Dare Not Linger

by Nelson Mandela

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  Table of Contents

  A Note About the Authors

  Photos

  Copyright Page

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  The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.

  I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.

  –Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

  Prologue

  It was three months after Madiba and I married that he sat down to write the first chapter of what he intended to be the sequel to his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.

  A sense of duty to his political organisation and the broader struggle for liberation in southern Africa informed his decision to write Long Walk. And it was a sense of duty to South Africans and to global citizens that energised him as he began the work which has now become Dare Not Linger.

  He wanted to tell the story of his years as the first president of a democratic South Africa, reflect on the issues that had occupied him and his government, and explore the principles and the strategies they had sought to apply in addressing the innumerable challenges the new democracy faced. More than anything, he wanted to write about laying the foundations of a democratic system in South Africa.

  For about four years the project loomed large in his life and in the lives of those close to him. He wrote painstakingly, with his fountain pen or his ballpoint, awaited comments from trusted associates, then rewrote and rewrote until he felt he could move on to the next chapter or section. Every step was marked by a commitment to consultation. I am particularly grateful to Prof Jakes Gerwel and Madiba’s personal assistant Zelda la Grange, who gave him every encouragement and supported the project in multiple ways in this period.

  The demands the world placed on him, distractions of many kinds and his advancing years complicated the project. He lost momentum, and eventually the manuscript lay dormant. Through the last years of his life he talked about it often – worried about work started but not finished.

  This book represents a collective effort to complete the project for Madiba. It presents the story he wanted to share with the world. Completed and narrated by South African writer Mandla Langa, with Madiba’s ten original chapters and his other writing and thoughts from the period elegantly interwoven, the story has his voice ringing clearly throughout.

  Mandla has done an extraordinary job of listening to Madiba and responding to his voice authorially. Joel Netshitenzhe and Tony Trew, trusted advisers and members of Madiba’s staff during the presidential years, provided comprehensive and richly mediated research, analysis and preliminary narrativisation, and the Nelson Mandela Foundation anchored our endeavour institutionally. I am grateful to all of them, and to our publishing partners, for enabling us to bring Madiba’s dream to fruition.

  My wish is that every reader will feel challenged by Madiba’s story and be inspired to work toward sustainable solutions to the world’s multiple intractable problems. The title of the book is drawn from the final passage of Long Walk, where Madiba speaks of reaching the summit of a great hill and resting briefly before continuing his long walk. May we all find places of rest but never linger too long on the journeys we are called to.

  –Graça Machel

  A Note to the Reader

  A significant proportion of the words in this book are from Nelson Mandela’s own writings, encompassing text from his unfinished memoir on his presidential years as well as personal notes, and speeches made in Parliament, at political rallies or on the international stage in his capacity as a revered advocate for human rights.

  The unfinished memoir, ‘The Presidential Years’, consists of ten draft chapters, most of which include several versions, as well as notes toward further chapters. The sequence of chapter versions is not always clear from the archival evidence. Text for this book has been extracted across chapter versions and note accumulations.

  In an effort to retain the historical integrity of Mandela’s writing, we have made very few editorial interventions to his extracted text, apart from standardising quotation marks, italicising titles of books or newspapers and occasionally inserting a comma for sense or correcting the rare occurrence of a misspelt name. Editorial interpolations to provide further information to the reader appear in square brackets. We have retained Mandela’s characteristic style of capitalising professional titles and have also preserved inconsistencies, such as his occasional capitalisation of terms such as ‘Blacks’ and ‘Whites’. Quoted material from interviews where Mandela was speaking without notes has been standardised to be consistent with the editorial style of the narrative.

  To assist the reader, we have included a comprehensive glossary of significant people, places and events mentioned in the book here, along with a list of abbreviations for organisations, a map of South Africa and an abridged timeline of the period of Mandela’s life ranging from his release from prison in 1990 until the inauguration of his successor, Thabo Mbeki, in 1999.

  Preface

  For many South Africans, in 1997 the public holiday of 16 December was remembered more as an important milestone in Nelson Mandela’s long journey than for its poignant provenance, which simultaneously commemorates the victory of the Voortrekkers over amaZulu armies in 1838 and marks the establishment of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC), in 1961.* Having gone through various name changes, the day was finally renamed the Day of Reconciliation in 1994.

  On this Tuesday afternoon, when the temperatures in the North West provincial town of Mafikeng were already in the upper thirties, the more than three thousand ANC delegates gathered for the Fiftieth National Conference of the ANC sat in rapt silence waiting for President Mandela to deliver his political report. Minutes earlier he had sat on the dais among the leadership of the outgoing National Executive Committee (NEC), a small smile on his face as he listened to the spirited singing of liberation songs, which was punctuated by rapturous applause as he stepped towards the podium.

