Sunday Times

The man who changed the course of history

Nelson Mandela helped to transform South Africa’s history and touched millions worldwide. David Blair assesses his life

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THE theme running through Nelson Mandela’s life was his unshakeabl­e belief that one human being can change the course of history dramatical­ly for the better.

In a bitterly divided South Africa, Mandela won the love of almost all his compatriot­s; in a sceptical age, he became perhaps the only genuinely global hero.

Mandela understood that apartheid, which scarred South Africa for the first 75 years of his life, would not be laid low by guerrilla war, revolution or popular uprising. At various times, he favoured all of these, but in the loneliness of his Robben Island prison cell, he came to see that apartheid was an expression of the weakness and insecurity of white South Africans in general, and Afrikaners in particular.

Mandela realised that fear, rather than implacable racism, lay behind their opposition to black majority rule. The key to ridding South Africa of the wicked absurdity of racial segregatio­n was, he concluded, to persuade whites that democracy was in their interest as much as the black majority’s, and to show that they would be safe without apartheid.

So Mandela set out to kill apartheid through persuasion and reconcilia­tion.

“I learned,” he wrote in his memoirs, “that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessar­ily cruel fate. I sought always to defeat my opponents without dishonouri­ng them.”

Defeating apartheid without dishonouri­ng South Africa’s white inhabitant­s was Mandela’s crowning achievemen­t.

Today, few can remember how illusory a prospect this once seemed. An opinion poll conducted in 1985 found that 70% of South Africans expected a civil war. During that dismal era, when PW Botha — the last

Mandela realised that fear, rather than implacable racism, lay behind whites’ opposition to black majority rule

of the unyielding Afrikaner leaders — held absolute power, the black townships were in flames and many hundreds of thousands simply voted with their feet by emigrating.

After all, Botha insisted that apartheid would continue into an indefinite future — and with Mandela behind bars and a negotiated settlement ruled out, South Africans genuinely feared that their country was heading towards the abyss of racial conflict.

“We will not take the road to abdication and national suicide. Don’t push us too far,” declared Botha in his infamous “Rubicon” speech in 1985— so named because he was decidedly not crossing the Rubicon to reform the system.

Yet, only nine years later, apartheid had not been diluted but consigned to history. Mandela was serving as the first black president, South Africa had become the democratic “rainbow nation” of his promises — and Botha had retired, seeing out his days on the Cape coast until his death in 2006. And all this happened without a civil war.

This peaceful achievemen­t of democracy was Mandela’s monument. He was the key to everything. Mandela was South Africa’s indispensa­ble man, providing the personal ballast that saved his country from tipping into that abyss of conflict.

Born in 1918, he was a member of the royal family of the Thembu clan of the Xhosa people. Mandela’s father, Henry, served as a traditiona­l chief and adviser in the court of the Thembu king, Jongintaba Dalindyebo.

Mandela was groomed to become a royal counsellor, like his father, and was deeply influenced by what he remembered — perhaps rosily — as the king’s benign rule. On Mandela’s telling, the royal court was a collegiate place where everyone had their say and, as far as possible, Jongintaba secured universal agreement for every decision.

As part of Mandela’s preparatio­n for his role, Jongintaba arranged for him to go to a prestigiou­s school, Healdtown College. There, Mandela developed his lifelong love of English literature and a deep knowledge of British history.

In his memoirs, he would “confess” to being “something of an Anglophile”, writing of his attachment to “British style and manners”. He spoke of his acquired English name with pride, explaining that “Lord Nelson is a famous historical figure” and “the name Nelson is too famous for you just to throw it away”.

Mandela progressed to study law at the University of Fort Hare, then the only institutio­n offering degree-level education for young blacks. With his father dead, he soon fell out with Jongintaba over a proposed marriage and fled to Johannesbu­rg. Without this incident, Mandela might have lived out his days as a Thembu chief in a remote area of South Africa.

Instead, Mandela arrived in Johannesbu­rg and joined the ANC, forming the only black law firm in South Africa with his friend Oliver Tambo.

Mandela delivered flamboyant courtroom performanc­es — and lost case after case. The redress his black clients needed from apartheid was, quite simply, impossible to obtain.

So he became a young radical. At some point in the 1950s, the evidence suggests he was a secret member of the banned South African Communist Party, although he probably left after a few years.

The ANC was formally outlawed in 1960, helping to convince Mandela that drastic steps were needed. Tambo later recalled the Mandela of this era as a combative hardliner. “If you wanted confrontat­ion, you called Mandela,” he said.

Mandela resolved to lead an “armed struggle” and became the first commander of Umkhonto weSizwe, the “Spear of the Nation”, as the ANC’s new guerrilla army was known.

He organised a brief bombing campaign in December 1961. Sabotage was the only aim — there was no plan to kill anyone — and bombs were placed at power stations, electricit­y pylons and empty government offices.

The whole effort was a fiasco. Some bombs failed to explode; others blew up too early.

The only casualty was a young recruit, Petrus Molife, who was so badly trained that he accidental­ly killed himself with his own explosives — a fact

The young Mandela was also arrogant, stubborn and feckless. His incompeten­ce during his brief leadership of the ‘armed struggle’ bordered on the absurd

that Mandela omitted from his memoirs.

This episode showed that Mandela’s gifts did not include the ability to run a guerrilla campaign. Unable to organise any effective explosions, he also ignored basic security procedures, often carrying incriminat­ing documents and taking his habitual early-morning jogs even while supposedly in hiding. He was duly arrested in 1962 and jailed for leaving the country illegally.

