But Botha’s government was determined to stamp out ANC bases beyond the country’s frontiers. In January 1981 their forces invaded Mozambique, attacking three buildings in the capital, Maputo, and killing thirteen ANC people. Mandela saw this as being clearly linked to South Africa’s forthcoming April elections. “P. W. Botha is prepared to violate the territorial integrity of an independent country,” he wrote to Tambo, “and to kill unarmed refugees in order to remain in power.” He believed Botha was trying to curry favor with the Reagan administration in its crusade against communism. But Mandela still seemed optimistic: “Our next blow will be so devastating that more and more government supporters will realise that the Nats are leading the country to complete disaster.”46
By 1981 the attacks and reprisals were stepping up. Joe Gqabi, an ex-MK fighter and the ANC representative in Zimbabwe, was murdered in Harare; soon afterward a bomb exploded in a Port Elizabeth shopping center. Tambo announced that “combat situations” might arise in which civilians could be killed. In four and a half years there had been 112 attacks and explosions. It was, wrote the historian Tom Lodge in 1981, “the most sustained violent rebellion in South African history, and all the indications are that it will continue into a full-scale revolutionary war.”47
The rebellion was approaching a kind of insurrection within the townships. But it was also coming up against the global Cold War, as Western powers were watching black South Africa through red-tinted telescopes. P. W. Botha’s anticommunist crusade was gaining more support from the neoconservative governments in London and Washington, and from right-wing organizations and companies in America and Europe. They saw Mandela as an archenemy, and Buthelezi and Botha as champions of free enterprise.
When Margaret Thatcher came to power in Britain in 1979, she was sympathetic to the white South Africans—influenced by her husband, Denis, who had good friends in Natal—and she became implacably hostile to the ANC, whom she saw as communist terrorists, threatening a stronghold of capitalism. Her friend the Afrikaner mystic Laurens van der Post advised her that while the ANC were Xhosa communists, the Zulus were a proud, separate nation, ably led by Buthelezi. “She listened to him rapt,” said her Private Secretary, Charles Powell, “her lips parted.”48
In Washington, Ronald Reagan was “not too steeped” in South African issues (as his Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig, delicately put it). Chester Crocker, in charge of Africa at the State Department, told a South African reporter: “All Reagan knows about South Africa is that he’s on the side of the whites.” Nevertheless, Crocker embarked on an ambitious policy of “constructive engagement” aimed at getting the Cubans out of Angola and the South Africans out of Namibia, which involved dealing closely with P. W. Botha and his Foreign Minister, Pik Botha, but left out the ANC entirely: Crocker would not meet Tambo until 1986.49 And Crocker’s patient negotiations were undermined by the hawkish CIA Director, William Casey, working with Reagan’s close aide Pat Buchanan. Casey was backing covert anti-communist plots throughout the continent. In South Africa he befriended Pretoria’s intelligence chiefs and supported P. W. Botha—to whom he presented a signed copy of his book.50
The ANC’s hopes of support from independent black states were being dashed by the failures of their governments, and by successive coups and countercoups. Over two decades twenty-eight African countries had experienced coups d’état and fifty governments had been overthrown; some were taken over by dictators who ignored all human rights, like Idi Amin in Uganda.51 By the early eighties only Nigeria, with huge oil revenues and a new civilian government, appeared economically hopeful. Western businessmen were writing off most of black Africa, while white South Africa depicted itself as the only viable part of the continent. The more mature Robben Islanders were learning lessons about the problems of democracy from the coups, wars and dictators to the north, and were determined not to take the same routes.
