The State Department now scarcely mentioned Mandela and his fellow prisoners: when the liberal Senator Dick Clark held eight days of hearings about South Africa in 1976, occupying a book of 792 pages, the name of Mandela was never uttered. It was left to Andrew Young, the black Congressman from Atlanta, to make the point that “If there is a rational solution to the problems of South Africa, it is going to have to be worked out with those men who are now imprisoned or detained or now being destroyed.”69
The Robben Islanders still put more hopes in the East. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe continued to welcome ANC leaders, to provide funds and weaponry for their armed struggle and to educate ANC exiles in their universities. The East Germans were particularly supportive, and printed the ANC’s magazine Sechaba, which was full of pro-Soviet propaganda and attacks on the imperialist powers. Tambo himself kept his distance from any communist influence, and was impressed that Moscow did not seek to influence ANC policy: he was personally convinced that Africans would not embrace communism when the time came.70 But Sisulu and other Robben Islanders remained optimistic that their salvation would come from the socialist world. Mandela was more pragmatic, believing that the ANC should work with any friends it could find in time of need: he often recalled how Churchill had worked with Stalin during the Second World War. He remained preoccupied with unifying the opposition to apartheid; and his detachment in jail gave him a much clearer view of the challenge, as he explained in early 1976:
My current circumstances give me advantages my compatriots outside jail rarely have. Here the past literally rushes to memory and there is plenty of time for reflection. One is able to stand back and look at the entire movement from a distance, and the bitter lessons of prison life force one to go all out to win the cooperation of all fellow-prisoners, to learn how to see problems from the point of view of others as well, and to work smoothly with other schools of thought in the movement. Thrown together by the fates we have no choice but to forget our differences in the face of crisis, talk to one another mainly about our background, hopes and aspirations, our organisations and the kaleidoscope of experiences in the field of struggle.71
19
Black Consciousness
1976–1978
IT WAS Winnie, talking in her coded language on a visit to the island, who first told Mandela about the new generation of militant black rebels who were emerging inside South Africa, and warned him to take them seriously, as they were changing the character of the struggle.1 She was in a position to know, for she was attracted both to their ideas and to their virile young leaders.
The Black Consciousness movement had begun in 1969, when Steve Biko, a courageous young medical student at the University of Natal, had turned against the white leadership of the National Union of South African Students and formed the all-black South African Students’ Organisation (SASO), which soon became the nursery for a new party, the Black People’s Convention (BPC). Biko felt himself diminished by the paternalism of white liberals, and vowed that the black man must escape from his sense of inferiority and see himself as “self-defined, not as defined by others.” Some of his rhetoric sounded like a replay of the revolt of the Youth League twenty-five years earlier, or of the PAC ten years before. But Biko had gained more intellectual depth and confidence than Robert Sobukwe, encouraged by the independence of black Africa, the civil rights victories in America and the growing literature of black power, particularly Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. The confidence was expressed by pride in the word “black,” which would soon also be adopted by sympathetic Indians and Coloureds, and later by the media: The Rand Daily Mail used it as early as July 1972.2
The mood was heavily influenced from abroad, particularly America. “In dribs and drabs we discovered the old voices of protest,” wrote one of Biko’s followers, Patrick Lekota, who had become known as “Terror” on the football field. “We found Frantz Fanon, David Diop, Aimé Césaire of the negritude movement. Some us dug out W. E. B. du Bois, Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah. The younger voices of Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver and George Jackson reached us.”3
Biko was determined to arouse his people from the “great silence” of the sixties, and to give them self-respect in the midst of oppression. “All in all the black man has become a shell,” he wrote in 1970, “a shadow of man, completely defeated, drowning in his own misery, a slave and ox bearing the yoke of oppression with sheepish timidity.” He soon excited a militant new generation of black schoolchildren who saw their parents in this humiliating image, and were determined to escape from it. By 1973 Black Consciousness was sweeping through the black campuses, and the government banned eight of its leaders, including Biko and his lieutenant Barney Pityana. But the independence of Mozambique and Angola brought a new surge of hope: in 1974 the BPC organized rallies in support of the new black government in Mozambique. In response the government charged nine of its leaders, headed by Saths Cooper (later to be on Robben Island), with fomenting disorder under the Terrorism Act.4
