Dare Not Linger

by Nelson Mandela

  What Mandela said in the snap debate was in essence a reprise of his earlier speech in the Senate, but it was accompanied by a reminder of the fundamental goals of transition, and stressed that it was imperative that there should be a national effort to achieve those goals. Shell House ‘was not a bolt from the blue’ he said. The marchers ‘were to be directed to attack Shell House, destroy information and kill members of the leadership’. Knowing this, the ANC had alerted the authorities, who failed to take preventative action despite agreeing to do so, resulting in the deaths of more than thirty people, killed in the wake of the Inkatha rampage in Soweto.

  ‘Needless to say,’ Mandela continued, ‘the surging columns on Shell House, away from the routes to their destination, the shots fired, and the fact that the few policemen deployed there decided to run away, gave credence to the information we had gathered. It is in this context, Madam Speaker, that this incident happened.’

  He regretted ‘the loss of life, anywhere and under any circumstances. But what parties involved in this vendetta need to pause and reflect on, is what would have happened if the intentions of these plotters had been realised, if, indeed, Shell House had been invaded, documents destroyed and ANC leaders killed!’28

  He ended on a conciliatory note however: ‘Let us therefore dedicate ourselves, in memory of all the lives lost in conflict, to working together to seek solutions to the problems which generate conflict. We must bring an end to violence. The existence of no-go areas, controlled by whatever party, is a shame to our nation. We must see to it that they no longer exist. Above all, we must save human lives.

  ‘As long as we fail to tackle these problems, we will … undermine our capacity to improve the quality of life of our people, millions of whom still live in abject poverty. We will be hampered in our drive to ensure that all South Africans enjoy the climate of safety and security, which is their right.

  ‘The nation has set itself the task of reconstruction and development, nation building and reconciliation. It expects [from] its representatives in these hallowed chambers, the seriousness of purpose and the application to duty, which success requires. It is in this spirit that we view the comments that have been made. On my part, I call on all parties to join us in working for a better life for all South Africans.’29

  * * *

  At its final sitting in 1999, Mandela reflected on the contribution made by the first democratically elected parliament. He commended the people of South Africa for having chosen ‘a profoundly legal path to their revolution’, noting that it ‘is in the legislatures that the instruments have been fashioned to create a better life for all’. Remembering some of the bruising encounters with the committees, he said that it was in the legislature ‘that oversight of government has been exercised’.30

  Mandela was aware that, while he waxed lyrical about it, Parliament had its detractors. Sometime previously, Joseph Chiole, of the Freedom Front, had let rip against the media, which he felt misinformed the public. ‘Members of Parliament,’ he said, ‘have been, and still are, being discredited, insulted and degraded to such an extent that member-of-Parliament bashing is now a very popular pastime in South Africa … Every day, in nearly every newspaper, one reads distorted stories.’ Concluding his speech, Chiole said, ‘The true situation in South Africa at present is that MPs are terribly frustrated by the fact that they do not have the necessary means at their disposal to render a satisfactory service to the voters and to do absolutely necessary research work as well. On the other hand – I am sorry to say this – if proposals are made by MPs, they are accused of stoking the gravy train.’31

  Mandela said, ‘Questions have been raised, we know, as to whether this House is not a carriage on the gravy train, whose passengers idle away their time at the nation’s expense. To those who raise such questions, we say, “Look at the record of our Parliament during these years of freedom.”’

