Lessons from Mandela’s Rivonia Trial speech
IT WAS an autumn day, on April 20, 1964, in South Africa when Mandela, from the dock of the Rivonia Trial, during the opening of the defence’s case, addressed the world.
The address was dubbed in the media as “(an ideal for which) I am prepared to die”. Over time, some scholars and historians were to regard the speech as one of the greatest in the 20th century.
At the time, Mandela was also presented in the media, perhaps rightfully so, as the Black Pimpernel, for the symbol he had become in the Struggle against the system of white domination and apartheid policies by the whites-only regime. He was to occupy prominent positions and the spotlight since then and over the next decade or so, since the 1952 Defiance Campaign.
In the Defiance Campaign, a programme adopted and waged by the ANC and its allied formations, Mandela was the volunteer-in-chief. The campaign was a programme in which all apartheid’s discriminatory laws of segregation against black people were defied in what became the first militant resistance after the passive protests of the previous four decades (1912, since the formation of the ANC, till 1952).
With the campaign regarded as successful and popular, and having captured the imagination of the public and the attention of the world, there was an ever-raised question on what exactly did the ANC envision and desire. The need for an answer led to what ultimately became known as the Freedom Charter (FC), adopted at the Congress of the People (CoP) on June 26, 1955.
CoP culminated into a summit following widespread consultations with, and collections of demands and desires from, people from all walks of life in South Africa. The consultations were held in rural and urban areas and across all facets of life, such as education, health care, sports and culture, and other sectors and settings.
As a result of the CoP and the adopted FC, the apartheid regime laid charges of treason against 156 leading figures of the ANC and its allied formations in the congress alliance (which were the SA Indian Congress, the SA Coloured People’s Congress and the Congress of Democrats. The trial was the biggest and longest treason trial up until then and lasted four years, stretching from 1956 till 1959.
Mandela was accused number one, (or “Accused-in-Chief”), further raising his profile as the leading voice and visible face in the Struggle for liberation, even though Mandela was not the president of the ANC but the regional president of its Transvaal (an apartheid-era province) regional structure.
It must further be noted that in
December 1961, following the decision by the ANC to adopt military means as a way of taking forward the armed resistance against the regime, Mandela became the commander-in-chief of the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe.
The March 1960 Sharpeville massacre, in which 69 peaceful protesters were gunned down, and the brutal suppression of the stay-at-home campaign meant to protest against SA’s event to celebrate the British granted status as an independent Republic in May 1961, were the main triggers that led to the adoption of the military campaign.
At the closing of the defence’s argument, Mandela delivered a speech, I am Prepared to Die. Mandela told the world about the five decades of a patiently peaceful yet passionate Struggle for freedom from white domination but only for the struggling people to be met by replies of vicious and savage attacks by the government.
The speech concluded with the powerful words: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
The legal debates on how Mandela and his colleagues escaped the death sentence remain, ensuing as part of the literature and reference in legal studies. The point is that they were spared death by capital punishment and they were to serve as rallying point and sources of inspiration for the Struggle in the 1970s and 1980s.
The remainder of the decade of the 1960s, following the 1964 life sentence, gave rise to a lull in that there were no protest activities that took forward the resistance and there was
little military action on the part of liberation armies. It took the formation of South African Students Organisation (Saso), in the late 1960s, to revive an organised resistance that was mounted from the early 1970s.
Having broken from the National Union of South African Students, the Black Consciousness (BC) philosophy-inspired Saso began taking up some campaigns, including those relating to political grievances in addition to those on campuses, in the early 1970s. The first was the 1972 campaign, after successfully helping to create the Black People’s Convection (as an “adult wing” involving those who believed in the BC philosophy over and beyond tertiary students), in which Saso protested against the expulsion of Onkgopotse Tiro. Tiro had delivered a scathing attack against Bantu Education policy at the graduation ceremony of Turfloop University (now University of the North).
A year later, and coincidentally, in 1973, there were mass uprisings by workers in Durban, Pietermaritzburg and surrounding areas, which later spread as far afield as Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and other parts of the country to varying degrees. The uprisings were to continue into the new year and, with some victories scored by workers in the workplaces, and was terminated in 1974.
In the same year, and in the light of the defeat of Portuguese colonisers in Mozambique, Saso held the
pro-Frelimo (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) rallies in what was aimed at mobilising black people in South Africa on the ideals for liberation in South Africa.
With the protest actions and overall resistance activities, the lull was broken and apartheid was back in the spotlight. At that time, Mandela was an entrenched figure in the world, as the symbol of the Struggle against apartheid. His name and face was used as the basis to mobilise for increased and intensified international solidarity actions, including economic sanctions against and diplomatic and other isolations of apartheid South Africa.
It was in the 1980s – beginning with the 1980 student boycotts, the 1984–1986 period of heightened mass resistance in the townships, and the 1987–89 workers’ strike actions and stay-away campaigns – that Mandela’s name would be invoked and used for taking forward a programme of united action for the liberation of our country.
As stated in my other opinion piece, My Father Says – Zindzi Mandela, it was on the February 10, 1985 that Mandela provided the clearest position that he holds, as a person and as a leader of the ANC, on the political situation in the country and on the way forward towards a political settlement in South Africa.
He was released from prison on February 11, 1990, and on April 27, 1994, the first inclusive and all-enfranchised elections were held. Two weeks
later, on May 10, 1994, Mandela was inaugurated as the president of a free and democratic South Africa.
To quote myself: “Lest we forget that our freedom, albeit political, was not freely handed over to us but was Freedom fought and sacrificed for by the multitudes over several generations.” (Katishi Masemola, 2019)
That said, what should be the lessons from this great speech 60 years later and 30 years after the freedom Mandela was prepared to die for was achieved?
One, we should be prepared to die in defence of this freedom rather than allow it to be trampled on by anyone.
Two, we should get any elected government to deliver on promises to turn South Africa into the ideal country Mandela fought for. In doing so, to be selfless and avoid betraying (t)his ideal.
Last, and more importantly, we should learn not to take this freedom for granted. We should use the opportunities it provides to build and deepen the democracy we enjoy and teach the current and coming generations to jealously guard it without fear and favour, and be prepared to die for it.
Indeed, the future is in the hands of this and the coming generations, to paraphrase one of Mandela’s speeches as a free man.