Nelson Mendella
I can't say Nelson Mendella has been much in my thoughts throughout my life. I ordered his autobiography with but mild interest. But his book is fascinating and thought provoking. When he was getting himself in trouble in South Africa over apartheid, I was finishing high school and then was in college. I do not recall now ever paying much attention to him. I knew both whites and blks claimed South Africa as their home. It seemed whichever side had control would certainly stiff the other side. It seemed a case of ignorant savages on one side and educated civilized fearful whites on the other. It is hard to find a country in Africa in which blks seem to be running any remotely admirable form of government. At least South Africa had some modernization. If the blks took over it seemed everything would likely head down the tube. And the whites would be deprived of property, probably even many killed from blk anger. Ones senses, over time, that many groups with legitimate grievances, once in power, just use the power to abuse and pay back their former oppressors. In these cases, it becomes simply a question of who gets to oppress who? Matters of justice, opportunity, respect are seldom the principal players.
History has dealt Africa cruel fates. It is a country where seasonal climate changes require seasonal migration, not just for animals, but often for humans too. Because of this, owning land was not feasible. Instead, people formed tribes which were kind of mobile families who adjusted to migratory and rural existences. Constant movement does not generate stable societies, or cities of buildings and tradesman, or any of the other factors which generate what we call civilized societies. But one cannot read any book by those who lived in such simple communities and not recognize how fond they were of such a life. When colonization ended, Africa was divided up into countries with the boundaries drawn up by Europeans on another continent. But Africa is a country which is not well served by boundaries----boundaries which impede seasonal migrations and force competing tribes to co-exist and compete for power. Then add eager-beaver missionaries of various ilk who interjected competing religious dogmas into the mix. Now you have different tribes, different religions, and the alien concept of owning property. What you end up with is modern day Africa---discombobulated chaos.
There have been whites living in South Africa for centuries. They have a right to feel South Africa is their country too. Of course Africans were there first and have a right, in that sense, to claim it is their country. And of course there are far more blacks than whites in South Africa. I have taught in a University where blk students were in the majority and fully understand the limitations of any nondiscriminatory application of justice to those in any kind of minority. If you are a white minority you pay a price. There is no way to press a button or pass a law and make everyone color blind. Depending on your goals, being in a minority setting in a majority society may or may not be suitable. Of course all of this is minor compared to the former apartheid situation in South Africa where a minority owned most of the wealth, including the land. Solomon himself would be stymied in such a situation.
To read Mendella's book is to see life through the eyes of one who started his life in a peaceful rural 'primitive' society and gradually became more educated, more urbanized, more aware of injustices heaped on his own race. Mendella is an effective leader because he has the capacity to see matters through the eyes of both sides. He genuinely wants justice and fairness to prevail. He doesn't hold a lot of grudges. He is a practical,kindly, tolerant person who understands that progress comes in bits and pieces. It seems there are two kinds of people who spend their lives fighting for justice. There are those who fight battles for individual justice in individual situations. This is a safer tactic. Then there are those who tackle the problems from a more general viewpoint and try to reform a government which discriminates through laws and tyranny. Nelson Mendella chose the latter path. This kind of path requires a unique courage, patience, and personality. With a different personality Mendella would have been eliminated by the South African Government early in his role as a reformer. Instead the Government leaders sensed Mendella was a smart, fair, decent enough guy, with noble intentions, BUT---to protect the interests of whites he had to at least be locked up for life. And thus he was put in jail, instead of being hung.
Most of us are never going to have the courage and devotion to take on a whole government possessing dictatorial powers, especially when the usual result is your own death. Mendella's faith, courage, and patience never wavered for more than 50 years. He spent most of these years imprisoned on an island. It need be remembered that Mendella was not some uneducated low class ruffian whose alternative to being a rebel was extreme poverty, poor health care, slave-like labor, and a short life span. Mendella was a lawyer who could make good money if he just accepted apartheid with all the injustices it laid on most of South African blacks. I can understand some urban gang member who fights because, in his eyes, there is nothing left to lose. Mendella and his fellow leaders (blk and white) were educated, civilized responsible individuals with an acute sense of fairness. They simply could not do otherwise when most of us would certainly have accepted our own good luck and been sure not to rock the boat---of course for the sake of our own status in life, our own financial situation, our own family, our own comfortable lifestyle. To me, decent people who go to such lengths to elevate the level of justice and freedom for all in society are true heroes.