  He directed Parliament’s critics to the ‘one hundred laws on average that have been passed by this legislature each year’. These were laws passed so that ‘the legacy of our past can be undone and put right …

  ‘This,’ Mandela concluded, ‘is a record in which we can take pride.’32

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Traditional Leadership and Democracy

  The fact that traditional African leadership played a role in the inception of the ANC is usually overlooked or, at best, subsumed by popular folklore. Nelson Mandela always recognised the historical dignitaries, some of whom were southern African royalty, who had been the delegates to the founding conference of the ANC in Bloemfontein (also called Mangaung, its ancestral Sesotho name) on 8 January 1912. In the years of exile, it had also become a traditional practice for the long-serving ANC president O. R. Tambo to use the birthday of the ANC to acknowledge the support of the international community and pledge solidarity with liberation movements worldwide. Mandela’s style of leadership was to mark the anniversary by preaching unity, reprising the words of Pixley ka Isaka Seme, one of the ANC’s founders and its first president. Mandela would repeat Seme’s memorable call:*

  Chiefs of royal blood and gentlemen of our race, we have gathered here to consider and discuss a theme which my colleagues and I have decided to place before you. We have discovered that in the land of their birth, Africans are treated as hewers of wood and drawers of water. The white people of this country have formed what is known as the Union of South Africa – a union in which we have no voice in the making of the laws and no part in their administration. We have called you therefore to this Conference so that we can together devise ways and means of forming our national union for the purpose of creating national unity and defending our rights and privileges.1

  As time passed, however, due largely to the machinations of, first, the colonial administrations and, later, the apartheid state, the traditional structures of kings and chiefs ended up serving interests unfavourable to the majority of the people. Apartheid’s grand design, using the timeless strategy of divide and rule, gave rise to Bantustans, little fragments of so-called ‘self-governing’ entities, with their own political parties and administrations.

  For Mandela and the ANC, it was a political imperative to carve out an accommodation for the traditional leadership in democratic South Africa, without compromising democratic principle. When it was founded, the ANC had an upper house of traditional leaders, recognising the earlier role of kingdoms and traditional structures in the resistance against colonial intrusion.

  Although the upper house was dropped because it was implicated in entrenching segregation, it was supplanted in 1987 by the Congress of Traditional Leaders (CONTRALESA), which became part of the broad democratic front created by the ANC.* This was in line with the ANC’s 1989 ‘Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa’, which declared that the ‘institution of hereditary rulers and chiefs shall be transformed to serve the interests of the people as a whole in conformity with the democratic principles embodied in the constitution’.

  On Robben Island in the 1970s, prisoners debated the developments in the Bantustans, aware of the manipulative arrangements that granted power and privilege to leaders toeing the apartheid line while at the same time dismissing the rebels. The essence of Mandela’s thinking on this was set out in his 1976 essay, ‘Clear the Obstacles and Confront the Enemy’, in which his words ‘Time is of the essence and we cannot afford to hesitate’ reflect a great sense of urgency. He then immediately goes to the heart of the problem, saying that ‘one of the most burning issues in the country today is the independence of the Transkei and other Bantustans, and the whole question of our tactics towards apartheid institutions’.2

  Brutally self-critical, Mandela questions the wisdom of totally reject-ing the Bantustans and posits arguments about where they could be used – or potentially explored – to further the objectives of liberation. The essay describes the liberation movement as having ‘weaknesses’ and being ‘out of touch’, and advocates some accommodation with the
Bantustans. This, he suggests, would tip the scales in the favour of the liberation movement and give it a political presence or foothold in the rural areas where it was currently at its weakest. This entente between the liberation movement and the Bantustan would then facilitate the exploitation of the regime’s weak spot. The crux of his argument, however, is the fear that the liberation movement could well boycott itself into irrelevance.

  ‘In exploiting our weakness in the rural areas,’ he writes, apropos the imminent independence of the Transkei, ‘the regime probably realised that the independence of each Bantustan would result in a sharp drop or total disappearance of whatever following we had there.* Once people enjoy the right to manage their own affairs, they have won the only right for which they could join the liberation movement.’ He cautions against dilly-dallying, as the lure of the homelands had already snared ‘some men who were once politically active’. He warns: ‘If we do not iron out our differences and close ranks immediately, we may find it difficult, if not impossible, to resist the divisive pressures once independence becomes a fact.’

  By the time Mandela was released, the United Democratic Front had laid the foundation for a broad democratic front that included a goodly number of traditional leaders. Many had decided to stake their fate in resisting the Bantustan system in its totality, or to use it as a platform against its progenitors.

