One of the most inspiring survival stories of any age
February 12, 1990
TALL, spare and elderly, a living legend re-emerges into the light of common day. Nelson Mandela is free. It is modern tradition for rebels to have graduated from prison to lead their own nations out of bondage. But never has such an incarceration lasted so long. Think of it: 27 years. In that time, most of us would have been reduced to institutionalised husks. Not Mandela.
His is one of the most inspiring survival stories of this or any age. Yet even as we rejoice with him, we are bound to be anxious for this grey-haired figure who now bears such great expectations on his somewhat frail shoulders.
The chaos and violence that attended his homecoming yesterday was an all too realistic reminder of the dangerous no-man’s land between African excitement and Afrikaner police tactics.
Mr Mandela in his address yesterday was resolutely — even provocatively — defiant. Maybe that was to be expected. For on no account could he afford to return sounding like an Uncle Tom. The hope must be that, having shown heroic patience in captivity, he does not now allow himself to become an old man in too much of a hurry.
The picture of him yesterday hand-in-hand with his younger wife Winnie may be a touching one for the family album. But it could be bad news if the political relationship between them were to become too close.
There are plenty of hotheads in the ANC prepared to accept nothing less than the revolutionary replacement of white supremacy by black supremacy. And the suspicion is that Mrs Mandela may be among them.
For the present, the whites have most of the guns. And they are not likely to surrender without a fight. The most they may be persuaded to accept after tough bargaining is to share power with the blacks.
So what are likely to be the minimum demands of the blacks? (1) An end to the State of Emergency. (2) The scrapping of all remaining apartheid laws. (3) The vote. From what he has already said and done, there is every reason to believe that this is the way President F.W. de Klerk wants to go.
But let nobody underestimate how hard it will be for him to sell that traumatic trio of concessions to his own people. Mrs Thatcher understands this. That is why she is the first to declare that Mr de Klerk deserves encouragement from the outside world, and that sanctions against South Africa should lifted.
But let us end where we began, with Nelson Mandela. For his return to the political stage is one of those rare and hazardous moments in world history like the breach of the Berlin Wall, when human freedom is given an epoch-breaking shove.