Mandela

by Anthony Sampson

  From Morocco Mandela made flying visits to the new black states of West Africa. In Mali the Defense Minister, Madeira Keita, warned him against “precipitate action that might be disastrous.” In Senegal he was welcomed by President Leopold Senghor. He was also received by Sir Milton Margai, the Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, and President Tubman of Liberia. His most frustrating visit was his return to Ghana, where he met up again with Tambo and tried to see President Kwame Nkrumah, in the hope that he could counter the PAC’s powerful hold. They had encouragement from some Ministers, but the Foreign Minister, Ako Ajei, lectured them that the ANC was a tribal organization, and said they could not see the President. Mandela realized that Nkrumah had not been told the truth about the ANC, and had to be content with handing in a memorandum. The Ghanaians did not even pay his hotel bill. But he had time to relax, and spent several evenings with Hilary Flegg, who had run the Treason Trial Defence Fund in Johannesburg.32

  From Ghana Mandela flew to London for a ten-day visit. He had a travel permit from Tanganyika, but had a tense time with an immigration officer who asked him the purpose of his visit. Mandela said he was writing a book on the evolution of political thought in Africa, and wanted to visit museums and libraries. He soon realized that the officer knew better, and was aware that he was connected with Tambo (who was in another queue), but he was eventually waved through.

  In London Mandela did not try to see anyone in Macmillan’s government: “I was a raw revolutionary,” he explained later.33 His first purpose was to talk further with Tambo, whose wife, Adelaide, had written to Mandela warning that Tambo’s asthma was worsening from the strain of overwork, and had prevented him from going to the UN in New York. Tambo had already been cold-shouldered by the Foreign Office in London, who were worried by the ANC’s communist links and were paying more attention to the PAC.34 Later the ANC responded by sending out Robert Resha, the firebrand from Sophiatown, who (as Sisulu reckoned) “spoke the PAC’s language.”35 Tambo was very encouraged by Mandela’s vigor and total commitment to the struggle. “However dangerous the situation, he always rose to it,” Adelaide Tambo recalled, “as if he knew he had to keep up the people’s spirit.”36

  Mandela also took up his own British connections. Mary Benson had arranged to give dinner to Tambo in her small flat in St. John’s Wood; but to her amazement he arrived with Mandela, wearing an immaculate suit, who paced up and down the squeaking floorboards talking excitedly until 1:30 a.m. about the sense of freedom in his African tour. She wrote in her diary: “N Gorgeous.”37 She arranged for him to meet the Labour politician Denis Healey, a friend from her army days in Egypt, whom Mandela found very helpful. “He told me he had a background at university of having been a Marxist,” Mandela recalled, “so he didn’t have to fear to talk to me: I accept politics.”38

  Tambo arranged to visit David Astor, the editor of the Observer, who was with Michael Scott and Colin Legum, the paper’s African expert. Mandela entered the room already talking in a loud, cheery voice: “I’ve come to thank you for all your paper has done for our people”—though he had in fact been worried by the Observer’s favorable reports on the PAC.39 Mandela noted afterward in his diary: “Discussions are most cordial and each expresses flattering and inspiring comments.”40 Astor was struck by Mandela’s tremendous presence and confidence in representing his people, and arranged for him to meet the Labour and Liberal leaders Hugh Gaitskell and Jo Grimond (who apparently had never heard of him). Astor advised him to base himself in Washington rather than return to South Africa and be caught; but Mandela insisted that he must be among his people.41 He explained to Colin Legum that he would extend the ANC’s campaign to every possible front, including churchmen and liberals, but that the armed struggle was the priority: he was not looking forward to discussing it with Luthuli on his return.42

  Mandela had some time in London for sightseeing and relaxation: Mary Benson showed him Parliament and Westminster Abbey—where he posed for photographs—with Freda Levson (who had run the Treason Trial Defence Fund for a time) and her husband, Leon, with whom he lunched in Chelsea.43 And he paid a surprise visit to his old Orlando friend Todd Matshikiza, the composer of King Kong, who was now living in exile in a small flat in Primrose Hill with his wife, Esme. They were sitting there at midnight when Tambo arrived, bringing Mandela with him. Mandela looked thoroughly relaxed, while Tambo seemed tense. “I’ll never forget his vision that night,” Esme recalled. “I really felt he was divinely inspired, completely unmaterialistic. With his great big vision he didn’t even see the rumpled bed.” He described how the South African police were determined to catch him. “Then why go back?” asked Esme. “You should stay here.” He replied: “A leader stays with his people.”44 In the face of all the dangers, he was bent on defying the enemy at home, in spite of the likelihood of arrest. He seemed ready for martyrdom.

