During the 1960s, in the United States, people were treated unequally based on the color of their skin. During the 1960s, segregation policies was dictating the way colored people lived in the United States, separating and distinguishing them in many different ways from the white population. Until the 1990s, in a country far away from the United States, these same policies were still in effect. South Africa has long been the home of the apartheid regime, a now former social policy depriving the non-white people from their natural civil rights. Like in the United States, colored people endured the government’s one-sided policies. Public bathrooms, schools, sports teams and even housing complexes were established by colors and class. Beyond separation, the colored population could not have access to the same standards of living as the white population. In the United-States, the Civil Rights movement started thanks to the efforts of great leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and many others. South Africa needed its own leader to end the apartheid. Nelson Mandela, born Rolihlahla Mandela, a Xhosa term colloquially know as “the troublemaker”, inspired many of these leaders in his fight against the apartheid. Despite the oppression from the apartheid regime of South Africa and the white non-supportive community, Nelson Mandela was a perseverant leader who never ceased to fight for the civil rights of the people of South Africa and beyond.
Shortly after graduating from high school in 1939, Nelson Mandela enrolled at the University College of Fort Hare, the only residential center of higher education for blacks in South Africa at the time. The University was considered as Africa’s equivalent of the University of Oxford, or Harvard University, attracting scholars from all parts of sub-Sahara Africa. In his first year at the university, Mandela and a group of fellow first-year students founded a first-year students’ house committee which challenged the dominance of the second-year students. If Nelson Mandela was right that second-year students exercised supremacy over first-year students, as I believe he was, then we need to reassess the popular assumption that the general institutions representing authority are successfully avoiding these incidents. As a matter of fact, at my high school boarding school a few sports teams’ member, such as rugby or soccer players, exercised power over incoming athletes and were solely sanctioned after the facts. Organizing a group of first-year students to defend themselves in the first place, and to defy the second-year students’ supremacy, is exactly the right thing to do.
During his second year at Fort Hare, Nelson Mandela was elected to the Student Representative Council (SCR). For some time, students have been dissatisfied with the food quality and the lack of power held by the SCR to solve the issue. Over this election, a majority of students voted to boycott unless their demands were met. Standing along with the student majority, Mandela resigned from his position. Perceived as an act of insubordination and provocation, the university’s Dr. Kerr expelled Mandela for the rest of the year and gave him an ultimatum. He could only return to the university if he agreed to operate on the SRC. Though I concede that the quality of the food served at his university was maybe not one of the finest food you could have in South Africa at the time, I still insist that resigning from his position was an unproportioned reaction to the issue, even if this meant aligning with the student majority. I believe that he could have initiated a more diplomatic solution after the election, despite the discontent of his fellow classmates.
Refusing the agreement, Mandela enrolled at the University of South Africa where he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree and went back to Fort Hare for his graduation in 1943. As Mandela later stated in 1993, during his speech as Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, “Education is the most powerful weapon in which you can change the world”. I fully understand and agree that education is extremely important for any individual who aspires to great things, appoint that needs to be emphasized since too people still believe that some of the greatest minds the world have ever known achieved what they achieved only by change or with the proper relations. Although it may be true that these two elements may have had some influence in these people’s lives, no one shall contest that individual such as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, and many others would have accomplished what they accomplished without a proper education, knowledge, or understanding of the world that surrounded them.
It is in 1942, a little before his graduation, that Nelson Mandela officially joined the African National Congress (ANC), and soon became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement. Within the ANC, Mandela and a small group of young Africans banded together, calling themselves the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), wanted to transform the ANC into a popular movement. Their goal was to be the voice of millions of rural peasants and working people who had no say under the existing regime. Furthermore, the young group believed that “the ANC’s old tactics of polite petitioning were ineffective”. In accordance with my strong support for a fully representative democracy, I agree that the people should have someone to represent them at a national level and express their resentment, and requests. Moreover, at that time, the ANC’s old representatives were mistaking if they believed that some polite petitions would be successful against a regime where only a minority of the population enjoys the rights any individuals in the country naturally deserves.
