Mandela votes in 1994.
Nelson Mandela, the South African freedom fighter who spent 27 years in prison for opposing the racist apartheid system imposed by the white minority and then, in 1994, became his nation's first president under a new multiracial system after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993,
has died at age 95. Last summer, he spent three months in the hospital with a lung infection that brought him close to death. But he struggled on, just as he had done all his adult life.
Here he is on the occasion of South Africa's first free elections in April 1994:
This is for all South Africans, an unforgettable occasion. It is the realization of hopes and dreams that we have cherished over decades. The dreams of a South Africa which represents all South Africans. It is the beginning of a new era. We have moved from an era of pessimism, division, limited opportunities, turmoil and conflict.We are starting a new era of hope, reconciliation and nation building. We sincerely hope that by the mere casting of a vote the results will give hope to all South Africans and make all South Africans realize this is our country. We are one nation.
When someone of outstanding principle and compassion, of fortitude and moral uprightness passes from this life—or, as the Navajo say, "walks on"—no eulogies can truly do justice to the impact that life has had on so many. Certainly no words of mine can capture what Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela meant to so many his life touched. Best to let his own words speak for him.
Here he is in 1961, in what is said to be his first television interview. The ITN reporter Brian Widlake explains in voiceover: "The police were hunting for him at the time, but African nationalists had arranged for me to meet him at his hideout; he is still underground."
"The Africans require, want the franchise on the basis of one man, one vote," Mandela began in the interview. "They want political independence."
Widlake asked him if it were possible for blacks to develop in the country without pushing out the Europeans.
"There is room for all the various races in this country," Mandela responded.
[He was asked about the likelihood of violence:]
There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and non-violence against the government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people. And I think the time has come for us to consider, in the light of our experiences [...] whether the methods we have applied so far are adequate.
Mandela never wavered from the point of view that blacks and whites should run the country together even as the regime imprisoned, tortured and murdered thousands to maintain its iron control over the black population.
Please continue reading below the fold for more about Mandela.
Whether they guarded him in his cell on Robben Island where he spent the first 20 years of what was slated to be a life sentence at hard labor or joined the armed African National Congress or the non-violent United Defense Front to overcome the bloodthirsty apartheid government, few people were not impressed by Mandela's indomitable spirit and his incisive mind.
He was a servant of his people. All the people of South Africa. But to the government and its international allies, he and all like him were terrorists, a designation that was as phony as the racial theories on which the regime was founded.
In the 1980s, behind their publicly stated support for ending apartheid with the gradualist approach they falsely claimed that moderates in Pretoria were supporting, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan conveniently concealed their unqualified support for the white supremacist regime. They fought members of their governments and populace who wanted sanctions. They spoke favorably of the regime's leaders as massacres occurred.
As the government notched up its brutality, an ever morphing, multi-faceted anti-apartheid movement both inside South Africa and internationally brought an end to Mandela's imprisonment a year after Reagan left office and just months before Thatcher resigned. Yet Mandela and all other members of the ANC would remain on the U.S. terrorist list until 2008, long after its most famous member had completed his single term as president.
Mandela in 1962
On the day of his release, in a
Capetown speech before wildly cheering crowds in February 1990, Mandela vowed, as he had decades before, a South Africa shared by all races under equality. But he also said the armed struggle led by the ANC would continue until apartheid was ended.
It was not smooth sailing after his release. While he was elected president of the ANC to replace the ailing Oliver Tambo, there were many in the organization that now viewed him as too moderate and far too accommodating of the white government. Many opposed negotiations with Pretoria. But Mandela knew the ANC was too weak militarily to prevail. As a result of negotiations, during which Mandela's prison study of both the language and history of Afrikaners were used to good result, President F.W. De Klerk ignored his advisers and lifted the four-year-old state of emergency under which the government had ruled by decree, having detained and mistreated tens of thousands of mostly black South Africans.
