"Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another ........The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement!"
- Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa May 1994
Ok, So I finally finished reading "A long walk to freedom" last weekend. So I've got to write about it. But I have a feeling that it's going to be reeeaallly long. I'll try my best to keep it as short as possible but seriously how can you possibly summarize a very eventful 70+ years of history in a few paragraphs??
So with that said here goes.......
Rolihlahla (Literarily meaning "pulling the branch of a tree", Essentially meaning "troublemaker") was born to a tribal chief in a remote village (Qunu) in South Africa. He grew up running around with the village boys, and attending to goats and pigs. He was given the name "Nelson" by his school teacher.
At the age of nine after the death of his father, he was taken in by the Regent of the area. His school years were relatively calm and he fared well at education. Shortly afterwards the suggestion of marriage by the Regent made him and the Regent's own son, flee the town and arrive in Johannesburg.
Here he found some clerical work in a law firm, and completed his BA at the same time. Next he went on to study law at the University where he was the only black in the class. Despite the harrassment from his colleagues and the continuous discouragement from his lecturer (who used to tell him that blacks are not capable in studying subjects as law, and that he should go back to the farm), Mandela kept on his work.
Mandela teamed up with Oliver Tambo to start a law firm which provided legal services to blacks at a low cost. Oliver Tambo later went on to become one of the major pillars of the African National Organization (ANC) and was the president (in exile) of the organization while Mandela was in prison.
The situation in Black South Africa after 1948 was very grim. The minority white government (Dutch/ Afrikaners) was controlling the majority black africans. "Arpetheid" was taking form, first the "Petty Arpetheid" and next "Grand Arpetheid" brought in legislation that made discrimination "Legal ". The blacks had no voting power, and were not recognised as citizens of their own country. They were given ~ 13% of the land to live and to make a living out of. Blacks were not allowed in white cities. This displaced many people and Mandela's law office also had to be vacated. There were separate buses, public toilets, hospitals, beach areas etc for blacks. The education reforms brought limited the level of education a black person was entitled to. A boycott carried out by the ANC resulted in thousands of Children with no education at all.
Mandela joined the ANC and was actively working for the organization, gradually learning and making his way up. During this time, most of the leaders of the organization were banned from time to time, essentially confining them into living in a single city for years at a time, and preventing them from attending any meetings or even speaking to two people at a time. This was a strategy the Government took to curb the rising political movement against them.
The ANC's policy was non-violence, which followed along the path of Mahatma Gandhi, but unlike with the British this method didn't seem to be working with the Afrikaners, for they replied to peaceful, unarmed protests with violence and killings. Mandela's opinion of non-violence was that it was only a strategy, which wasn't going to work in this situation. Much as he didn't want to take up arms, he couldn't deny the fact that people were getting restless and soon a civil war could break out. The military wing of the ANC was Mandela's idea, which was first opposed by the others of the ANC, but later agreed upon.
During this time the ANC was banned, making any member of the organization a criminal overnight. Most leaders of the ANC went underground, and some fled the country. Mandela was in and out of prison before he was sentenced to life in prison for 'attempting to overthrow the government".
He spent most of his prison sentence in Robben Island in a cell which was so small that when he slept lengthwise on the stone floor, his head touched one wall, and the feet the other wall. The treatment of prisoners were brutal and gruesome. They were not given proper blankets, clothes or food, and was expected to do hard labour, despite being political prisoners. They were only allowed one letter from family every 6 months. But Mandela and his friends kept the fight going, demanding their rights to food and proper clothing and fighting every inch of the way. He kept his legal skills sharp by preparing legal cases for those prisoners who sought them, and reading books that were allowed in the prison. During later years he applied to study for a LLB degree at the University of London by remote correspondence. It was during this time that this book was mostly written, in secrecy of course, once a part of it was discovered by prison authorities and were burned, luckily a short-hand version of the book was already smuggled out of the jail to Oliver Tambo through a lawyer.
It's simply amazing how, despite all the hardships and mistreatments, these few extraordinary people kept up their spirit, determination and even their sense of humor, for in his book Mandela recalls many humorous incidents and tricks they played while in prison.
Mandela kept writing to the government and initiating negotiations and trying to correspond with the outside on the arpetheid issue. Finally, the tide turned and the international pressure and the internal chaos in the country pushed the Afrikaners government to reconsider arpetheid. With F.W De Klerk assuming work as the new president, in 1989 arpetheid was lifted, and political prisoners including Mandela was released.
It was another 4 years before the first democratic election was held in South Africa.
And the rest is history.............
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