It is only later, in 1949, that the ANC officially adopted the Youth League’s more drastic methods of boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-cooperation, with policy goals of full citizenship, redistribution of land, trade union rights, and free mandatory education for all children. For 20 years, Nelson Mandela directed peaceful, nonviolent acts of defiance against the South African government and its racist policies, including the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. Mandela was surely right about nonviolent protest, as he may not have been aware of, recent studies led by international relations scholars, which are applicable to domestic scales, have shown that the use of force triggers series of reactions from each party, with each responses being increasingly more violent than the previous one as the conflict lasts longer and escalates.
It is in 1961 that Mandela, who was formerly firmly committed to nonviolent protest only, began to think that armed struggle was the sole path to equality and freedom. Afterwards, he co-founded Umkhonto we Size, also known as MK, an armed branch of the ANC devoted to sabotage and guerilla war tactics to end the apartheid. Mandela contradicts himself and cannot have it both ways. On the one hand, he has been arguing for nearly 20 years that nonviolent protests were the only way to get rid of the apartheid and free the non-white population from the South-African government’s constant discrimination, oppression and censure. On the other hand, he founds an armed grouped to sabotage and develop war tactics to end the apartheid. Although the Africanists, a new group of black activists who believed that the pacifist methods were ineffective, rapidly gained in popularity at the expense of the ANC, I strongly believe that Nelson Mandela should have remained pacifist as he had always been, even though I can understand, yet cannot even imagine, how difficult it must have been for him and the non-white people of South-Africa to be persecuted over and over for many years.
During that same year, Mandela orchestrated a three-day nationwide workers’ strike. The next year, he was arrested by the government for leading the strike, and was sentenced to five years in prison. In 1963, Mandela was once again brought to trial, but this time he and ten other leaders from the African National Congress were sentenced to life imprisonment for political offences, including sabotage. Today, I cannot but wonder if Mandela’s sudden radicalization was not one of the reasons why he was arrested and sent to jail. By focusing on radicalizing the movement and preparing guerilla war tactics, Mandela certainly obtained the government’s attention, but he may also have established an atmosphere of fear and, most likely, instability in the country.
Out of the twenty-seven years Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, eighteen of them were spent on Robben Island. During this time, he contracted tuberculosis and, as a black political prisoner of class D, received the lowest level of treatment from prison workers. Yet, this did not reach his unwavering commitment to education. Indeed, Mandela was able to earn a Bachelor of Law degree through a University of London correspondence program. Despite the repetitive mistreatments, the extremely strong restrictions on communication with the outside world, and the repetitive labor that was imposed, Nelson Mandela stood admirably strong.
In 1970, when Commander Piet Badenhorst became commanding officer at the prison, Mandela witnessing an increase in the physical and mental abuse of prisoners, complained to visiting judges who had Badenhorst reassigned. The new commander, Willie Willemse, developed a co-operative relationship with Mandela so as to improve the prison standards. I am nothing but amazed to see how charismatic and perseverant Mandela must have been over the years he was imprisoned. In fact, his capabilities to negotiate higher prison standards for the inmates is just incredible.
In 1982, Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders were moved to Pollsmoor Prison, allegedly to support contact between them and the South African government. Later, in 1985, President P.W. Botha offer Mandela’s liberation in exchange for abandoning armed struggle, but he categorically rejected the offer. Although it must have been a though choice to make and I respect it. On the one hand I disagree with his will to end the apartheid through armed struggles. On the other hand, I understand that refusing any agreements made him, figuratively speaking, a free man to the regard of the people. Furthermore, the government of South Africa, already pressured by the international community to release him as worldwide protests began, would not have any power over Mandela if he was released.
