Conversations with Myself
Page 3
I find the explanation for your dream in the simple fact that you read deeper lessons into our ancestry. You regard their heroic deeds during the deathless century of conflict as a model for the life we should lead today. When their country was threatened they showed the highest standard of patriotism. Just as they refused to use the primitiveness of their economic system and ineffectiveness of their weapons as an excuse for shirking their sacred duty, so the present generation should not allow itself to be intimidated by the disparities current internal alignments seem to entail…But the full story of our past heritage remains incomplete if we forget that line of indigenous heroes who acted as curtain raisers to the major conflicts that subsequently flamed out, and who acquitted themselves just as magnificently. The Khoikhoi,5 from whom the bulk of our Coloured folk is descended, were skilfully led by Autshumayo (S.A.’s [South Africa] first black political prisoner to be exiled to Robben Island), Odasoa and Gogosoa. During the Third Liberation War in 1799 Klaas Stuurman took the unprecedented step of joining forces with Cungwa, Chief of [the] Amagqunukhwebe. Many people, including freedom fighters with a long record of struggle and sacrifice, speak contemptuously of [the] Abatwa. Yet several S.A. historians have written objective and warm accounts on their unconquerable spirit and noble qualities. Those who have read reports of the Sneeuberg battles between [the] Abatwa and the Boers, and more especially that between [the] Abatwa, led by their chief, Karel, and a commando of more than 100 Boers around the great cave at Poshuli’s Hoek, will have an idea of the important contribution made to S.A. history by a community that once were the sole occupants of our beautiful country.6 In numerous engagements they showed unusual courage and daring and would continue to fight desperately even after the last arrow had been fired. These are the men who strove for a free South Africa long before we reached the field of battle. They blazed the trail and it is their joint efforts that supply the source of the vast stream of S.A. history. We are the heirs to a three-stream heritage; an inheritance that inspires us to fight and die for the loftiest ideals in life. The title ‘African hero’ embraces all these veterans. Years later, more articulate and sophisticated personalities were to follow and, in the process, the tableau of history was enriched a thousand times – the Selope Themas, Jabavus, Dubes, Abdurahmans, Gools, Asvats, Cachalias,7 and now you and your generation have joined this legion of honour…
I am very fond of great dreams and I particularly liked yours; it was very close to my heart. Perhaps in your next dream, there will be something that will excite not only the sons [of] Zika Ntu, but the descendants of all the famous heroes of the past. At a time when some people are feverishly encouraging the growth of fractional forces, raising the tribe into the final and highest form of social organisation, setting one national group against the other, cosmopolitan dreams are not only desirable but a bounden duty; dreams that stress the special unity that hold the freedom forces together – [in] a bond that has been forged by common struggles, sacrifices and traditions.
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Mandela transcribed portions of George W Stow’s The Native Races of South Africa: A History of the Intrusion of the Hottentots and Bantu into the Hunting Grounds of the Bushmen, the Aborigines of the Country, see note 6, this chapter.
‘Western civilisation has not entirely rubbed off my African background and I have not forgotten the days of my childhood when we used to gather round community elders to listen to their wealth of wisdom and experience. That was the custom of our forefathers and the traditional school in which we were brought up. I still respect our elders and like to chat with them about olden times when we had our own government and lived freely.’
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Excerpt from his unpublished autobiographical manuscript written in prison.
1. FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN PRISON
Western civilisation has not entirely rubbed off my African background and I have not forgotten the days of my childhood when we used to gather round community elders to listen to their wealth of wisdom and experience. That was the custom of our forefathers and the traditional school in which we were brought up. I still respect our elders and like to chat with them about olden times when we had our own government and lived freely. It is always a great moment when I listen to an expert on our true history, culture, legends and traditions. We used to pester men like Mweli Skota, Selope Thema, Chief [Albert] Luthuli, Professor Z.K. Matthews, Moses Kotane, J.B. Marks and the amount of knowledge they had on African history was impressive.1 Their chief strength lay in the fact that their feet were deeply planted in African soil and they used scientific knowledge to enrich our heritage and culture. They could trace the movements of each section of our people from the North, discuss competently the various theories on the subject, the reasons for the many clashes between our people throughout our history, contact with the whites and even attempt to predict the future course of events. The old generation that inherited the oral traditions of our ancestors has disappeared or is disappearing and science has developed modern techniques of acquiring knowledge in all fields, but even the younger generation of today still values the experience of elders. Young men who are grappling every day with fresh practical human problems like to test the knowledge acquired from the classroom and books against the experience of their mature seniors who have been in the field.
2. FROM A CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL
Yes, the boarding master is the man who is in charge of the students in a college, yes. Now this was a remarkable man…He once gave a sermon [about] a man whose house was haunted by evil spirits. He did everything to drive them out, but he failed. Then he decided to leave his kraal [a rural settlement of huts and houses], packed all his things on a wagon and started driving away to settle elsewhere. Along the way, he met a friend and the friend asked, ‘Where are you going?’ Before he answered, a voice came out of the wagon, ‘We are trekking, we are leaving our kraal.’ It was one of the evil spirits. He thought he was leaving them behind; he actually came along with them. And he says, the moral was ‘Don’t run away from your problems; face them! Because if you don’t deal with them, they will always be with you. Deal with a problem which arises; face it courageously.’ That was the moral…I never forgot that, you see, and I accepted that if you have a problem, you must face it and not gloss over it. For example, you know, in politics, there are very sensitive issues and people normally don’t want an unpopular approach. If people say ‘We must go on action’, very few people will say ‘Have we got the resources? Have we made sufficient preparations? Are we in a position to undertake this action?’ Some people like to give an impression of being militant and therefore not to face the problems, especially if they are the type of problems which are going to make you unpopular. Success in politics demands that you must take your people into confidence about your views and state them very clearly, very politely, very calmly, but nevertheless state them openly.
3. FROM A LETTER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA, DATED 22 DECEMBER 19872
I hereby apply for exemption from Latin 1 on the following grounds: Although I obtained a pass in this subject in the 1938 matriculation examinations, and in spite of the fact that I passed a special course in the same subject at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1944, I have forgotten practically everything about it. If I am compelled to attempt the course, I will have to start right from the beginning. At the age of 69 years this will be a very difficult undertaking indeed. I am a qualified attorney, having practiced as such for nine years prior to my arrest and conviction. If I decided to resume practice as an attorney, I would not be required first to obtain a degree course in Latin. In actual fact, I have no intention of ever practicing law again either as an attorney or as an advocate. Even if I had intended practicing law some time in the future, I am not likely ever to do so, since I am serving
a sentence of life imprisonment. If you grant this application I propose to register for African Politics in place of Latin 1.
4. FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN PRISON
My association with the African National Congress has taught me that a broad national movement has numerous and divergent contradictions, fundamental and otherwise. The presence in one organisation of various classes and social groups with conflicting long term interests that may collide at crucial moments brings its own train of conflicts. Contradictions of a different kind may split from top to bottom an otherwise homogeneous class or group, and the prejudices arising from different practices in regard to circumcision are amongst these. I still remember well my first reaction, and even revulsion, at Fort Hare when I discovered that a friend had not observed the custom. I was twenty-one then and my subsequent association with the African National Congress and progressive ideas helped me to crawl out of the prejudice of my youth and to accept all people as equals. I came to accept that I have no right whatsoever to judge others in terms of my own customs, however much I may be proud of such customs;3 that to despise others because they have not observed particular customs is a dangerous form of chauvinism. I consider myself obliged to pay proper respect to my customs and traditions, provided that such customs and traditions tend to keep us together and do not in any way conflict with the aims and objects of the struggle against racial oppression. But I shall neither impose my own customs on others nor follow any practice which will offend my comrades, especially now that freedom has become so costly.
5. FROM A CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STENGEL
Oh, yes, yes. I was proud of that because we were told by our teachers, ‘Now you are at Fort Hare, you are going to be a leader of your people.’4 This was what was being drummed upon us, and of course in those days to have a degree as a black man was something very important. And so I had this feeling, and of course the King was very proud that he had a son, a member of the clan, who was at Fort Hare.
6. FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN PRISON
But the process of illusion and disillusionment is part of life and goes on endlessly. In the early [19]40s what struck me forcefully was the conflict between my expectations and actual experience. At College I had come to believe that as a graduate I would automatically be at the head, leading my people in all their efforts. In a sense that was true of the majority of the Fort Hare students. Many of them left the lecture room straight to some cosy job, with a steady income and carrying a measure of influence. It is also true that graduates do enjoy the respect of the community especially in the field of education.
But my experience was quite different. I moved in circles where common sense and practical experience were important, and where high academic qualifications were not necessarily decisive. Hardly anything I had been taught at College seemed directly relevant in my new environment. The average teacher had fought shy of topics like racial oppression, lack of opportunity for the black man and the numerous indignities to which he is subjected in his daily life. None had ever briefed me on how we would finally remove the evils of colour prejudice, the books I should read in this connection and the political organisations I should join if I wanted to be part of a disciplined freedom movement. I had to learn all these things by mere chance and through trial and error.