The vestigial underground ANC within South Africa was wary of Biko’s movement, with its echoes of the PAC, while many of Biko’s followers despised the ANC’s conservatism and inertia. But Winnie Mandela, banned from active politics, was inspired by the anger and assertiveness of the young rebels. “There was a total vacuum,” as she recalled, “and if Biko had not come into life then I shudder at the consequences for history. It was such a revitalizing experience to communicate with that man.… I was the only voice at that time that was brave enough to do so.” She shared the new pride in blackness: “You felt your blood rise as you stood up and felt proud of being black, and that is what Steve did to me.”5
Barney Pityana took Biko to see Winnie, who responded warmly: “Winnie had no ifs and buts, and opened her heart to us,” Pityana recalled. “Steve always went to see her when he was in Johannesburg.”6 After Winnie’s bans expired in 1975 she gave speeches and interviews warning about a surge of anger among young blacks.7 But the ANC had little to do with the buildup, and when the young activists Tokyo Sexwale and Naledi Tsiki approached Winnie for contacts with the ANC she said that her links had “broken down.”8 Mandela and his colleagues were skeptical when they first heard about Black Consciousness, partly because the Afrikaners originally welcomed the movement as a sign that blacks were “developing on their own lines,” in keeping with apartheid: he saw sympathetic articles by an Afrikaner professor and in the Afrikaans women’s magazine Huisgenoot.9
But it was the government’s insistence on teaching Afrikaans which was the breaking point for black schoolchildren. The violence of the revolt in June 1976 took nearly everyone by surprise. When pupils in Soweto went on strike against Afrikaans teaching, ten thousand young blacks marched in their support. The police fired on them, killing a thirteen-year-old boy, Hector Pietersen. Children ran riot, killing two whites. Soweto became a bloody battlefield, invaded by armored cars and helicopters. In the next days strikes and riots spread to the Cape: by the end of the year the death toll was between five hundred and a thousand. The government’s report later blamed the ANC, the PAC and the communists, but the real inspiration came from Biko and the schoolboy leaders themselves, who knew little of the ANC.10 “We didn’t deserve so much credit,” said Winnie, “but we don’t mind at all.”11 She herself felt very personally involved, having been there when Hector was killed: “I was part of that revolution.… It was the contribution of those children who put us where we are today.”12
The Soweto revolt ran round the world, causing more outcry (Mandela reckoned later) than the Sharpeville massacres.13 But on Robben Island the first indication of a crisis was a complete drought of news.14 As stories gradually filtered through, Mandela wrote a statement which was smuggled out by Mac Maharaj when he left the island soon afterward. It showed Mandela’s first militant support for the revolt, stressing the need for both unity and action. “The gun has played an important part in our history …” it began. And it concluded:
The first detailed news reached the prisoners in August 1976 from Eric Molobi, a young Black Consciousness rebel who arrived on the island after two years in prison, where he had been tortured almost to death. He was very critical of the ANC, and when he first told them about the revolt they would not believe it.16 But soon a flood of young rebels arrived on the island, defiant and aggressive: some of them had escaped from South Africa to join ANC training camps, had returned as fighters for MK and been captured. “We poured into the place, in truckfuls from everywhere, like a huge windfall,” said Terror Lekota.17 Many of the young comrades saw the island as a place of honor. “That was where our heroes were kept,” said Sifiso Buthelezi. “We really equated Robben Island with freedom.”18 But they had some disappointments with their leaders. As Lekota put it:
We found the political prisoners steadfast in their fight, with defiant determination. But their morale had been dampened, and they couldn’t see the horizons. They were allowed no news, and thought everything was dead: they didn’t even know about the Durban strikes in 1973. We gave them hope and justified their determination, but also problems: a lot of us were bruised emotionally after being tortured; we were not refined politicians, only raw material. Lots of the comrades thought the Rivonia people were old conservatives, and that the PAC was more appealing with its call for Africa for Africans.19
Mandela was excited by the extent of the Soweto revolt, and by the reawakening of protest after the “silent sixties.” He was gratified that Bantu education, far from making blacks subservient to white supremacy, had provoked a fierce reaction: it had “come back to haunt its creators.”20 He was impressed by the caliber of the young rebels, who revealed new aspects of black South Africa: “You feel you have been enriched, your horizons have been widened, your roots in your own country have been deepened.” And he realized that the ANC was being challenged to catch up.21 Many of the young men had been tortured by the police, and showed the marks. Mandela, who had never been tortured, was impressed by their fortitude.