  In December 1989, just two months before Mandela’s release, the Conference for a Democratic Future brought together thousands of representatives from hundreds of organisations, including political parties from several Bantustans. Just two months after his release from prison, Walter Sisulu spoke to the conference on the need for a broad front. ‘Our response is to remain steadfast in the search for broader unity,’ he said. ‘Indeed, we cannot be satisfied with even the broadness of this conference. Our aim is a greater one. It is to unite the whole of our society.’3

  The sense of urgency never quite left Mandela, even after his release. He pushed for the ANC to bring traditional leaders and Bantustan parties into the camp of the liberation movement and deny them to the National Party. A note written to Walter Sisulu during a meeting underscores his concern: ‘Comrade Xhamela, I hope you will soon visit homeland leaders. Delay may lead to our being outwitted by Government.’4

  When the formal negotiations began on 21 December 1991, Bantustan parties were among the participants. Days before the first meeting of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), Mandela, as president of the ANC, issued a statement:

  ‘In keeping with the spirit of unity, the ANC considers it important that the traditional leaders be involved in the process. It is our view, which we have put to CODESA, that the highest-ranking traditional leaders from all parts of South Africa attend the proceedings on 20 and 21 December as observers. Just as such leaders were present at the formation of the ANC, they should be present at the watershed events that herald the dawn of a new, democratic South Africa.’5

  After much discussion in the ANC’s own councils about the form this should take, a compromise was reached in favour of a special participatory status, with delegations of traditional leaders from all four provinces. Later, as the first election approached, Mandela urged activists to be tactical and not to shun traditional leaders because of their history. When speaking to young people in April 1994, he reminded them that ‘it is going to be difficult for our organisation to take root and be strong in the countryside unless we are able to work together with [traditional leaders] in their respective areas. Those who feel that we [should] have nothing to do with the chiefs do not know the policy of the ANC and have no idea how to strengthen the organisation in the countryside.’

  The National Party had exploited this weakness. ‘That is how,’ Mandela said, ‘they succeeded in forcing the homeland policy on the masses of our people.

  ‘In our custom and history, the chief is the mouthpiece of his people. He must listen to the complaints of his people. He is the custodian of their hopes and desires. And if any chief decides to be a tyrant, to take decisions for his people, he will come to a tragic end in the sense that we will deal with him.’6

  This last point was born of a meeting he had with a cross section of traditional leaders soon after his release. Of this he writes:

  ‘Soon after I was released from prison I flew down to East London and met Comrade Silumko Sokupa and the Regional Executive Committee to acquaint myself with the situation in that area. In their briefing they told me that the Head of the House of Rarabe, King Zanesizwe Sandile, would visit me at my hotel that morning. I was shocked because to invite a monarch to visit a mere politician in a hotel was a breach of protocol.

  ‘I instructed the committee to phone immediately and inform the King that I would prefer to pay him a courtesy visit at his palace later during the day. At that moment the King walked in. I apologised and pointed out that many of the young people who occupied leadership positions in the African National Congress grew up in the urban areas. They knew precious little about traditional leaders. It was not so much deliberate disrespect of, as lack of information on, the historic role of traditional leaders and the vital contribution they have made towards the liberation struggle.

  ‘Heroes like the Khoi leader, Autshumayo, Maqoma and Hintsa from the House of Tshiwo, Siqungati and Gecelo from the abaThembu, Cetwayo and Bambatha from amaZulu, Mampuru and Sekhukhune from abaPedi, Makhado and Tshivhase from amaVenda, and a host of other legends, were in the forefront of the wars of resistance. We speak of them with awe and admiration. Traditional leaders like Dalindyebo Ngangelizwe of abaThembu and Indlovukazi of amaSwazi, Labotsibeni Gwamile, each paid a large number of cattle to enrol their respective people into the ANC.* Kings hailed from all over the length and breadth of the country to join other African leaders in the formation of the ANC in 1912. An upper House was later created to accommodate the Traditional Leaders.