Nelson Mandela once played the part of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, in a play performed at Fort Hare. He played the tyrant Creon when the prisoners put on Antigone on Robben Island. Ahmed Kathrada had ordered a whole lot of Greek plays ostensibly for his studies – these did not evoke any curiosity among the warders, so were allowed to come in without any problems. Playing the villain no doubt appealed to Mandela’s wicked sense of humour. He sometimes quotes from Shakespeare and has a taste for Greek tragedy, which he first read on the Island. He joked at one time about being an actor and, during the years of his political apprenticeship, he learned the power of the dramatic gesture.
Indeed, his life from 1941 until his incarceration in 1962 was one of great public drama. From the late 1940s he began to assume leadership positions in the African National Congress (ANC), and through the 1950s and into the 1960s he participated prominently in every national campaign and event in the struggle against apartheid. By the time of his capture in August 1962, he was the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) – the armed wing of the ANC – and arguably the most popular and well-known figure in the anti-apartheid struggle. He had become ‘The Black Pimpernel’, South Africa’s most wanted man.
Not surprisingly, in the 1963–64 Rivonia Trial, the most dramatic and significant political trial in South Africa’s history, Mandela stole the show.
His personal drama heightened when, after a couple of passing affairs, he married a young relative of Walter Sisulu, Evelyn Mase, in 1944. They had four children: a daughter, Makaziwe (Maki); two sons, Madiba Thembekile (Thembi) and Makgatho (Kgatho); and another daughter – their first, also named Makaziwe – who died aged just nine months. After a dozen years of marriage they separated with bitterness and acrimony, which caused considerable unhappiness in the family down the years.
In 1958, he married the radiantly beautiful Winnie Madikizela. Mandela always admired strong women, like Ruth Mompati, Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph and Ruth First, but he did not, perhaps, appreciate how strong Winnie would turn out to be. They had two daughters: Zenani (Zeni) and Zindziswa (Zindzi). Mandela often called Winnie ‘Zami’, an abbreviation of her Xhosa name ‘Nomzamo’. This second family was to feel as acutely as the first the impact of Mandela’s public life. His drama was their pain.
‘Only armchair politicians are immune from committing mistakes. Errors are inherent in political action. Those who are in the centre of political struggle, who have to deal with practical and pressing problems, are afforded little time for reflection and no precedents to guide them and are bound to slip up many times. But in due course, and provided they are flexible and prepared to examine their work self critically, they will acquire the necessary experience and foresight that will enable them to avoid the ordinary pitfalls and pick out their way ahead amidst the throb of events.’
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From his unpublished autobiographical manuscript written in prison.
1. FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN PRISON
Only armchair politicians are immune from committing mistakes. Errors are inherent in political action. Those who are in the centre of political struggle, who have to deal with practical and pressing problems, are afforded little time for reflection and no precedents to guide them and are bound to slip up many times. But in due course, and provided they are flexible and prepared to examine their work self critically, they will acquire the necessary experience and foresight that will enable them to avoid the ordinary pitfalls and pick out their way ahead amidst the throb of events.
2. FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MANUSCRIPT WRITTEN IN PRISON
In Alexandra, life was exciting and, although the racial policies of the present government have destroyed its social fabric and reduced it to a ghost town, thinking of it always evokes in me fond memories.1 Here I learnt to adjust myself to urban life and came into physical contact with all the evils of white supremacy. Although the township had some beautiful buildings, it was a typical slum area – overcrowded and dirty, with undernourished children running about naked or in filthy rags. It teamed with all kinds of religious sects, gangsters and shebeens. Life was cheap and the gun and the knife ruled at night. Very often the police would raid for passes, poll tax and liquor and arrest large numbers. In spite of this, Alexandra was more than a home for its fifty thousand residents. As one of the few areas of the country where Africans could acquire freehold property, and run their own affairs free from the tyranny of municipal regulations, it was both a symbol and a challenge. Its establishment was an acknowledgement tha
t a section of our people had broken their ties with the rural areas and become permanent town dwellers. Drawn from all the African language groups, its population was politically conscious, more articulate and with a sense of solidarity which was causing increasing concern among the whites. It became clear to me that the leadership of my people would come from the urban areas where militant workers and an emergent class of prosperous and ambitious traders were suffering all the frustrations of racial prejudice. These are the straps that bind one tightly to Alex. Up to the actual moment of my arrest fourteen years ago, I regarded the township as a home in which I had no specific house, and Orlando, where my wife and children still live, as a place where I had a house but no home.