What his comrades said about him
WITHOUT MANDELA, South African history would have taken a completely different turn. And that is not just because of his charisma or status, but basically because of his leadership and initiative from Robben Island. It is a fact that it was he who triggered the negotiations . . . Tambo was absolutely irreplaceable: he kept the organisation going, he kept the people together. But when it came to facing the post1990 period, the role of Mandela is absolutely unique. — Joe
Slovo, 1994
ON TRIAL HE WAS Nelson Mandela, the ANC leader, standing tall, proud and dignified. He was exceptionally handsome with a magnificent physique, dark, piercing eyes, sometimes narrowing above his high cheekbones until he looked almost Oriental, sometimes opening wide in serious moments. But his infectious laughter and radiant smile often broke through his dignified reserve. He had the unique quality of being near to you and far away at the same time.
Charismatic to a degree seldom seen, it is no wonder that even after more than 20 years on Robben Island, South Africa’s dreaded maximum security jail, he remains head and shoulders above everyone else. Mandela is recognised as the leader in the South African liberation struggle, respected and revered, not only by his fellow prisoners and by the ANC, but by thousands of people, black and white, the world over.
In our car he was Nelson, just one of us, as we shared our jokes and the peaches we bought and ate along the road — the “peach club” we called it. We shared so much else too: long political discussions, comment on the trial, which by now we accepted as a way of life. I don’t recall any grumbling about it. We joked about our future sometimes and I would complain, “It’s all right for you chaps, you will be together in gaol, but I’ll get the husband-poisoners because they are the only white women who get long sentences!”
Sometimes Nelson would tell us of his childhood in the Transkei, the traditions and even the initiation rituals. —
Helen Joseph, 1987 The following item by Oliver Tambo was published as the introduction to the book ‘No
Easy Walk to Freedom’ by Ruth
First in 1965
MANDELA AND TAMBO, said the brass plate on our office door. We practised as attorneys-at-law in Johannesburg in a shabby building across the street from the Magistrate’s Court. Chancellor House in Fox Street was one of the few buildings in which African tenants could hire offices: it was owned by Indians. This was before the axe of the Group Areas Act fell to declare the area “white” and landlords were themselves prosecuted if they did not evict the Africans.
‘‘Mandela and Tambo’’ was written huge across the frosted window panes on the second floor, and the letters stood out like a challenge. To white South Africa it was bad enough that two men with black skins should practise as lawyers, but it was indescribably worse that the letters also spelled out our political partnership.
Nelson and I were both born in the Transkei, he one year after me. We were students together at Fort Hare University College. With others we had founded the ANC Youth League. We went together into the Defiance Campaign of 1952, into general strikes against the government, and sat in the same Treason Trial dock.
For years we worked side by side in the offices near the courts. To reach our desks each
Every case in court, every visit to the prisons to interview clients, reminded us of the humiliation and suffering burning into our people — Oliver Tambo
morning, Nelson and I ran the gauntlet of patient queues of people overflowing from the chairs in the waiting room into the corridors.
South Africa has the dubious reputation of boasting one of the highest prison populations in the world. Jails are jampacked with Africans imprisoned for serious offences — and crimes of violence are ever on the increase in apartheid society — but also for petty infringements of statutory law that no really civilised society would punish with imprisonment.
To be unemployed is a crime because no African can for long evade arrest if his passbook does not carry the stamp of authorised and approved employment.
To be landless can be a crime, and we interviewed weekly the delegations of grizzled, weather-worn peasants from the countryside, who came to tell us how many generations of their families had worked a little piece of land from which they were now being ejected.
To brew African beer, to drink it or to use the proceeds to supplement the meagre family income is a crime, and women who do so face heavy fines and jail terms.
To cheek a white man can be a crime.
To live in the “wrong” area — an area declared white or Indian or coloured — can be a crime for Africans.
South African apartheid laws turn innumerable innocent people into “criminals”. Apartheid stirs hatred and frustration among people.
Young people, who should be in school or learning a trade, roam the streets, join gangs and wreak their revenge on the society that confronts them with only the dead-end alley of crime or poverty.
Our buff office files carried thousands of these stories and if, when we started our law partnership, we had not been rebels against South African apartheid, our experiences in our offices would have remedied the deficiency.
We had risen to professional status in our community, but
Breaking stones on Robben Island, a totally useless exercise, was not peripheral to the struggle but an exposure of the futility of all that apartheid represents — Archbishop
Trevor Huddlestone
every case in court, every visit to the prisons to interview clients, reminded us of the humiliation and suffering burning into our people.
Nelson, one of the royal family of the Transkei, was groomed from childhood for respectability, status and sheltered living. Born near Umtata [now Mthatha] in 1918, he was the eldest son of a Tembu chief.
His father died when he was nine and his upbringing and education were taken over by the paramount chief.
Nelson, Sabata, paramount chief of the Tembu and opponent of the government, and Kaizer Matanzima, chief minister of the Transkei and arch-collaborator with the nationalist government, were educated together.
At the age of l6, Nelson went to Fort Hare and there we first met: in the thick of a student strike.
After Fort Hare, we parted company. I went on to teach mathematics at St Peter’s School in Johannesburg.
From this school, killed by the government in later years because it refused to bow its head to government-dictated principles of a special education for “inferior” Africans (Bantu Education), graduated successive series of young men drawn inexorably into the ANC, because it was the head of our patriotic, national movement for our rights.
Nelson ran away from the Transkei to escape a tribal marriage his cousins and uncles were trying to arrange for him.
In Johannesburg, he had his first encounter with the lot of the urban African in a teeming African township: overcrowding, incessant raids for passes, arrests, poverty, the pinpricks and frustrations of white rule.
Walter Sisulu, secretarygeneral of the ANC in a vital period, befriended and advised and urged him to study law. Mandela studied by correspondence to gain an arts degree, enrolled for a law degree at the University of the Witwatersrand and was later articled to a firm of white attorneys.
We met again in 1944 in the ranks of the ANC Youth League.
As a man, Nelson is passionate, emotional, sensitive, quickly stung to bitterness and retaliation by insult and patronage. He has a natural air of authority.
He cannot help magnetising a crowd: he is commanding, with a tall, handsome bearing; trusts and is trusted by the youth, for their impatience reflects his own; appealing to the women. He is dedicated and fearless. He is a born mass leader.
WE MUST GO on our knees — those of us who still believe in prayer — and we must say, “Thank you God for what you gave to us in Nelson Mandela”. We have done what no other country in the world has done … and how many countries in the world are looking up to us, and especially after the leadership of Nelson Mandela. They expect from us, I would say, almost the impossible. —
Beyers Naudé, 2002
COURAGE IS Mandela’s hallmark, possibly inherited as his birthright. Breaking stones on Robben Island, a totally useless exercise, was not peripheral to the struggle but an exposure of the futility of all that apartheid represents. — Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, 1995