu, who first brought Mandela into the ANC and who
suffered beside Mandela for most of his 27 years as a political prisoner, next
rose to offer Mandela's name in nomination. Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC general
secretary, offered the second.
Up at the podium, Chief Justice
Michael Corbett paused in his black robes as the chamber grew silent. “Only one
candidate has been nominated, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela,” he intoned.
Then he paused again. “I hereby
declare Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela duly elected president of the Republic of
South Africa on behalf ...” He was cut off as every member of Parliament and
hundreds of guests rose in a deafening roar of cheers and applause.
“On behalf of all the members
present, I congratulate you, sir, on being elected president of the Republic of
South Africa,” Corbett finally finished.
Mandela, 75 and silver-haired,
looked dapper as he acknowledged the honor in a gray striped suit with a white
carnation in the left lapel.
Another honor came from a
traditional bare-chested imbongi, or praise singer, from Mandela's Tembu
tribe. Wearing animal skins and waving a long whisk, he bellowed a chant that
recalled Mandela's life: from herd boy to political prisoner to the presidency.
The story had special poignancy
here, beside the Cape of Good Hope, in the port where Dutch sailors founded the
first white settlement in 1652 and began the European colonization of southern
Africa.
Most of the rest of Africa shed the
yoke of white rule and colonialism, especially after World War II. But the
Afrikaners here, as descendants of those early settlers are called, moved the
other way. Starting in 1948, with the election of the first National Party
government, they systematically imposed Draconian laws to enshrine white
supremacy.
They used the whites-only Parliament
to ban interracial mixing in schools, hospitals, neighborhoods and marriage.
They forced families apart, bulldozed black homes from white areas and forced
millions at gunpoint to desolate, reservation-like homelands in a vain attempt
to separate the races.
And, in the end, they used a
ruthless police-state apparatus to oppress tens of millions of people, strictly
regulating their lives on the basis of their hair, their noses and the shade of
their skin.
Like the colonialists before them,
the Afrikaners imprisoned their enemies on Robben Island, a notorious penal
colony seven miles off Cape Town in the shark-infested waters of Table Bay. Its
hazy outline was visible Monday even as Mandela spoke at City Hall, calling it
“a dungeon built to stifle the spirit of freedom.”
“For three centuries, that island
was seen as a place to which outcasts could be banished,” Mandela said. “The
names of those who were incarcerated on Robben Island is a roll call of
resistance fighters and democrats.”
Ending that infamy and that struggle
was what Monday was all about. “Where apartheid was put on the books, democracy
will now replace it,” Popo Molefe, the new ANC premier of Northwest province,
said as he arrived at the Parliament building. “Today apartheid is really
dead.”
Ramaphosa—chief ANC negotiator
during talks that led to the new constitution and election—grinned as he
mounted the steps. “We were thinking of storming it,” he said. “Now we can walk
in gently.”
Many legislators arrived with their
spouses. Trevor Manuel, who will be in Mandela's Cabinet, brought his
white-haired mother, Euphemia. “This is the best Mother's Day present,” she
said.
Joe Slovo, the Communist Party chief
who was considered public enemy No. 1 by the apartheid regime, showed off his
trademark red socks. “From most-wanted to member of Parliament,” he said,
shaking his head in wonder.
Moments later, two other living
symbols of change walked up the cobblestone path. Tall and blond, Willem
Verwoerd pointed to the legislative office building named for his late
grandfather, Hendrik F. Verwoerd, the Afrikaner prime minister considered the
architect of apartheid.
“I think this is one of the names
that should be changed soonest,” he said.
His wife, Melanie, a new ANC Member
of Parliament, smiled. “Even for whites, it's a day of liberation,” she said.
HISTORICAL
ESSAY
South
Africa Confronts Its Past
In 1993 South Africa took critical
steps toward a multiracial government and majority rule. In an article for the
1994 Collier’s Year Book, author William Minter outlined the history of South
Africa’s social, political, ethnic, and economic landscape. Minter traces the
region’s agrarian beginnings, its Dutch and British colonization, and the
turbulent 20th century, marked by the beginning and end of apartheid. South
Africa’s ongoing struggle for democracy culminated with the election of
President Nelson Mandela in 1994.
South
Africa Confronts Its Past
By
William Minter
Africans and Europeans
The territory now known as the
Republic of South Africa, an area nearly twice the size of Texas, has an
estimated population of almost 40 million people. Until about 3,000 years ago
the inhabitants lived by hunting and gathering. Between 1000 b.c. and a.d. 1000
cattle-raising and agriculture gradually spread from the north. People thought
to speak languages of the Bantu family dominated among the agriculturalists and
imposed their culture by intermarriage and conquest. When European ships first
rounded southern Africa in 1487, the region was inhabited in the arid west by
Khoikhoi herders and San hunter-gatherers (called Hottentots and Bushmen,
respectively, by the Europeans), who spoke languages collectively called
Khoisan. Living in the east were agricultural peoples who spoke languages of
the Bantu family, antecedents of modern Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, and Sotho; their
descendants are now commonly referred to as blacks or Africans.
The first permanent European
settlement was made at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 when the Dutch East India
Company established a refreshment station for ships. Under Dutch rule the
settlement, the forerunner of today's Cape Town, expanded slowly inland, coming
into conflict with the pastoralist Khoikhoi, many of whom were killed or forced
into servitude. Slaves were also imported from elsewhere in Africa and from
Asia, especially the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). In 1713 a smallpox epidemic
ravaged the Khoikhoi in the Cape Town area, leaving them with little capacity
for further resistance. Although they and the San hunter-gatherers mounted
sporadic raids against white settlers until late in the 18th century, the
whites killed off those in these two groups who tried to maintain their
independence.
Despite significant miscegenation,
the Cape settlement was a highly stratified and racially divided society. The
whites, including French and German as well as Dutch settlers, were at the top;
below them were people called Coloured, with mixed Khoikhoi, white, and foreign
slave ancestry. Both whites and Coloureds spoke a local form of Dutch that came
to be called Afrikaans ('African'). Whites speaking this language were later
known as Boers (meaning farmers), then as Afrikaners.
The port of Cape Town served the
Dutch East India Company's trade with Asia. In nearby areas white farmers
raised cattle and sheep, grew wheat, and made wine on land taken from the
Khoikhoi, and they marketed what they produced to the company and to the urban
population. Farther from the port, settlers known as trekboers concentrated on
hunting, as well as on raising sheep and cattle. Although they lived on the
periphery of the market economy, they still depended on supplies of essential goods
from Cape Town.
Toward the end of the 18th century
trekboers moving further east and north began to encounter Bantu-speaking
farmers, who proved much more formidable than the Khoikhoi and San. The white
settlers referred to the Bantu speakers successively as Kaffirs (originally an
Arabic word meaning infidel), natives, Bantu, and, finally, blacks or Africans.
The whites propagated the historical myth that their new opponents had only
arrived on South African territory at about the same time as they themselves
had. When the encounter on the eastern frontier took place in the late 18th and
the 19th centuries, however, Bantu-speaking peoples had already been living in
the eastern third of what is now the Republic of South Africa for roughly 1,000
years.
British Sway
The 19th century was marked by a
series of migrations and wars pitting whites against whites, whites against
blacks, and blacks against blacks. The British seized control of the Cape
Colony from the Dutch in 1795, mostly to keep the valuable station on the India
trade route away from the French; permanent transfer of control to the British
was finalized by treaty in 1814. In 1820, British settlers began to arrive, for
the most part taking up residence in the eastern Cape Colony, near Port Elizabeth.
Meanwhile, east of the colony, life
among Africans was in upheaval as Shaka founded a Zulu kingdom in a series of
conquests along the coast of present-day Natal. Many communities and
individuals fled to escape Shaka's advance; the ensuing competition for land
and cattle touched off a series of wars and migrations known as the Mfecane.
When the British abolished slavery
(but not white supremacy) in the Cape Colony in the early 1830s, Afrikaner
resentment of British rule increased dramatically. Starting in 1834, some
12,000 dissatisfied Afrikaners left the colony with their livestock and slaves
and journeyed to as-yet-unconquered land in the interior—a migration later
called the Great Trek. While British and colonial forces fought the Xhosa in a
series of wars, the Afrikaner 'voortrekkers' in the interior clashed with Zulus
and other African groups weakened by the Mfecane; the voortrekkers established
the independent republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal in the 1850s.
In 1843, 15 years after Shaka's death, Britain annexed the short-lived Boer
republic of Natal on the eastern coast. Later the British imported indentured
laborers from India to work sugar plantations, which became the basis of
Natal's economy.
By 1850 the Xhosa had been conquered
by the British. After further fighting, including a significant setback at the
battle of Isandhlwana, British and colonial forces also defeated the Zulus.
When another Bantu-speaking people, the Venda, were overwhelmed by Afrikaner
commandos from the Transvaal in
1898, the white conquest of the African population of South Africa was
complete. By around this time the territories now known as Lesotho, Botswana,
and Swaziland had come under British control separately, as a result of
treaties between their chiefs and the British crown.
Diamond mining had begun in
Kimberley, north of Port Elizabeth, in 1867, and the area was quickly annexed
by Britain. Gold mining was under way two decades later in the
Afrikaner-controlled Transvaal. The two mineral discoveries brought a new
influx of white settlement from England, the European continent, and even from
North America. The mines made southern Africa one of the most important
strategic prizes in the world, and they transformed the region's primarily
agricultural economy to an industrial and urban one.
