In Nelsons Mendel’s autobiography, a long walk to freedom the concepts of political geography are widespread throughout his tale of his journey in life while growing up within South Africa. Throughout the text, we see so many examples of all the unique terms we have gone over within the class, but the prominent term that stands out to me is nationalism. This paper seeks to examine and explore the concept of nationalism through the lens of political Geography in the In Nelsons Mendel’s autobiography a long walk to freedom. The paper will go into the history of South Africa and how it relates to all the nationalistic movement throughout the timeline in South Africa. And give details and quotes from the book that point to all the factors that grew African nationalism within South Africa. Also, the paper will explain what nationalism is and some terms that relate and explain it in a better way.
Furthermore the paper will examine how there are distinct forms of nationalism and that they come in the form of civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism. Through these two different nationalism concepts such as rainbow nation and Afrikaans nationalism will be explored. Lastly, the paper will be going into the subject of apartheid as a tactic of ethnic nationalism what it meant to the people of South Africa as well as the timeline of pre- during – and post-apartheid. Through all of this information, the paper will give a better scope on the concepts of political geography within Nelsons Mendel’s autobiography a Long Walk to Freedom.
The first thing to explain when examining Nelsons Mendel’s A Long Walk to Freedom is concepts of Nation, State, and Nationalism. With the combination of two concepts called the nation, and the state we get a dual term called nation-state. To explain in better detail, a nation is a community of people who believe they have shared factors such as language, religion, history and other cultural traits that link this community together. The state is the legal and political component which binds them together through the power over the people living within the set defined borders. (pg19) When put together they create what is called a nation-state which pretty much is the country as a single legal body with sovereignty and people with somewhat homogeneous in factors such as language, religion, shared history. Nationalism derives from the identification and emotional attachment to that particular nation-state. Nationalism can be better understood by the territorial expression of identity: a sense of belonging to a group or community that shares a common identity, often but not always associated with a particular territory. (PG277). Benedict Anderson explains it best with his writing on what a nation-state and how nations are imagined communities and sought to explain the development of nationalism in the 19th century. Anderson wrote that nationalism was the operation of an imagined political community in which there is no way a person could know everyone (pg278). The concept of nationalism within this nation will bring them together to make them feel like one community. (pg19) Nationalism in South Africa has a long a dark history with the country across two centuries but has seen some positive movements in recent years. For a better understanding of South Africa and nationalism, one must be explained the history of South Africa.
So let’s start from the beginning when Europeans first began to arrive in 1488. A Portuguese explorer of the names Bartolomeu Dias landed in South Africa looking for a trade route to India but instead found what he called at the time the most southern coast of South Africa and named is “Capo Das Tormentas” meaning cape of storms. Next come the Dutch settlements in the 17th century, through the 18th century a power struggle and through different wars, South Africa went from the French to the British to the Dutch to the British, then to the Dutch again. The discovery of one of the largest diamond and gold pockets in the world, which made control of South Africa very profitable in the eyes of the Europeans. These discoveries caused friction between the settlers of Dutch origins who become known as Afrikaans and the British Empire which eventually lead to new conflicts within the region in the 19th century. This came to be known as the Boers wars, Boer meaning farmer in Dutch and the British Empire. This war endured from 1899 to 1902, with the British Empire emerging as the victors as a result shortly after the union of South Africa came about as a dominion of the British Empire in 1910. As part of the British Empire, we see South Africa fight in two world wars along the side of the allies but the population of Afrikaans not in approval in the involvement of these wars. So eventually in 1948, we see the national party which is the ethnically Dutch white settlers come into leadership through elections where only white South Africans were allowed to vote. This is where we see Nelson Mandela speak on the shift in politics and ruling over black South Africans and this is even more evident when in 1961 South Africa became the Republic of South Africa through a referendum which is a vote to become independent. This is where you see The Republic of South Africa becomes tremendously oppressive of black South Africans through different policies and actions they made to suppress African nationalism or sense of unity. An example of this is the political party Nelson Mandela became a part of, the ANC. Which stood for “The African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912 in response to the creation of the Union of South Africa which institutionalized racial discrimination against Blacks.”(pbs.org). This group was outlawed by the nationalist party in South Africa in the 1960s. All of this becomes strong factors in the growth of black South African nationalism. But later on, all this African nationalism turned into a different direction once Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa’s first democratic free elections. To better explain this paper will next discuss the two different type of nationalism that is seen within Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom.