  ‘Even at the height of the severe repression of the apartheid regime, there were courageous monarchs like Cyprian Bhekuzulu kaSolomon and Sabata Dalindyebo and others who refused to betray their people by accepting the Bantustan policy.†

  ‘When I returned from prison I took along with me Comrade Peter Mokaba, the President of the ANC Youth League, General Bantu Holomisa, then the strongman of the Transkei Bantustan, and Ngangomhlaba Matanzima, a former Minister of Agriculture in the same Bantustan.‡ We visited African Kings and traditional leaders under them in the Eastern Cape.

  ‘To all of them my message was the same: I explained that we fully appreciated the fact that they were forced by the apartheid regime to accept the policy of separate development. Had they not done so, they would have been removed from their positions by that oppressive regime. We the ANC were not there to protect them at that time.

  ‘I went further and stressed that the youth were justified in condemning them as traitors, as traditional leaders, with a few exceptions mentioned above, were vicious in persecuting members of the liberation movement. Now the organisation had been unbanned, political prisoners had been released and exiles would soon be back in the country. The ANC was regaining its strength and legitimacy, and would give protection to traditional leaders. I then urged them to rally behind the organisation and to join the fight for liberation.

  ‘Everywhere we went we were warmly welcomed. Vulindlela Tutor Ndamase was then King of Western Pondoland with headquarters at Nyandeni. Holomisa, who was present at that meeting, had become the military ruler of the Transkei, where Pondoland was situated. He staged a successful but bloodless coup against Prime Minister Stella Sigcau, Princess of Eastern Pondoland. In welcoming us, Vulindlela boasted that he was not an ordinary traditional leader, but a well-known King. Nobody, he claimed, would ever dare to coup him. It was as if he was challenging the General to try to coup [sic] him. It was as if he was challenging the General to try to unseat him. But the General appeared not to be offended by the royal boast.

  ‘We also visited King Xolilizwe Sigcau of the House of T
shiwo. In his welcome speech he strongly attacked the toyi-toyi [dance], which had become a popular form of protest.* He said there was nothing he hated more than the toyi-toyi. He had investigated to find out where this type of demonstration came from, and nobody could help him. He announced that he had banned that form of protest in his kingdom.

  ‘Peter Mokaba then explained its origin. It was a war cry against the apartheid policy. It was not at all aimed against traditional leaders. He regretted the fact that the King thought that it was directed at important community leaders. Mokaba then boldly and gracefully toyi-toyied, gyrating menacingly all the way. The Master of Ceremonies was Mandlenkosi Dumalisile, a senior traditional leader in that House, and Minister of Agriculture in the Transkei Bantustan. When Peter Mokaba concluded his remarks, Dumalisile thrilled the meeting when he, in turn, joined and toyi-toyied. The King, obviously fascinated by Mokaba’s eloquence and grace, accepted the explanation.

  ‘Holomisa and Ngangomhlaba Matanzima accompanied me only in the Transkei where my meetings went on without trouble. Despite the diplomatic and courteous language used, I did not fare well in the Bantustans of Bophuthatswana and Lebowakgomo in the Transvaal Province, as the Limpopo Province was then known. The position was equally difficult in KwaZulu-Natal.

  ‘Lucas Mangope was President of Bophuthatswana, and a different customer. I visited his Bantustan in the company of Comrade Joe Modise, who later became our Minister of Defence, Ruth Matseoane, who became our Ambassador to Switzerland, and Popo Molefe, who later became the Premier of North West. Before April 1994, no liberation movement could campaign in Mangope’s Bantustan. He first agreed when I requested him to remove all barriers and allow political organisations to campaign freely in his area. Later during the discussion, he suddenly pounced an unexpected question on us and asked, “When you address a meeting in my area are you going to say Bophuthatswana is a Bantustan?”