  In London Mandela appeared very much his own boss, very confident of his personal authority, and determined to shift the ANC toward a more African position. His most painful encounter was with Yusuf Dadoo, his old communist friend who was now based in London. He saw him with the economist Vella Pillay, who had become a key link between the communists inside and outside South Africa. Mandela and Tambo had listened to complaints throughout Africa about how the ANC did not look African when they were represented abroad by white or Indian communists. Mandela now told Dadoo and Pillay that the ANC must show itself as an independent force, and be represented only by Africans at international conferences. “It was very difficult, very tense,” Pillay recalled. “Mandela was hard, and seemed not to be listening to us. His speeches in Africa had become more like the PAC’s. But perhaps it was a necessary phase.”45 Dadoo protested that Mandela was changing ANC policy, but Mandela insisted it was a change of image only. The ANC had to appear genuinely African: it had got “lost in a nebulous organisation representing everybody.”46

  Mandela returned to Ethiopia in June for a much more systematic assignment: to begin a six-month course in military training to prepare him as the leader of MK. On a hill outside Addis Ababa he handled an automatic rifle and pistol for the first time. On June 29 he recorded in his diary: “First lesson in demolition.”47 He fired mortars, made bombs, went on fatigue marches through forests and learned about guerrilla fighting, enjoying the physical challenge and the military discipline. In retrospect, Mandela’s attempted sudden transformation into a guerrilla commander seems romantic and unrealistic in the face of the modern, well-organized South African army. But it was in tune with the heady revolutionary atmosphere of Africa in the early sixties.

  Back in South Africa the government was becoming more determined to stamp out black opposition, and to track down Mandela. Winnie complained that the police searched or visited her house nearly every day over the first three weeks in June, asking where Mandela was.48 In July Parliament passed the Sabotage Bill, which allowed the courts to impose the death penalty on saboteurs for quite minor acts of destruction. The police were becoming much more efficient, wasting less time on liquor raids or pass raids. “The people are facing an outright military build-up,” Sisulu told me in early July. “They must prepare themselves for self-defense. The talk of non-violence is an anachronism.” The PAC was promising an early revolt, with a major campaign the next year: “We told the people to expect action in 1960, and they got it,” their later President, Zeph Mothopeng, told me in Soweto. “Now we tell them to expect it in 1963.”49 The high command of the MK were also impatient for bolder action, and from their hideout in Rivonia they were pushing ahead with much more ambitious plans. They urgently needed Mandela back in South Africa, and in mid-July he received a telegram telling him to return immediately to resume command.

  He left Ethiopia with the gift of a modern pistol and two hundred rounds, and flew back via Khartoum and Dar-es-Salaam, where he was excited to find twenty MK recruits on the way from South Africa to Ethiopia for training.50 When he arrived in Bechuanaland the British magistrate warned him t
hat the South African police knew of his impending return. Kathrada and Sisulu had been there two weeks earlier to make arrangements, and Mandela was met by Cecil Williams, a white communist theater director who had driven up from Johannesburg in his new Austin Westminster car to collect him.51 They drove through the night, across the open border, with Mandela still in the khaki uniform he had worn for his training in Ethiopia. They arrived at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia at dawn on July 24, where Mandela stayed in the thatched house.