But the extent of the generation gap came as a shock to him and the other earlier prisoners. “Although some of us were young,” wrote Mosibudi Mangena, who had come to the island three years before Soweto, “we suddenly found ourselves looking very old and moderate.”22 Even Harry Gwala thought that “at times young people’s actions sometimes bordered on anarchy.”23 Many of them had consciously rejected their own parents, whom they regarded as cowards. They were uncompromisingly defiant and confrontational: some of them, the “lumpen element,” were not really political extremists at all, but minor gangsters or tsotsis.24 “We would punch the warders,” said Mike Xego, a Black Consciousness activist who later joined the ANC. “If the warders touched us, we would quickly punch back.”25 “We messed up the whole code, we refused to study,” said Eric Molobi. “We were too angry—we took two years to change.”26
Mandela had foreseen the rise of a more radical generation. During the Rivonia trial he had warned that the government would face much fiercer rebellions, which would make it long for the old ANC leaders. But he was shaken to find that these rebels were almost as skeptical of the ANC as they were of the government. “Before we went to the island we were told that Mandela was a sellout, and that he believed in Xhosa domination,” said Tokyo Sexwale, himself an ANC fighter, who came to the island in 1978.27
“To be perceived as a moderate,” said Mandela, “was a novel and not altogether pleasant feeling.”28 He realized he must try to come to terms with the young rebels, and asked some of them, including Saths Cooper of the BPC and Strini Moodley of SASO, to give lectures to the older prisoners. He became more aware of the appeal of Black Consciousness; recalling his own experience in the Youth League, he thought the young men would soon come around to the broader policies of the ANC. He tried to visualize their influences: “The toddlers I left behind have become serious-minded adults,” he wrote to Chief Buthelezi. “They live in the milieu of rapid change and development of science and technology.… Perhaps education and the influence of the mass media have helped to close the generation gap. We must, therefore, allow for what may appear superficially to be excesses of the youth. Wordsworth succinctly said, ‘the child is father to the man.’ ”29
But Mandela faced the greatest test of his political skills in trying to relate to these courageous, but impatient and angry, young men with whom he had had no previous contact, but whom he needed to bring into the broader movement. He had some important links among their leaders, and responded warmly to a friendly message from Hlaku Rachidi, the President of the BPC, who was in prison in Modderfontein.30 But he found many of the young rebels sectarian and immature in their preoccupation with blackness and their exclusion of whites.31
He was careful not to respond to the young lions with aggression, which would make them fight back: he did not campaign for the ANC or try to recruit from the new organizations. Instead he relied on a softer approach of gradual persuasion. He always remembered a fable which he had learned as a child, about the wind and the sun challenging each other to make a man take off his clothes. First the wind blew a gale right through him, but he only clutched his clothes to himself more firmly. Then the sun shone on him until he eventually took all his clothes off.32
Mandela and his colleagues set about trying to convert the young comrades to more moderate policies. “It was not the regime but the ANC that cracked us,” said Mike Xego. “One by one, the ANC underground on Robben Island worked on us—on individuals—talking with us and smuggling notes to us.”33 Most young comrades came to admire the sheer resilience of the veterans: “It was amazing to us that in spite of so many years on the island they were still so courageous, mentally alert and determined to fight on,” said Dan Montsisi, who came to the island in 1979. “We developed a deep comradeship with them through discussions and understanding of the problems we face in South Africa. We also felt great respect. They were like fathers to us.”34