A century of hostility between the
Afrikaners and the British culminated in the Boer (or Anglo-Boer) War, which
ended in 1902 with British victory over the Afrikaner republics of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The Liberal government that came to power
in Great Britain three years later was approached by Jan Christian Smuts of the
Transvaal and persuaded to grant self-government to the white populations of
the two former Afrikaner republics. Impressed with Britain's responsiveness to
the Afrikaners' appeals, Smuts and his wartime commander in chief, Louis Botha,
became spokesmen for cooperation with Britain and British South Africa. Largely
through their efforts, in May 1910 the Transvaal and the Orange Free State
joined with the Cape Colony and Natal to become provinces in a new Union of
South Africa—a self-governing dominion under the British crown.
While some Africans and most
Coloureds retained the right to vote in Cape Province, the constitution of the
national government, and those of the other provinces, effectively deprived
nonwhites of a political voice. South Africa's racial policies eventually drew
strong criticism from other (especially Asian and African) members of the
Commonwealth of Nations (an association of states once belonging to the British
Empire), and in 1961 the Union of South Africa withdrew from the commonwealth
and became a republic.
Development of Apartheid
Only the white citizens of the newly
formed Union of South Africa enjoyed national political rights. The majority of
both Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking whites agreed on enforcing white
supremacy and racial separation, which was first called segregation and later
known as apartheid ('separateness'). Among the whites, English speakers
predominated in business; the more numerous Afrikaners engaged in farming,
skilled blue-collar occupations, and government service. Coloureds,
concentrated in Cape Province, and Indians, living mainly in Natal, filled many
middle-level and lower-level positions.
The mining and farm economy depended
on low-paid African labor. The Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 confined land
ownership by Africans to less than 13 percent of the territory—areas known as
reserves (nicknamed Bantustans by critics and later called homelands), although
Africans represented more than 70 percent of the population. A pass system was
established that regulated movement of Africans between rural areas and the
cities, blocking them from freely seeking employment.
In 'white' cities and towns
Africans, Coloureds, and Indians were confined to separate housing areas.
Mining was done mainly by male migrant workers from neighboring countries or
from the reserves; they lived in barracks and were forced to leave their
families at home during the contract periods, which lasted from 12 to 18
months.
Disputes in white politics often
centered on control of Africans. Both mine owners (mainly English-speaking
South Africans or foreign investors) and Afrikaner farmers wanted to keep wages
low and to slow down African urbanization. But the manufacturing industry came
to need better-skilled workers who lived permanently in the urban areas.
Afrikaner manual workers were afraid of competition from lower-paid Africans,
and Afrikaner businessmen felt threatened by competition from Indians.
In 1948 the Afrikaner-based National
Party came to power after an election in which it defeated the incumbent United
Party (led by Jan Smuts), which was based on British-Afrikaner cooperation.
Under the National Party, whose strongest support came from rural areas and the
urban white working class, apartheid became more deeply entrenched. Marriage
between whites and Africans or Coloureds was made illegal, racial restrictions
were tightened, and laws were passed that allowed for the execution, without
jury trial, of those who encouraged social change. Bolstered by a voting system
that gave greater weight to rural areas, and by its strong defense of white
privilege, the National Party won election after election; 1993 marked its 45th
consecutive year in power.
In the 1960s the South African
government began deporting millions of Africans to the rural homelands. By 1981
it had declared four of the reserves—Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and
Ciskei—independent countries, but they went unrecognized by the outside world,
which considered them part of South Africa. As apartheid came under increasing
challenge in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the National Party regime reacted
both with repression and with a series of reforms intended to preserve the
essentials of white supremacy.
The Struggle for Democracy
After a series of attempts at
revolt, such as a 1906 rebellion against taxes led by the Zulu chief Bambatha,
Africans in South Africa tried to work within the system to gain equal rights.
In 1912 the African National Congress was founded. Destined to become the
country's leading black nationalist organization, the ANC in its early years
protested against discriminatory measures by making appeals to the British and
South African governments and to the League of Nations. Another strong
supporter of African rights was the South African Communist Party, which
evolved into a multiracial organization.
The young Mohandas Gandhi, who had
founded the Natal Indian Congress in 1894, a year after arriving in Natal from
India to work as a lawyer, waged his first campaign of nonviolent civil
disobedience in 1906, in protest against anti-Indian discrimination. He
continued his campaign in South Africa for the next eight years and was
frequently imprisoned for his activities. The Natal Indian Congress was merged
into the South African Indian Congress in 1920 and eventually joined forces
with the ANC.
After World War II, encouraged by
Allied commitments to freedom expressed during the war and in the United
Nations charter, the ANC Youth League and other groups turned to stronger
action, including strikes. Under the leadership of Nelson Mandela (who was
elected president of the Transvaal ANC in 1953), the ANC organized a civil
rights campaign of defiance of racial laws in the 1950s. The Pan-Africanist
Congress, which split from the ANC in 1959, argued in favor of exclusively
African leadership of the nationalist movement.
At a demonstration by the
Pan-Africanist Congress against pass laws, at Sharpeville in 1960, police
killed 70 members of the unarmed crowd; both the PAC and the ANC were
subsequently banned. In reaction, both groups turned to guerrilla warfare;
Mandela, by then the acknowledged leader of the ANC, formed a guerrilla wing
that engaged in sabotage in urban areas. Disguising himself as a chauffeur and
window cleaner, he evaded arrest for a time, but in 1962 he was captured and
jailed. The next year, Mandela along with several colleagues was convicted of
plotting revolution; he was sentenced to life in prison, where he became a
symbol of political oppression.
Despite condemnation of the South
African government by the United Nations, little concrete international action
was taken against the regime until 1976, when a new generation of protesters,
led by students, staged demonstrations in Soweto (the name comes from
'southwestern townships'), near Johannesburg, against the forced use of the
Afrikaans language in schools. Police fired on the demonstrators and made mass
arrests; violent confrontations between demonstrators and police swept across
Soweto and beyond.
As many as
a thousand Africans were killed in 1976-1977, but new opposition to apartheid
was galvanized, both internally and internationally, and many young people from
the Soweto generation joined the guerrilla army of the ANC in exile. Support
for the opposition movement jumped again after the 1977 killing of activist
Stephen Biko while in police custody; Biko's South African Students'
Organization had pushed for the development of 'Black Consciousness,' stressing
the need for Africans to become politically self-reliant. That same year,
nearly all still-legal antiapartheid organizations were outlawed.
Black
South Africans were encouraged by the independence of Angola and Mozambique in
1975 and of Zimbabwe in 1980. Inside South Africa, banned activists organized
clandestinely. Civic groups, religious organizations, and trade unions
mobilized opposition to apartheid, drawing support not only from Africans,
Coloureds, and Indians but also from an increasing number of whites.
The
government legalized black and nonracial trade unions and instituted other
reforms, hoping to win the support of Coloureds, Indians, and an emerging
African middle class. But opposition to white minority rule escalated
dramatically in the 1980s. Along with low-scale ANC guerrilla action, there
were widespread protests by the newly formed United Democratic Front, a
coalition of hundreds of antiapartheid organizations. International reaction to
government repression culminated in the imposition of partial economic
sanctions by the United States and other countries in 1985 and 1986.
The Tide
Turns
Although
the South African security forces, directly and through proxy forces, did great
damage to neighboring African countries in retaliation for their support of the
ANC, by the end of the decade the South African regime was on the defensive. In
1988, President P. W. Botha agreed to a decade-old UN plan for the independence
of South African-ruled Namibia. His successor, F. W. de Klerk, who took office
the following year, released Mandela, lifted the ban on antiapartheid groups,
and began to ease apartheid restrictions. He also conceded the principle of
eventual voting rights for all South Africans, regardless of race.
In
December 1993 a multiracial council was given supervisory authority over key
governmental functions, pending the country's first open elections (scheduled
for April 1994). De Klerk's government remained in office but was unable to
make major decisions without the approval of the council. The new constitution
and planned elections were still opposed by right-wing groups, including
extreme right-wing Afrikaners and Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, whose
Inkatha Freedom Party ruled the KwaZulu homeland. Meanwhile, de Klerk and
Mandela were jointly awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to
effect a peaceful transition to majority rule in South Africa.
POSTSCRIPT
The Life
and Times of Madiba Nelson Mandela can be summarized in the words of Maya Angelou, U.S. writer and Black
Scholar… something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.
Nelson Mandela,
the first black president of South Africa (1918-2013) and one of the greatest
leaders in the World history. A humane, far-sighted statesman in his lifetime,
he became a legend in his lifetime and became a folk hero after his death.
Madiba,
you have fought a good fight, He has
kept the faith, Continue to Rest in Peace, as
you now belong to the ages AMEN.
The World
will eternally remember his posthumous Birthday every year on July 18.
MANDELAPEDIA, is the encyclopedic
Life and Times of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, 1918-2013.
The
edition was researched by the Trio of
Japheth Odesanya, Prince Henry Ojoye and Femi Alufa; it was
first appeared in The Factor Magazine,
January 2014, World Edition. The remainder of the article was contributed by Anthony Lemon.
© Copyright, FEMI ALUFA POST, 2016.