  The next day Winnie and the children came to see him for a brief reunion. She left filled with foreboding. That evening most of the ANC’s working committee arrived at Lilliesleaf, including Sisulu, Kotane, Mbeki, Marks, Nokwe and Dan Thloome, another ANC activist, for a crucial discussion on strategy. Mandela reported on the military and financial support he had been offered by African leaders, and described their concerns about the ANC’s links with Indians and whites. He advocated reorganizing the Congress alliance to give the ANC a clearer leadership, as he and Tambo had agreed in London. Sisulu agreed that their tactics should be adjusted, but cautioned: “We must bear in mind the sensitivity of other minority groups.” Nokwe responded vigorously: “We are the prisoners of our own sins. We allowed ourselves to drift. I think co-operation has been carried too far.” Mandela said: “What we lack is initiative. We should change our attitudes and exert ourselves. Our friends must understand that it is the ANC that is to pilot the struggle.”52

  Mandela wanted to go immediately to Natal to report on the problem to Luthuli, particularly since the PAC was spreading rumors that Mandela had become an Africanist, and had joined the PAC. Kathrada, Mbeki and others wanted to delay the visit until they were sure it was safe, but they were overruled.53 So the following night Mandela left Lilliesleaf for Durban with Cecil Williams, pretending to be Williams’s chauffeur. They were rashly using the same conspicuous new car in which Williams had met him in Bechuanaland, and Mandela was carrying his pistol.

  In Durban he saw Ismail and Fatima Meer, and met Monty Naicker of the Indian Congress. He tried to persuade them that the ANC must move to the forefront. He told Fatima how one African leader, hearing that the Freedom Charter was written by whites, had torn it down from the wall.54 But the Indians were unconvinced. He then drove to Groutville to make his case to Luthuli. The ANC President objected to weakening the organization’s nonracial front at the behest of foreign leaders. Mandela argued that the situation was serious: they must ensure that the black states did not switch their support to the PAC. But Luthuli wanted to discuss it further with friends.55

  Mandela then arranged to meet the MK saboteurs of the regional command in a safe house in Durban. He appeared dramatically in his new military style, with beard and khaki shirt and trousers, and greeted them in Arab style: “Salaam.” Ronnie Kasrils, one of the saboteurs, thought he looked every inch a commander, but quite tense and solemn: he never smiled.56 Billy Nair, another of the group, was much impressed by Mandela’s authority on military questions: “It was exhilarating—a wonderful experience.”57 Even Bruno Mtolo, who was later to betray Mandela as a state witness, was impressed: “He did not have to show off to prove that he was a leader; it was perfectly clear to anyone that he was. He was honest about everything which had to be done, and wanted it to be done in a simple way.”58 Later in the evening Mandela unwisely joined a large party at the house of G. R. Naidoo, the hospitable photojournalist from Drum, which included many unfamiliar guests. Mandela, still in khaki, seemed unconcerned, but his friends worried. He seemed almost to be courting arrest.

  The next afternoon, Sunday, August 5, Mandela, in his white chauffeur’s coat, set off back to Johannesburg with Cecil Williams, discussing sabotage on the way. Soon after they passed Howick, beyond Pietermaritzburg, they were overtaken by a police car, with two other cars closing in behind, and flagged down. Mandela hastily hid his gun and his notebook between the front seats. He was questioned by a police sergeant, who knew quite well whom he was talking to. Mandela briefly considered jumping out onto the embankment and trying to make good his escape, but he did not know the terrain. The police drove him and Williams to Pietermaritzburg, and locked them in separate cells.59 Mandela knew this was the end of his time underground, only seventeen months after he had made his climactic speech in the same town. (Thirty years later, as President, he came back to receive the Freedom of Howick. He remarked that revisiting the scene of his arrest made him feel a little impatient to be given the Freedom.)60

  Who had tipped off the police? The question has still not gone away. The police, after suppressing the news of Mandela’s arrest for two days, spread disinformation about their coup. On August 8 the Rand Daily Mail described how a squad had closed in on a house where Mandela was hiding. Four days later the Johannesburg Sunday Times wrote: “Mandela was betrayed: Reds are suspected,” and reported a “fantastic story of intrigue and double-crossing.”61 Joe Slovo detected “the smell of some Judas in our ranks whose identity could not be pinpointed,” but there were also foreign suspects.62 Twenty-four years later the New York Times reported that a retired agent had boasted that the CIA had provided South African intelligence with the full details of Mandela’s movements.63 This is credible: the Americans needed Pretoria’s military cooperation and South African uranium, and could offer efficient intelligence in return. But the claim cannot be substantiated. The South Africans could have tracked Mandela through Afrikaner employees in the Bechuanaland police. They could have seen Cecil Williams’s conspicuous car when it picked him up in Bechuanaland, and when it drove on to Rivonia and Durban.64 Whoever provided the information, Mandela had been careless in Durban, and had left too many clues. He himself showed no interest in finding the culprit afterward: “I’ve never seen any reliable evidence as to the truth of it.”65