But the Cold War was now distorting policies all through Africa, as the Soviet Union supported Marxist regimes while the Americans financed anticommunist leaders like Mobutu in Zaire, thus providing coffers for corruption. The Marxists on Robben Island saw African setbacks in terms of American interference. They had looked to the communist government in Somalia, for instance, as a utopia; when in 1977 the Somalis threw out the Russians and brought in the Americans they simply could not believe it.52 (Harry Gwala explained that the Somalis had not properly adopted Marxism-Leninism, and were held back by bourgeois democracy.)53
Mandela had hoped that the Cold War would evaporate as the two rival systems were forced to cooperate in space and elsewhere: he told Zindzi in 1978 that “the Cold War is now melting away.”54 But it became hotter around the edges of South Africa after Angola and Mozambique acquired Marxist governments. Mozambique under President Samora Machel briefly appeared to be a socialist dream, but then white technicians and managers left the country, and the incursions of rebel soldiers reduced large areas to chaos. Angola became a battlefield for the rival superpowers: the central government brought in Cuban troops, while the Americans and South Africans supported the rebel UNITA army of Jonas Savimbi. Angola was torn apart, and the battle for the country polarized both sides.
Most Robben Islanders regarded the CIA as the chief villains. Mandela saw the CIA as the agent of American imperialism, which (he wrote in 1975) “props up right-wing elements in all countries, which tries to undermine and topple legitimate progressive governments through violence, intrigue and dollars.”55 He still praised the American democratic system, as he had in his Rivonia speech, and educated the young comrades about the American constitution and the separation of powers. But the general mood on the island was very anti-American. “America was the most hated country,” said Eric Molobi. “No one looked for help from them.” “We were unanimous in our negative attitude towards the United States,” said Kathrada.56
By March 1982 Mandela had been in prison for almost twenty years. From his isolation he had watched the Western world swinging from right to left, and back to the right, ending up with Reagan and Thatcher. Most governments had denounced apartheid, but none had held out much support for the prisoners or for the ANC in exile. In the meantime communist fighters in Vietnam and Cuba had shown the way to triumphant revolution, and the Russians, the East Germans and other Marxists were training ANC guerrillas and providing them with weapons. The ANC continued to look east rather than west for their salvation: the KGB reported that black southern African leaders saw the Soviet Union as “the only major power that could assist them.”57
The map of Africa had been transformed over two decades by the retreat of the old empires. “The African Revolution which swept through Africa knocked at the doors of Southern Africa,” wrote Sisulu in 1976. “The door remained bolted.”58 Another door opened when Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, leaving only South Africa and its colony Namibia as the rump of the old “white redoubt.” But successive white South African governments—under Verwoerd, Vorster and Botha—had fought back with growing ingenuity and ruthlessness, and had found friends among other pariah states and right-wing groups in the Western democracies. With all the protests around the world, the apartheid government was still very well fortified, and the Robben Islanders, who had lived on hope, could see no easy prospect of the walls tumbling.
*When the Lord Provost of Glasgow wrote a letter, released to the press, to the South African President asking for Mandela to be allowed to come to Scotland to receive his award, the South African Consul in Glasgow reported to Pretoria with pride that “the response (even in Labour newspapers) has been one of neutrality, disapproval, hostility or, now, of disinterest.”26
23
Insurrection
1982–1985
IN APRIL 1982 the commanding officer of Robben Island, Brigadier Munro, came into Mandela’s cell to tell him to pack his belongings because he was being moved from the island. Mandela, puzzled, stowed his accumulated things into a few cardboard boxes, and had no time to say pr
oper good-byes. He was taken with three others—Walter Sisulu, Raymond Mhlaba and Andrew Mlangeni—to board the ferry to Cape Town. From the boat they looked back in the dusk at the island which had been their home for eighteen years. In Cape Town they were rushed past armed guards to a huge truck with a cage on it, into which they were herded. After being kept standing for an hour’s drive, they arrived in the lush suburb of Tokai, full of vineyards and gardens, where they were taken inside Pollsmoor prison, a huge complex built for 6,000 common-law prisoners.1 From the outside, Pollsmoor looked sunny and cheerful. Inside, it was a self-enclosed underworld of dark corridors and clanging metal doors leading to rows of barred cells. They were taken to the top floor, to find a big room with four beds with sheets and towels, and their own separate washroom. From this isolated fortress Mandela would soon watch his country hurtling into much more serious violence, which he was helpless to control.