“How I changed!” said Seth Mazibuko. “All because I met Nelson Mandela and learned from him and the others. I had been brought up to believe that Mandela was an animal. Our parents taught us: ‘Don’t get involved in politics because you’ll end up a terrorist and go to prison like that Mandela.’ … I heard this voice, deep and strong, saying, ‘Which ones are Seth, Murphy, and Dan?’ I looked up and there was Mandela.… It was then that I began to question some of my Black Consciousness beliefs, because here was our leader preaching unity and non-racialism.”35
The attitude to warders was a key issue. At first many of the young rebels were determined to defy them on principle: some would even provoke the guards to set the dogs on them. The Red Cross inspectors, visiting in March 1977, reported that the new inmates “brought into the prison a new emphasis on prisoners’ human dignity. They were frequently in conflict with the prison authorities, not because they wanted to make trouble at all costs, but because they were not prepared to accept the degrading and racist treatment they said they often received from their warders.”36
Some of the new prisoners regarded Mandela as a “sellout” because he had reached understandings with the warders, and helped to keep discipline. But they gradually began to listen to their elders. Eric Molobi was enraged by one warder who always swore at him and laughed when he swore back, until Sisulu asked him: “Why do you think he laughs at you? It’s because warders are the vermin of the Afrikaners, and like to see you come down to their level. Why don’t you try not swearing back?” The next time, Molobi restrained himself and just looked at t
he warder, who soon lost interest in him. “But I still wasn’t emotionally convinced,” said Molobi, “because Black Consciousness had taught me always to fight back.”
Gradually the comrades came to recognize many of the warders as human, and vulnerable, particularly to humor: when they discovered that they enjoyed dirty jokes, they arranged for their best joke tellers to walk beside them and make them laugh. “It broke through the wall,” as Molobi said. “Most of them came round in the end, and helped us. It changed our views of the raw system.”37
“We were all convicted, prisoner and jailer … we were chained to one another,” said Tokyo Sexwale. He noticed that the warders were shocked to find a Catholic prisoner who wanted to see his priest, or a prisoner who spoke Afrikaans: “They thought we only spoke Russian or Cuban.… Eventually we were able to find common ground, and strong friendships were built.”38
Terror Lekota soon realized that most of the warders were uneducated, and that many were from orphanages, with miserable backgrounds. “Eventually they wanted to understand why we were there. It was tremendously refreshing and inspiring to see these ordinary people appreciating our cause. The experience led to my belief that South Africa had a promising future.”
The influence of the veterans gradually took effect. “After four to six months, the excitement died down,” said Terror Lekota. “They had long debates and began to change their views.”39 Lekota himself was a critical influence. Before coming to the island he knew little about the ANC: he had read Mandela’s speech at Rivonia, but had only ever heard his name spoken in whispers. When he arrived he smuggled a note to Mandela asking him some political questions. Mandela, who had heard about his bravery, wrote back with three pages about the ANC’s history, explaining its long attempts at peaceful persuasion before it turned to unconstitutional methods. “I read it over and over,” remembered Lekota, “till I knew it by heart, and I knew I’d join the ANC.” Mandela was impressed by this strong, articulate young leader. He advised him not to leave his own organization, SASO, but Lekota was determined to join the ANC.40 “It was a painful self-appraisal,” said Dullah Omar, a Cape lawyer who talked to many Black Consciousness members on the island. “It sounded simple, but it wasn’t.”41
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