Whether as township lawyer or ANC activist, Mandela had shown himself courageous, charismati­c and dedicated. Yet the young Mandela was also arrogant, stubborn and feckless. His incompeten­ce during his brief leadership of the “armed struggle” verged on the absurd.

It was the prison years that brought out his greatness. Twelve months after he was jailed, the police raided an ANC training camp in Rivonia, outside Johannesbu­rg. Mandela was brought from his cell and placed on trial for sabotage and “acts of violence”.

The Rivonia trial provided the world’s last glimpse of Mandela for almost three decades. He was charged with treason, a capital offence, and his own lawyers put his chances of being hanged at 50-50.

With his life in the balance, Mandela gave an address from the dock that ranks among the greatest speeches of the 20th century. “I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people,” he said. “I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. 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 see realised.”

Then, knowing that he faced the scaffold, Mandela looked directly at the judge. “But my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

In the event, Judge Quartus de Wet sentenced Mandela to life imprisonme­nt with hard labour, a verdict that brought sighs of relief from the public gallery.

At the age of 46, Mandela was consigned to Robben Island, a windswept rock in the Atlantic used variously as a leper colony and maximum security jail. The prison routine was merciless: Mandela broke rocks in the courtyard, forbidden to talk to other inmates. He lived alone in a tiny and frigid cell. Later, he worked in a quarry, where the glare of sunlight glittering off limestone permanentl­y damaged his eyes.

He endured a series of personal tragedies. Mandela’s mother, Nosekeni, died in 1968. The police raided his family home and wrenched his headstrong wife, Winnie, from their daughters before placing her in solitary confinemen­t. Then his son, Thembekile, died in a car accident in 1969.

“What can one say about such a tragedy?” Mandela wrote. “I was already overwrough­t about my wife, I was still grieving for my mother, and then to hear such news. I do not have words to express the sorrow or the loss I felt.”

Mandela fought his despair by setting out to become the master of his prison life. He treated the guards as unsentimen­tal equals, embracing the maxim “know your enemy” and learning reasonable Afrikaans.

Mandela, intensely reserved and self-contained, was quietly imbued with a sense of destiny. His favourite poem was WE Henley’s Invictus:

“It matters not how strait the gate

How charged with punishment­s the scroll I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” The more far-sighted ministers in South Africa’s regime began to realise that prisoner No 46664 was no ordinary inmate. If a negotiated end to apartheid was possible, then Mandela was the man to deal with.

As early as 1986, the regime began talking to Mandela. In complete secrecy, Mandela held scores of meetings with Kobie Coetsee, then the justice minister, and later Niel Barnard, then the head of intelligen­ce. During these remarkable negotiatio­ns, the prisoner, the cabinet minister and the spy chief agreed the outlines of what became South Africa’s historic settlement: majority rule combined with constituti­onal guarantees for racial minorities.

By the time FW de Klerk ousted Botha in 1989, the regime had concluded that Mandela was someone who they could — and must — do business with. De Klerk duly released Mandela in February 1990 and opened formal talks with the ANC.

At the age of 71, Mandela walked free after 27 years behind bars. That fact alone gave him the credibilit­y to achieve what followed.

No black radical could question Mandela’s dedication to the struggle and, by the same token, no white South African could doubt that his gestures of reconcilia­tion were genuine and heartfelt.

But first came the long, hard business of negotiatio­n. No one who dealt with Mandela was allowed to doubt his skills as a canny lawyer and shrewd politician.

The talks to produce a new constituti­on were always on the brink of collapse. Infuriated by massacres of ANC supporters, which he blamed on De Klerk’s security forces, Mandela showed a ruthlessne­ss that belied his saintly image.

After 45 people were murdered in Boipatong township, Mandela walked out of the talks, called a general strike and personally led a march by 100 000 demonstrat­ors.

In the end, the deal that he alone had the standing to deliver was concluded, and South Africa’s first free elections followed in 1994. After millions of blacks and whites had queued

His words still ring in the ears of millions of South Africans. Deep down, they know that their country is free because a man called Nelson Mandela lived

together to vote, Mandela won the presidency.

His gestures of reconcilia­tion went beyond anything that whites had expected. Mandela summoned Percy Yutar, the prosecutor who had tried to have him hanged at the Rivonia trial, and gave him an official lunch. He sought out one of his old jailers, Jannie Roux, the former prison commission­er, and made him ambassador to Austria. He took tea with Betsie Verwoerd, the widow of Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid.

He even used rugby — the adopted sport of Afrikanerd­om — in the cause of reconcilia­tion.

The Springbok rugby team had once symbolised apartheid; on principle, black South Africans would always cheer their opponents. But when they played New Zealand at home in the Rugby World Cup final in 1995, Mandela donned a Springbok shirt and embraced their victorious captain.

In his inaugurati­on speech, Mandela declared: “Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.”

Those words still ring in the ears of millions of South Africans. Deep down, they know that their country is free because a man called Nelson Mandela lived.

 ?? Picture: REUTERS ?? Schoolchil­dren hold candles and portraits of Nelson Mandela during a prayer ceremony at a school in the southern Indian city of Chennai on Friday
Picture: REUTERS Schoolchil­dren hold candles and portraits of Nelson Mandela during a prayer ceremony at a school in the southern Indian city of Chennai on Friday

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