The prisoners’ treatment at Pollsmoor was much more civilized than it had been on Robben Island. They were given meals of proper meat and vegetables; they were allowed more newspapers and periodicals, including Time and the Guardian Weekly; and there was a long rooftop terrace, where they could relax during the day. They enjoyed new gadgets which they had never seen before, including television, videos and FM radio.2 Mandela even had a separate cell where he could read and write letters.3 Compared to the island, it seemed to him like a five-star hotel. But he felt disoriented and much more isolated. He missed the camaraderie and arguments, and even the wildness, of the island, which was much closer to nature than this concrete compound.
When Winnie came to see him soon after his arrival she found him looking “very, very well.” She was impressed by the handsome prison structure, which resembled a modern technical institution, and by the polite warder James Gregory, who had been with Mandela on the island. She also appreciated the more humane conditions for visits: she and Mandela could see and hear each other properly, through clear glass and loud amplifiers. But she felt he was worse off than before, cut off from his friends and subjected to “harassment of the soul.”4 He complained about the cold, damp cell and the lack of any view: he had not seen a blade of grass, he complained, since he arrived. Winnie thought Pollsmoor made the island look like a paradise.
The four prisoners assumed they were being deliberately detached from their comrades as ringleaders, and their suspicions were reinforced when they were joined a few months later by Kathrada, another member of the ANC’s High Organ (which Mlangeni had not been). Govan Mbeki remained the most notable absentee: the leading Marxist. On Robben Island Major Harding thought the government had decided that “these guys have got so much influence on the others. We must now get rid of them and isolate them from the others.” But he suspected they had acted far too late: they had believed their own myths about the troubles being caused by a small group of leaders.5
The three veterans—Mandela, Sisulu and Kathrada—were still together after four decades, having been through the Defiance Campaign, the Treason Trial and the Rivonia trial. They knew each other backward. “After all the disagreements and tensions,” wrote Kathrada in June 1985, “we were always able to successfully and satisfactorily resolve the problems.”6 Kathrada, much the youngest of the three, sometimes found “the old geezers,” as he called them, rather too serious. “The geezers don’t read Andy Capp, or Hagar, Blondie … and they don’t listen to the Bickersons, Morecambe and Wise, Lily Tomlin, all my favourite characters. Mercifully they do watch and enjoy The Cosby Show on TV.” But they were aging gracefully: “Prison life may not have altogether arrested the aging process; but it certainly seems to have slowed it down.”7
Mandela made several complaints about the grim conditions, with six in one cell, and water seeping through the cement floor. Helen Suzman, who had recently said on British television that Mandela was being well treated, passed on his complaint to Kobie Coetsee, warning that she might have to retract her comment; later she visited Pollsmoor, and agreed that the cells were bleak and the amenities worse than on Robben Island.8 Mandela kept up his complaints. A year later his lawyer Ismail Ayob wrote a seventeen-page memo to the Minister. Five years later he was still being refused more time out of his cell. “The Department of Prisons,” Mandela protested grandly to the head of prison, “had failed to apply its mind to the matter.”9
But he eventually came to terms with his new surroundings. “I feel fine and ten years younger than I am,” he wrote to Fatima Meer in June 1983. “The only difference is that I am not as active as I used to be on Robben Island.”10 “Morale is high,” he wrote in February 1984, “and as I write this letter the body is literally boiling with optimism and hope.”11 He was on friendly terms with Pollsmoor’s commanding officer, Brigadier Munro, though he had a dispute once again on the question of clothes, when he was not allowed a woolen cap. He appealed to Munro “not to make a caricature of myself by compelling me to see my family and legal representatives without a suitable headcover.”12 Munro allowed him to make a garden on the roof, and supplied him with sixteen oil drums, sliced in half and filled with good soil. Mandela spent two hours a day, in a straw hat and gloves, turning the roof into a small farm, eventually growing nine hundred plants, with all kinds of vegetables, including broccoli and carrots.13 He was proud of his “garden in the sky,” he told Lionel Ngakane.14 “He has a sort of obsession with his garden,” wrote Kathrada. “You can’t imagine the amount of time and energy which he expends on his plants.”15