  Unlike most tall people, Mandela was unconscious of his height, standing erect as he read from the report, his delivery flat and matter-of-fact. He believed in the import of his words and therefore saw little use for rhetorical devices much favoured by some of his compatriots. The new South Afr
ica, ushered in with joy and celebration by the first democratic elections of 1994, was already experiencing the traumatic aftermath of a difficult birth.

  On the ANC’s role as the governing party, Mandela said, ‘During these past three years, it has been a basic tenet of our approach that despite our people’s achievements in stabilising the democratic settlement, we are still involved in a delicate process of nursing the newborn baby into a state of adulthood.’

  If the future was certain, the past was proving unpredictable. Violent crime – a legacy of previous iniquities and inequalities – was making headlines every day. Unemployment, which the government sought to confront through pro-growth policies and affirmative action, caused a measure of disaffection among the majority; this was exploited by opposition political parties, especially the National Party. Once the ruling party of the apartheid state, the National Party had withdrawn from the Government of National Unity (GNU) in 1996, citing its inability to influence government policy.*

  ‘The more honest among its members,’ Mandela said of the National Party’s politicians, ‘who occupied executive positions and were driven by the desire to protect the interests of both the Afrikaners and the rest of the population, did not support the decision to pull out of the GNU.’

  As Mandela spoke in December 1997, there was a sense of expectation. The dramatic events of the previous year in South Africa, such as the expulsion of General Bantu Holomisa from the ANC and the formation of a breakaway political party, the United Democratic Movement, must have conjured up the trauma of the schism that gave birth to the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) in 1959.† Once a favoured son, with a reputation for speaking his mind, Holomisa was also credited with the rise of populist tendencies within the ANC, equally fostered by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Peter Mokaba, the outspoken president of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL).‡

  Then there was the question of succession. Mandela had already voiced his intention to step down as ANC president at this conference. In a televised broadcast on Sunday, 7 July 1996, Mandela confirmed the rumours that he wouldn’t be available for elections in 1999. In keeping with his promise when sworn in as the country’s first democratic president in 1994, he felt that, although he could have served two terms as stipulated by the Constitution, one term was enough as he had already laid the foundation for a better future for all.§

  Editorials and analysts presented the conference as an arena in which a trusted hero would be handing over the baton. The question of who would succeed him, Thabo Mbeki or Cyril Ramaphosa, had already been settled.** They both had sterling struggle credentials. Ramaphosa excelled in the Multiparty Negotiating Forum of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), which started in October 1991 and ended in 1993, and which culminated in the adoption of the Constitution on 8 May 1996.* Mbeki was widely hailed for his stewardship of the country’s affairs as Mandela’s deputy.

  Anxious to dispel the widely held criticism that the isiXhosa language group dominated the ANC, Mandela had in 1994 suggested Ramaphosa while broaching the question of succession to the remaining three senior ANC officials, Walter Sisulu, Thomas Nkobi and Jacob Zuma.† He was advised instead to anoint Mbeki. Mbeki was ultimately elected ANC president in 1997, thus putting him in line for the country’s presidency ahead of Ramaphosa.

  A piquant flavouring to the drama of the five-day conference came from the elections for the top positions in the ANC, with only two of the six being contested. Mbeki was elected unopposed as ANC president and Jacob Zuma became deputy president. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela had considered running for the deputy presidency against Zuma, but she could not muster enough support from delegates to second her nomination and was forced to stand down. Many felt that her dalliance with populist causes and barbed comments about government shortcomings, which sometimes smacked of defiance towards her erstwhile husband, had alienated the membership and led to her humiliation. Kgalema Motlanthe, one-time trade unionist and, like Mandela and Jacob Zuma, a Robben Island alumnus, was elected secretary general, with Mendi Msimang taking over as treasurer general from Arnold Stofile.‡ Of the two contested positions of national chairman and deputy secretary general, Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota trounced one-time fellow inmate on Robben Island Steve Tshwete for the position of national chairman; and Thenjiwe Mtintso won narrowly against Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini for the position of deputy secretary general.§

  * * *

  At the close of the conference, it was again a sombre Mandela who gave his farewell speech on the afternoon of 20 December 1997. Hands clasped in front of him, he departed from his written script to speak from the heart. Without naming names, he cautioned the incoming leader against surrounding himself or herself with yes-men and -women.

  ‘A leader, especially with such a heavy responsibility, who has been returned unopposed, his first duty is to allay the concerns of his colleagues in the leadership for them to be able to discuss freely, without fear within the internal structures of the movement.’

  Waiting for the applause to die down, he elaborated on the contradiction that faced a leader who had to unite the organisation while allowing internal dissent and freedom of expression.

  ‘People should even be able to criticise the leader without fear or favour, only in that case are you likely to keep your colleagues together. There are many examples of this – allowing differences of opinion as long as those don’t put the organisation in disrepute.’

  As an illustration, Mandela cited a critic of Mao Zedong’s policies during the Chinese revolution. The Chinese leadership ‘examined whether he had said anything outside the structures of the movement, which put the movement in disrepute’. Satisfied that this was not the case, the critic was brought into the central committee as president of the Chinese Chamber of Workers – the trade union movement.

  They ‘gave him responsibility for which he had to account,’ Mandela said to gales of laughter, ‘and he was forced to talk less and to be more accountable.’

  He went on, ‘Fortunately, I know that our president understands this issue. One thing I know is that in his work he has taken criticism in a comradely spirit and I have not the slightest doubt that he is not … going to sideline anybody, because he knows that [it’s important] to surround yourself with strong and independent persons who can within the structures of the movement criticise you and improve your own contribution, so that when you go outside your policy your decisions are foolproof and they cannot be criticised by anybody successfully. Nobody in this organisation understands that principle better than my president, comrade Thabo Mbeki.’

  Mandela went on, reading from his speech, to reiterate how leaders’ association with ‘powerful and influential individuals who have far more resources than all of us put together’ could lead to their forgetting ‘those who were with us when we were all alone during difficult times’.

  Following another round of applause, Mandela went on to justify the ANC’s continued relationships with countries such as Cuba, Libya and Iran. This was against the advice of governments and heads of state that had supported the apartheid state. To the foreign guests present in the hall, from all those shunned countries and the anti-apartheid movement worldwide, Mandela conveyed his gratitude. They ‘made it possible for us to win. Our victory is their victory.’

  Towards the end of his address, Mandela took a moment to admit to the vulnerability of the struggle and its gains. While there had been signal successes, there had also been setbacks.

  ‘It is not because we were infallible,’ he said, departing from his written speech. ‘We have had difficulties in the past, like any other organisations.

  ‘We had a leader who also was returned unopposed, but then we were arrested together with him.* But he was wealthy by the standards of those days and we were very poor. And the security police went to him with a copy of the Suppression of Communism Act, and they say: “Now look here, you’ve got farms. Here is a provision that if you are found guilty you’ll lose those pr
operties. Your associates here are poor people, they have nothing to lose.Ӡ The leader then opted to have his own lawyers and refused to be defended with the rest of the accused. Then the lawyer leading his witness told the court that there were many documents where the accused were demanding equality with the whites: what did his witness believe? What was his opinion?

  ‘The leader,’ Mandela continued, with a small chuckle at the memory, ‘said, “There will never be anything like that.” And the lawyer said, “But do you and your colleagues here accept that?”’ The leader ‘was beginning to point towards Walter Sisulu when the judge says, “No, no, no, no, no, you speak for yourself.” But that experience of being arrested was too much for him.’ He paused, reflecting. ‘Now we nevertheless appreciated the role that he had played, during the days before we were arrested. He had done very well.’

  Not pausing to explain the ambiguity of the last statement, which elicited great hilarity – was ‘doing well’ an appreciation of the leader’s service to the organisation or a barbed comment aimed at his material wealth? – Mandela wound up his off-script commentary.

  ‘I’m saying this,’ he concluded with a mischievous glint in his eye, ‘because if one day I myself should cave in and say, “I have been misled by these young chaps”, just remember I was once your colleague.’

  Returning to the script, he said that the time had come to hand over the baton. ‘And,’ he went on, ‘I personally relish the moment when my fellow veterans, whom you have seen here, and I shall be able to observe from near and judge from afar. As 1999 approaches, I will endeavour as State President to delegate more and more responsibility so as to ensure a smooth transition to the new presidency.

  ‘Thus I will be able to have that opportunity in my last years to spoil my grandchildren and try in various ways to assist all South African children, especially those who have been the hapless victims of a system that did not care. I will also have more time to continue the debates with Tyopho, that is Walter Sisulu, Uncle Govan (Govan Mbeki) and others,* which the 20 years of umrabulo [intense political debate for educational purposes] on the Island could not resolve.†