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Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
NELSON Rolihlahla Mandela’s death is to South Africa in particular and the world at large in general a historic occurrence because he was a man with a heart much larger than the evil and crimes imposed on his country by the now discredited apartheid regime for decades.

Many remember him as the founder-leader of the African National Congress’ Umkhonto Wesizwe (Spear of the nation) who was arrested by the South African security forces, sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island, spent a gruelling 27 years doing hard labour, was released and became the first black president of that country.

He forgave those who had tormented him as he strove to bring together all South Africans to found a new democratic nation. Mandela was born in the Transkei, at that time a so-called “native reserve”. Black people of the Transkei enjoyed some limited political participation in an assembly called Ibunga.

Native reserves were, however, labour recruitment areas for the Boer-owned South African mines. The labour recruitment agency was known as the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA). Mandela’s fellow tribesmen, the Xhosas, formed a very large part of this cheap labour force.

Others came from Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola and later Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Mandela’s youth was spent in that type of socio-political environment where the black people were openly and ruthlessly suppressed and exploited on the basis of their skin colour.

On January 8, 1912, a black lawyer named Isaac Kaseme formed an all-African led political party which he called the South African Native National Congress (SANNC). It changed that name to the ANC in 1923.  That was the political organisation through which Nelson Mandela would fight fearlessly for the freedom of his land.

During his youth, he saw various Boer leaders such as General Hertzog pass laws such as the Land Act which gave a hefty 87 percent of the land of South Africa to the white settlers and only about 13 percent to the indigenous black people.

In 1943, Mandela became one of the prominent members of the ANC’s youth league. The league had as one of its objectives the strengthening of the ANC. To the leaguers, the ANC leadership was not dynamic enough and was not an effective challenge to the racist and oppressive Boer administration.

One of those who shared this sentiment with Mandela was a brilliant young man from KwaZulu Natal whose name was Anton Lembede. However, he died a few years later, leaving Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Reginald Jambo, Thomas Titus Nkoli and Duma Nokwe to carry on the liberation struggle.

The Boers did not relax but increased their repressive and discriminating laws. Trade unions, including the umbrella body the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICWU), had run their course under Clements Kadalie who groomed Zimbabwe’s black trade union pioneer, Masotsha Ndlovu.

Taking part also at that stage was the South African Communist Party (SACP). In 1929, it formed a broadly representative organisation with the ICWU, and ANC and called it the League of African Rights (LAR).

The LAR demanded the abolition of the system of the numerous passes and permits required of black people in urban centres. If a black person could not produce one or the other to the police officer after a certain time in an urban area, he was liable for arrest as a vagrant.

That was part of the social and political environment in which Mandela lived and grew up. It is important to point out that in the 1930s, the ANC leaders differed on the strategy and pace at which the struggle should be carried out. A faction supporting the national chairman, James Gumede, wanted to move more militantly than the other led by Kaseme.

That was the situation in the early 1940s when Mandela and his colleagues more or less took over the youth league’s leadership.
However, they were supported and encouraged by the ANC new secretary general, the Rev. James Calata, and its newly elected president general Dr A B Xuma.

It was exactly at that time that Nelson Mandela and his professional colleague, O R Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Jordan Ngubane and A P Mola got actively and more or less fully involved in ANC organisational matters.

That group was followed immediately by another comprising Robert Sobukwe, and Godfrey Pitje. These and the Mandela group actually gave life and direction to the ANC youth league in April 1944.

Alliances with organisations like the Indian Congress, the Communist Party and so on followed and so did militant confrontation with the Boer regime. That resulted in the Defiance Campaign in the early 1950s resulting in the arrest of more than 100 ANC activists led by Mandela.

Meanwhile, Robert Sobukwe and Potlako Leballo and others had broken off from the ANC to the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). They felt that the ANC was not militant enough. But Mandela and his tried and tested group felt that the pace of the struggle must not be too much ahead (if at all) that of the masses.

Those ANC activists arrested for defying some of the Boer regime’s laws later faced treason charges. Mandela was their leader. The group was found not guilty. The ANC had in the interim decided to launch an armed struggle and Mandela would lead it. Umkhonto Wesizwe was duly launched and Mandela went to receive military training in Algeria.

Sabotage was to be the first phase of that armed struggle. Mandela returned home most secretly. The ANC President was by then Chief Albert John Luthuli.

The Boer administration tried to stifle the struggle by banning individual ANC officials and the parties themselves. All that failed. Puppet tribal leaders such as Chief Mantanzima of the Transkei, Chief Lucas Mangope of Boputhatswana and a few others were being grouped by the Boer regime for the launch of Bantustans.

The struggle meanwhile continued in the form of sabotage. By the middle of 1963, more than 200 incidents had been committed by Umkhonto Wesizwe. On the move was Mandela underground. South Africa’s security forces were everywhere looking for Mandela whom they and the media were by then referring to as the “scarlet pimpernel.”

He was eventually intercepted by three carloads of policemen who had obviously been informed by some well-placed source. He had been living underground for 17 months. On November 7, 1962, he was sentenced to five years hard labour. Three of those years were for incitement to strike, and two years for leaving the country illegally.

On July 12, 1963, the security pounced on Walter Sisulu and eight others at a house in Johannesburg’s Rivonia suburb and found a large consignment of explosives and incriminating documents.

Mandela was brought from Robben Island and put in the dock. He acquitted himself marvelously by blaming the oppressive, discriminatory and dispossesive Boer regime for turning virtually all the country’s black people into law-breakers.

On June 12, 1964, Mandela, Walter, Sisulu, Mbeki, Mhlaba, Motsoaledi, and Mlangeni were sentenced to life imprisonment. At that time, life imprisonment in South Africa meant literally that – remaining in prison for life.

His creation, Umkhonto Wesizwe, intensified the struggle until his unconditional release on February 2, 1990, when he ushered in a non-racial democratic South Africa.

Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a Bulawayo-based retired journalist. He can be contacted on 0734328136 or through e-mail [email protected]