Now that the history of South Africa has been touched upon let us explain the use of nationalism within South Africa through the two different types that show up which is civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism. Civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism are two different ways a person can view their country and how its pride and unity should be structured with very few similarities between the two. Ethnic nationalism’s fundamental focus is that nations be defined by a shared heritage, which generally embraces a mutual language, a shared faith, and a shared ethnic lineage. The othering of these “outsiders” is touch upon in the readings from Edward Said on how defined, and it relates very well to how Ethnic nationalisms portrays certain groups of people as outsiders who do not have the same language, embrace the same faith or originate from the matching ethnic heritage. In A Long Walk to Freedom, there were two different groups promoting ethnic nationalism it was black South African nationalism and then the white Afrikaners nationalism. African nationalism started springing about in large numbers during the decolonization of different sub-Saharan African countries and subsists in a tense association with tribalism and sub-national ethnic nationalism this can be seen through this quote from long walk to freedom “Urban, life tends to abrade tribal and ethnic distinctions, and instead of being Xhosas, or Sothos, or Zulus, or Shangaans, we were Alexandrians. This created a sense of solidarity, which caused great concern among the white authorities. The government had always of utilized divide-and-rule tactics when dealing with Africans and depended on the strength of ethnic divisions among the people. But in places like Alexandra, these differences were being erased.” (pg.77). This quote correctly shows how so many black South Africans didn’t view themselves as a collective until they became a part of certain cities to break this ethnic divide caused on most parts the white ruling class. It was because of things such as these groups like the ANC was able to form and unite so many black South African against white oppression in the country.
Afrikaner nationalism was shaped in the late nineteenth century after the different wars fought with the British Empire were lost, and the country became the Union of South Africa. This had the Afrikaner or Boers wanting to gain some political power within South Africa, and they were able to finally take control of the country in 1948 when the nationalist party came into power. This is where the implementation of apartheid was put into action which meant separateness and complete white supremacy over the black majority. Apartheid can best be explained through this quote “ Africans were desperate for legal help in government buildings: it was a crime to walk through a Whites Only door, a crime to ride a Whites Only bus, a crime to use a Whites Only drinking fountain, a crime to walk on a Whites Only beach, a crime to be on the streets after 11 p.m., a crime not to have a passbook and a crime to have the wrong signature in that book, a crime to be unemployed and a crime to be employed in the wrong place, a crime to live in certain places and a crime to have no place to live.”(PG.idk). Through this one can understand how the white Afrikaans minority indeed sought to keep the notion of white supremacy throughout South Africa.
Civic nationalism centers on the aspects of individualism and multi-culturalism and is very much the contradictory of ethnic nationalism. Civic nationalism looks to achieve fundamental human rights, for liberty and life, to all individuals within that given nation-state; also it holds well to many democratic forward-thinking States of the modern day era. Civic nationalism is the type of nationalism that Nelson Mandela sought to achieve after his election to be South Africa’s president in 1994. We see this through a quote on pg.568 in his book “I was asked as well about the fears of whites. I knew that people expected me to harbor anger toward whites, but I had none in prison, my anger toward whites decreased, but my hatred for the system grew. I wanted South Africa to see that I loved even my enemies while I hated the system that turned us against one another.” Nelson wanted to achieve peace in South Africa through Civic nationalism and bring the people of South Africa together under one flag. This is where the term rainbow nation first comes to the picture in South Africa. The concept of rainbow nation was first brought up by an associate of Nelson Mandela; Archbishop Desmond Tutu who wanted to describes how South Africa post-apartheid should be under new leadership. This leadership now could use civic nationalism to bring its people together no matter the color or ethnic group they would all be South Africans building a better life for each other. However, this concept of a rainbow nation was met with some issues as it is discussed in the book on pg.26 how the economic truths of a post-apartheid South Africa posed complications to achieving this rainbow nation. This is seen through the high levels of poverty and unemployment and low education levels among black South Africans. So the building a better life becomes harder under the term rainbow nation because many new leaders in South Africa become more concerned on the black South African Nation, and there are some white South Africans who say such concerns are saying they’re not a concern of the government and that new policies implemented by the government are discriminatory of them and this rainbow nation idea is just a social construct.
In conclusion, this paper uses the lens of political geography to analyze and discuss the different concepts of nationalism can be seen in Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom. The paper talked about the history of South Africa and utilized quotes from A Long Walk to Freedom to point to all the factors that catalyzed African nationalism within South Africa. Also, the paper explained what nationalism is and emphasized some terms that relate and explain it in a better way. Furthermore, the paper examined how there are distinct forms of nationalism and that they come in the form of civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism; through the two different nationalism concepts such as rainbow nation and Afrikaans nationalism that were touched upon. Lastly, the paper highlighted the reality of South Africa post-apartheid.
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