Moved to tears by words of freedom
The oratory of Nelson Mandela runs rings around the slop served in politics today, writes Carlos Amato
‘THERE was a long silence,” says Denis Goldberg, recalling the reaction to Nelson Mandela’s defiant last words from the dock on April 20 1964. “When I say long, I don’t know if it was 30 seconds, or a minute and a half. Dead silence. Until there was a kind of collective sigh from the audience. And then Judge Quartus de Wet, almost embarrassed, looked at defence lawyer Bram Fischer and said very quietly: ‘Mr Fischer, do you have a further witness?’ ”
Ending with a challenge to the judge to hang him, Mandela’s statement in the Rivonia trial remains the pinnacle of South African oratory. A four-hour fusillade of unflinching reason and controlled emotion, it provided a measured, elegant account of the ANC’s long route towards armed struggle. Its 10 393 words are gloriously free of the mendacity, cant and vulgarity that slosh through the plumbing of South Africa’s contemporary political debate.
In the light of recent idiocies in parliament, with school yard insults about clothes and body weight hurled across the altar of democracy, Mandela’s gravitas is missed more than ever. His long silence has hurt the national spirit almost as much as his death.
“We are going to have to learn to manage [without Mandela],” says Goldberg. “My generation of leaders can honestly say that we promised the conditions in which we can build our freedom. We didn’t promise you a rose garden. After Mandela’s release, when he was told ‘now you are free’, he said: ‘No — we are free to become free.’
“Mandela’s Rivonia speech transformed the understanding, in South Africa and internationally, of what liberation would mean.
“It explained what apartheid was like from a victim of the system. All of it was personalised and also generalised to the people as a whole. There was heat in his voice, but no shouting, no anger, no ‘now I’m going to get you’. It was: ‘This is what we want, and there’s a place for all in South Africa.’
“And then came that famous line:
His Rivonia speech transformed the understanding of what liberation would mean
‘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 which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.’ “Of course he wanted to live.” The statement was drafted in longhand by Mandela (“in great big fat letters”, says Goldberg) before the defence team and fellow defendants made suggestions. Andrew Mlangeni, also a Rivonia trialist, adds: “The statement Madiba made — that was the statement of all of us.”
One of George Bizos’s requests was that the phrase “if needs be” be inserted into the final sentence.
“He was quite right,” says Goldberg. “Because it leaves the judge the option of saying: ‘It need not be.’ ”
It is unlikely the statement itself saved the trialists’ necks. That they were convicted not of high treason but sabotage — a crime that allowed De Wet the option of imposing life sentences — suggests that the state and the judge were keenly aware that hangings would either hasten revolution or deepen South Africa’s isolation.
Bob Hepple was Mandela’s lawyer in his 1962 trial and spent the last half-century in the UK, enjoying a distinguished career as a labour law professor.
He returns to South Africa frequently and helped to draft the Labour Relations Act of 1995.
His memoir, Young Man with a Red Tie (Jacana Books), is an engaging, frank account of his activism, imprisonment and escape and, according to Hepple, Mandela’s oratory power lay in his moral and intellectual calibre.
Goldberg says: “In our trial in ’62, we went through his speech very carefully . . . He wanted to get the tone right and he never wanted to attack individuals. I want to remember him for that speech and for his ability to mobilise so many people for freedom.
“And also for the last line of his inauguration address: ‘Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.’ He ends with a cry: ‘Let freedom reign!’
“I wept then, and I weep now.”