The violence didn't end with the end of the state of emergency. Much of that violence came from the state intelligence services, not rogue agents but men who had been engaged in state terror for decades. There was also the clash between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party in which thousands were killed, mostly in Natal Province. A complicated set of talks commenced and, over time, amid assassinations and other violence, an agreement was arrived at for a general election in which all could vote to form a national unity government of five years under which a new constitution would be written.
Mandela won that election, and in 1994, he gave his inaugural address as president. An excerpt:
The time for the healing of the wounds has come.
The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come.
The time to build is upon us.
We have, at last, achieved our political emancipation. We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.
We succeeded to take our last steps to freedom in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting peace.
We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity—a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.
As a token of its commitment to the renewal of our country,the new Interim Government of National Unity will, as a matter of urgency, address the issue of amnesty for various categories of our people who are currently serving terms of imprisonment.
We dedicate this day to all the heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in many ways and surrendered their lives so that we could be free.
Their dreams have become reality. Freedom is their reward.
We are both humbled and elevated by the honor and privilege that you, the people of South Africa, have bestowed on us, as the first president of a united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa, to lead our country out of the valley of darkness.
We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom.
We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success.
We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world.
Let there be justice for all.
Let there be peace for all.
Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.
Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.
Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world.
Let freedom reign.
Mandela's cell with bucket-toilet on Robben Island.
Being president was no easy matter. South Africa was plagued with many problems besides the lingering mindset of apartheid, mostly economic. And there was only so much even a man of Mandela's stature could accomplish.
But he launched what was then an exceptional experiment, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Denise Oliver Velez wrote about this and the concept of "restorative justice" here eight months ago, citing The Road to Reconciliation:
Some Black people wanted harsh penalties for the perpetrators of apartheid crimes. Others thought that investigation of past wrongs would jeopardise the fragile new democracy, while others simply wanted to forget the past. In the end, the new government opted to establish a commission to document what happened during South Africa's most troubled times, and offer limited amnesty to those who confessed their complicity. The TRC was based on the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No 34 of 1995. It resembled a legal body that was bestowed with the authority to hear and try cases, resolve disputes, or make certain legal decisions. The policy of reconciliation embodied in the inquiry was predicated on the fundamental principle that "To forgive is not just to be altruistic, [but] it is the best form of self-interest."
A year after the attainment of majority rule, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was appointed chairman of the TRC. Its jurisdiction included providing support and reparation to victims and their families, and compiling a full and objective record of the effects of apartheid on South African society. Anybody who was a victim of violence was welcome to give his or her testimony before this newly constituted body. Perpetrators of violence could also give evidence and request amnesty from prosecution.
The Government envisioned the TRC as a mechanism that would help deal with the evils of apartheid. In the words of the former Minister of Justice, Dullah Omar, the commission was "... a necessary exercise to enable South Africans to come to terms with their past on a morally accepted basis and to advance the cause of reconciliation."
Like all great leaders, despite the pedestal on which he has been understandably placed, Nelson Mandela was not perfect. Naturally, there are people inside and outside South Africa who can only see those imperfections and are blind to what he achieved by his resolve and stubborn adherence to long-held principles. Thus, he will remain for some always a terrorist and for others forever a
sell-out. After a few days of mourning, or perhaps only a few hours, there will be those who blame him for South Africa's continuing ills, social and economic, as if Mandela was Messiah.
But for most, whatever his nation's problems and whatever the ANC's failures, Mandela will remain a charismatic model of profound humanitarian instincts honed by study and experience, a man who had nearly three decades stolen from him simply because he sought equality for all South Africans. He refused to let go of that dream even when the white supremacists offered him his freedom if he would just stop the fighting the struggle that had stuck him behind bars in the first place. He was a man who emerged from prison seemingly without any rancor. A leader by necessity, by personal choice and by the people's will.
Each of us should consider ourselves lucky to succeed in creating within ourselves just a little bit of Mandela.