It is not until 1990, when President Botha passed away from a stroke and was replaced by Frederik Willem de Klerk at the Presidency, that Mandela’s release was finally announced, on February 11, 1990. The newly instated president also unbanned the ANC, ended the restrictions on political groups and suspended executions. Upon his liberation, Nelson Mandela immediately urged the global community not to decrease their pressure on the South African government for constitutional reform. Although he specified that he was devoted to work toward peace, he declared that the ANC’s armed struggle would go on until the the black majority’s right to vote was established. Though I concede that threatening the government with longer armed struggles, along with the support of the international community, provides Mandela with a considerable bargaining power over the apartheid regime, I still insist that using violence to obtain what you desire for the people is a behavior that could backlash at anytime if it goes out of control. Even though Mandela has been able to manage the ANC’s followers, things could have gone out of control and perhaps ended in a blood bath if a minority or marginal group of individuals decided to directly attack and maybe kill some of the apartheid’s representatives.
In 1991, Mandela was elected president of the African National Congress and continued to negotiate with President de Klerk toward the country’s first multiracial elections. Regrettably, the white South Africans were only willing to share power, meanwhile many black South Africans desired a complete transfer of power. The news of violent eruptions throughout the country, such as the assassination of ANC leader Chris Hani, and the strained negotiation continued. Mandela tried to keep a delicate balance of political pressure and deep negotiations among the protests and armed resistance. Although I agree that the ANC needed to do more to obtain the rights the non-white community naturally deserved, Mandela somehow started the armed conflict that cost the life of the ANC’s leader. Despite his constant work toward peace and equality, we shall not forget that Mandela believed that armed struggle was an actual solution to end the apartheid.
In 1993, Nelson Mandela and President de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their collaboration toward dismantling the apartheid in South Africa. Moreover, due in no small part to their effort, negotiations between black and white South Africans prevailed. In 1994, South Africa was holding its first fully representative democratic elections and Nelson Mandela was elected as the country’s first black president with the former president de Klerk as his first deputy. Although I do not support the armed struggle Mandela initiated in 1961, I concede that he accomplished a fantastic thing by bringing the oppressed people of South Africa the rights they naturally deserved.
During his mandate, from 1994 until 199, Nelson Mandela worked on the transition from the minority rule and apartheid toward the black majority rule. He used the nation’s enthusiasm for sports as a pivot point to promote reconciliation between the white and black communities, encouraging the black South African population to support the once-hated national rugby team. In 1995, South Africa received an international attention by hosting the Rugby World Cup, brining extra recognition and respect to the young republic. Although I did not support Mandela for his support in armed struggles before he became president, I strongly support his idea to use sport, and more precisely rugby, unite the conflicting communities in his country. The movie Invictus relates Mandela’s dream to bring the people of South Africa behind one national symbol, although once-hated, the Springboks.
After retiring from politics at the end of his mandate in 1999, Mandela continued to maintain a demanding schedule by raising money to build schools and clinic South Africa’s rural heartland through his foundation. In 2007, Mandela assembled a group of world leaders, including Graca Machel, Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Mary Robinson, and Muhammad Yunus, in order to discuss some of the world’s toughest issues. The group was aptly named “The Elders”, and planned on working both publicly and privately to find solutions to problems around the globe. The Elders’ influence has crossed over Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and their actions have involved the promotion of peace and women’s equality, the demands to an end to atrocities, the support of initiatives addressing humanitarian crises, and the promotion of democracy. Now famous and influential, Mandela used his power to serve and defend the international community. As he focused on dialogue and peaceful negotiations, I strongly support and admire the actions he undertook in his later years.
Nelson Mandela was a great, charismatic, and inspirational leader who knew how to operate the masses to more or less peacefully accomplish a national revolution and liberate the non-white population of South Africa from the segregation, inequality, and oppression endured under the apartheid regime. I believe that more politicians shall follow his example and be as persistent, and as brave as he was.