Mandela was now able to receive and send fifty-two letters a year. He wrote in his round hand, in a formal, almost Victorian style, full of compliments, reminiscences, condolences and felicitations to friends and children, whose names he always remembered. He looked back on his past life and tried to catch up with the new. From his cell he seemed to be reaching out to every possible constituency, including liberals. He asked about past members of the Institute of Race Relations, such as his Soweto friend and neighbor Barney Ngakane; Mrs. Quintin Whyte, who taught him Latin at Healdtown; and Ellen Hellman, who had raised funds for the Treason Trial.16 But he was especially interested in the Churches, which were becoming more political. He congratulated Desmond Tutu on his appointment as Bishop of Johannesburg. He wrote to the Methodist Peter Storey recalling a wayside pulpit he had seen forty years before outside the Central Methodist Hall displaying the words “The greatest glory of living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time you fall.” He remembered too how a priest on Robben Island had described a saint as “a sinner who keeps on trying.”17 He wrote to Stephen Naidoo, the Catholic Archbishop of Cape Town, remembering his meeting with Bishop Clayton.18 He wrote to Sheikh Gabier, the militant chairman of the Moslem Judicial Council, recalling how he was first introduced to Islam by Congress leaders, and realized its full importance when he toured Africa in 1962. He had read the Qur’an in English in prison, as well as books about Islam.19 He wrote to Sister Bernard Ncube, a political Catholic nun who was frequently detained, saying how he was looking forward to the forthcoming film King David, and was glad that Sir Richard Attenborough was making a film about Gandhi.20
He longed for more letters. “There are hardly any men to correspond with,” he complained to Kepu Mkentane, his friend in the Transkei. “The few that can still be contacted seem to be totally unaware of the fact that letters were meant to be answered. By comparison, women have proved to be far better correspondents, more aware of the needs of prisoners.”21 In his loneliness he could be touchy: Amina Cachalia wrote describing how her husband, Yusuf, the former Congress leader, was doing well in business, and Mandela wrote back with a comment about the ringing till which Yusuf took as a reproof. Amina wrote back understandingly: “Clearly you had your belly filled with news, and the honest man that you are made it necessary for you to spit it out to me.” And she translated an Urdu poem which Yusuf had quoted:
Watch the rising sun
witness the lustre of its crystal clarity
hidden behind the veil.
>
But Mandela complained sadly about Amina’s cold letter: “There is a frozen lump inside me which nothing, save a letter from you, can melt away.” He assured her that he approved of Yusuf’s business: “Even in societies where the profit motive is not the dominant object of economic activity, business executives nevertheless strive for a good business day.” He concluded sadly that if only he had been with them, “I would have simply hugged Yusuf and kissed you.” It was a poignant reminder of the need for physical contact in relationships. Five years later Mandela was still harking back to the reproof: he did not dare to ask about the shop, he wrote, “lest I should get another tongue-lashing and a biting quotation from an Urdu bard … in the loneliness of a prison cell a rebuke from a loved couple can be as painful as a dart going through the heart.”22 But he put on a bold face after two decades in prison, in letters which he knew the censor would read. “If I had to I would be prepared to spend another twenty-one years without any regrets,” he told Kepu Mkentane. “In spirit I live far beyond these walls and my thoughts are rarely ever in the cell.”23 “To be shut up behind bars for twenty-two years,” he told Barney Ngakane, “is by any standard a shattering experience in which one misses virtually all the exciting joys of being alive.… But as you know a human being has an amazing capacity for adaptation, getting used, in due course, to some of the most impossible situations.”24 “If I had been able to foresee all that has since happened, I would certainly have made the same decision,” he told another friend. “But that decision would certainly have been far more daunting, and some of the tragedies which subsequently flowed would have melted whatever traces of steel were inside me.”25
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