  After a brief period of denial, Mandela faced up to his predicament. He was driven to Johannesburg and held in a police station. Sisulu was in another cell, and he briefed him about his arrest. The next day he appeared in the magistrates’ court, where he appeared in a Xhosa leopardskin kaross, “literally carrying on my back the history, culture and heritage of my people.” He was encouraged to notice the evident discomfort of the magistrate and the lawyers: “Mandela stared at the magistrate, who was transfixed like a mongoose looking at a snake,” said Wolfie Kodesh, who was watching. “It took the magistrate two minutes to get his strength back.”66

  It was a moment of truth for Mandela, who sensed that he was acquiring a new moral power: “I was the symbol of justice in the court of the oppressor, the representative of the great ideals of freedom, fairness and democracy in a society that dishonoured those virtues.”67 To make the most of his authority he decided to defend himself, using Joe Slovo only as his legal adviser. He was formally charged with incitement to strike and with leaving the country without a passport—he was relieved not to be charged with sabotage. The hearing was later set for October.

  Awaiting trial in the Fort, Mandela maintained an apparent optimism. He asked the clergyman Arthur Blaxall, who visited him three times, for some Afrikaans grammar books, and seemed to appreciate Blaxall ending his visits with a prayer.68 When he heard that his old English friend Helen Joseph had been put under house arrest—the first person to face this demoralizing ordeal—he wrote to her condemning “the cruel and cowardly order,” but was confident that her courage would not fail her, as “all signs point unmistakably to the early defeat of all regimes based on force and violence.”69

  While awaiting trial Mandela was allowed to write letters and to read books; he was already starting a new program of education which would continue off and on for the next three decades. With the help of books supplied by David Astor he began studying by correspondence for an LL.B. degree at London University, which would enable him to practice as a barrister. Astor also managed to send him political books via the British Ambassador, Sir John Maud, who assured the Commissioner of Prisons, Victor Verster, that they were not procommunist and would “occupy
Mandela’s mind with a Western alternative.” The first six books included A Short History of Africa by Roland Oliver and J. D. Fage, A History of Europe by H. A. L. Fisher and Anatomy of Britain by Anthony Sampson. Mandela wrote back very courteously to “Sir John Maud, GCB, CBE”—his first contact with a British diplomat—thanking the anonymous friend for the valuable present.70 Maud’s colleague Lord Dunrossil, who had always been wary of the ANC, later reported to the Foreign Office that “in the long run we may get some good will from Mandela for having helped him.”71

  Mandela’s arrest hardly came as a total surprise to the ANC, and he himself had clearly half expected it since his return from abroad. But the speed of it came as a shock. “This has been a grave blow at a wrong time,” Winnie wrote to her friend Adelaide Tambo in London in September. “We knew it had to come, but it’s come a little early.” Winnie was encouraged by the support for Mandela in London: “Every day we greedily page through our papers to see what next you’re doing.” She realized that Nelson might be in jail for some years, and was being urged by Bram Fischer and others to leave the country to study abroad, which she was resisting.72 Some of her friends were already worried by Winnie’s ill-advised friendships, and wanted her out of the way.73

  While Mandela was in the Fort, the underground ANC scattered leaflets saying “Mandela Is in Prison: The People Are in Chains” and calling for a mass meeting before he appeared for his trial. The leaflets promoted the new image of Mandela as the uncompromising outlaw, the lone fighter who symbolized the unity of the people: “Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is the fighting underground leader of the freedom struggle. He shows the way to freedom in the way of sacrifice, daring, courage, new methods of political struggle.”74 As the African Communist hailed him in October 1962: