Mandela: His Wars Against Apartheid

Mandela’s battles against apartheid-centred regimes in South Africa assure his prominence in global history

His generation was born into racial turbulence. As a pigmented society, the white supremacists who controlled all facets of governance and the economy forced harsh conditions of living on the blacks and coloured people in his native South Africa. Life, especially for the black South African, was tortuous and brutally short. Forced labour was the junta’s leading weapon against the blacks as a tool of oppression. Free movement of people was checkmated as those without travel permits were punished under the pass laws. Security agents at the beck of the ironclad regime hounded and persecuted non-whites without end on the flimsiest of  provocation.

It is into this society that Nelson Mandela was born at the cusp of the First World War in 1918. And this would set the platform for him to become the world’s greatest statesman of his generation. In what appears to be living up to the meaning of his other name, Rolihlahla – pulling the branch of the tree – Mandela set about seeking to pull down the shackles of apartheid early in life. The struggle for liberation, according to his biographers, began during his days at the University of Witwatersrand, where he was admitted to study law in the white-dominated institution. Faced by the challenges of racism, he found useful company in white communists, liberals and Indians who wanted an egalitarian society established in South Africa. His biggest break however came through his association with Anton Lembede, an important stalwart who campaigned tirelessly against colonialism and imperialism. Through his association with Lembede, Mandela was on the entourage that approached Alfred Xuma, then president of the African National Congress, ANC, broaching the idea to form the ANC Youth League, ANCYL. This request was granted, and he became a member of the league’s executive council.

Having risen through the ranks, Mandela and his cohorts moved beyond aiming barbed tirades at the apartheid policies of the government. In collaboration with others, he began to organise protest marches, boycotts, strikes and instability to hamper the smooth functioning of the regime. At rostrums, he was seen as a political bull on the pulpit. Following a disagreement with Xuma based on strategy, Xuma was removed from the ANC presidency, Mandela reportedly remarked that “we had now guided the ANC to a more radical and revolutionary path.” By 1950, he was on the mainstream ANC executive. Same year, the Free Speech Convention was held in Johannesburg, capital of South Africa.

By 1951 Madiba, as he is called in deference, had a shift in world view that will modify his tactics throughout the rest of the struggle against white domination. First, his stance against a racially united front was outvoted in a joint ANC and ANCYL conference. Later on, the hedges against communism that ringed his heart began to cave-in. This paved way for him to embrace the doctrinal works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin. His participation in militant subversion activities against apartheid was on the rise. Trouble also loomed on the horizon as activities for the Defiance Campaign reached fever pitch. The ANC working in tandem with its Indian and communist allies formed the National Voluntary Board to engage volunteers across the country. He was briefly incarcerated for the inciting speeches he gave to thousands of participants at the flag-off of the campaigns in Durban. The success of the protests yielded high membership figures for the ANC. Their adversary replied with mass arrest, stiffer conditions of movement and use of draconian laws to tame the dissidents.

When J.B Marks, president of the ANC was banned from public gatherings in 1953, he had no difficulty recommending Mandela to fill the post. On 22 July, Mandela was briefly arrested with others for violating the Suppression of Communism law. He got a nine-month sentence which was suspended for two years. Months later, he was prohibited from attending meetings or speaking to more than one person at a particular time.

Following series of skirmishes with the authorities, Mandela came to believe that his organisation “had no alternative to armed and violent resistance’’. Inspired by revolutionaries like Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, he and Maroko Sisulu formed the Umhonto we Sizwe or ‘‘Spear of the Nation’’ in 1961 to press home their demands for change. It is believed against his denial that Nelson Mandela must have been a member of the Communist Party at some point during the heckling against apartheid. The spate of sabotage attacks on key installations and terrorism against the state, occasioned by anti-apartheid groups became widespread. Mandela also represented his group in peace talks in Addis Ababa and elsewhere.

In 1962 he was arrested with an accomplice and locked-up in Johannesburg. The charges included incitement of workers to strike as well as travelling out of the country illegally. He was jailed for five years. From his room in the prison he enrolled for a correspondence law degree course at the University of London. A year after this incident police raid in a place inhabited by Mandela’s loyalists produce tonnes of documents of activities in which he was copiously mentioned. In October of that year, he and four other persons we arraigned at the Pretoria Supreme Court accused of plotting to overthrow the government, sabotage and conspiracy to cause violence.

On 12 June, 1964, Mandela and two of his co-accused were sentenced to life imprisonment. He was then moved from Pretoria Prison to Robben Island, where his long walk to freedom actually etched his name in the global hall of fame, assuring his illustrious status as a global statesman.

—Nkrumah Bankong-Obi