I think most people are good people in some aspect of their life. The worst of thugs may be truly loyal and just to his own mother or other gang members. The difference between most of us and the Mendella kind of true heroes is one of range and scale. This range varies from age to age. Right now we are in the midst of a religious based 'family values' rage where one's responsibilities, concerns, and focus are centered on one's own family members. The socio-economic forces are such today that more and more people circle the wagons around their own family unit. If a person can protect their own family members, their duty is done. A lot of people, probably a hefty majority, really don't want to hear too much about the problems of others distant from their own immediate life circumstance. These other unfortunate people, at home or abroad, have no real relevance to the lives of the more fortunate, and besides, most of the fortunate honestly feel they have 'earned' their good fortune. If you feel you have earned your good fortune then others less fortunate can simply do the same thing----the old fashioned way---earn their good fortune. Whenever I hear anyone say God has blessed them with talent or good luck, or whatever, I always cringe. My favorite self made sport figure---Terrell Owens---is always doing that. This is nothing more than the old Smother's Brothers joke---"Mama always liked you better than me". Beliefs are just that, and so not provable, but I don't believe in any God of that nature. I don't even pray any more for God's help with problems in my life. The idea that God is going to help me and ignore the homeless, the poor, etc, is just, in my mind, preposterous. Like what kind of God would be that way? When I get sick I could pray for God not to let me die BUT, I have lived a good life, why would God intervene to save my life and not intervene to save a life of a helpless child in a refugee camp?
Let me make the assumption that Mandella is a true hero. To whom do I give the credit---Mendella? God? His environment? His genetical parents? The credit goes to the God created laws of evolution. We don't have to totally understand the evolutionary process. We know it exists and we know the results of millions of years of progress. God created the system. The magnificence, beauty, creativity, and value is in the system, not the individual players. This system is built around change, and the changes affect survival under ever changing conditions. Without the constant changes, no species survives. The idea that God fiddles around and decides which egg combines with which sperm is, to me, kind of farfetched. It is more likely, again to me, that God macro manages, not micro manages. God is the creator of the evolutionary process, not the micromanager. I am grateful everyday for the many UNEARNED advantages I have, by good luck, gotten. All of ethics is then focused on those with such unearned advantages doing what they can to make a better life for those less advantaged. Are there rewards for being ethical? I think so in terms of real contentment, and maybe in some life after death, but this latter seems farfetched. True, but then so is all of existing life farfetched by any measure of human comprehension.
Mandella, from early on, was constantly given opportunities to get out of jail or not be thrown in jail IF he would just justify apartheid. He never would compromise his principles to save his own freedom. When these principles affect the lives of a large group of people, this non compromise takes on momentous importance. Mandella languished in jail for many decades, and a blk man in jail in apartheid South Africa had no easy life. Over time the task of a minority white population to control a large majority blk population proved impossible. The desperately poor blk population had nothing to lose and whites began to fear they would be killed one by one in ever increasing numbers. Under these circumstances it is no surprise that the whites would turn to Nelson Mandella to become the major blk leader in a government controlled by blks. The whites knew Mandella was a practical, reasonable, fair person who really did believe in justice and freedom for all. Whites also knew that justice and freedom for all was going to result in wealth, including land, being spread around more fairly. To be fair sometimes necessitates considerable sacrifice. People who have the power to have it their way also have the power to have things done the fair way. These kind of power and fairness questions exist all over the globe. For example, in America we all really do know that it is only fair that government spend the same amount of money to educate a child of the non-affluent as it does a child of the affluent. We know this. But the sacrifice to do justice here is hard to swallow, and so it just, so far, never gets done.
Mandella is not leader who generates famous quotations. He has written endless practical observations and principles relating to justice and freedom. Some of the quotations below give us insight into the feelings and thoughts of a unique kind of leader.
When Mandella's father died the family was forced to leave the village he was born in: "I mourned less for my father than for the world I was leaving behind. Qunu was all that I knew, and I lived it in the unconditional way that child loves his first home. Before we disappeared behind the hills, I turned and looked for what I imagined was the last time at my village. I could see the simple huts and the people going about their chores; the stream where I had splashed and played with the other boys; the maize fields and green pastures where the herds and flocks were lazily grazing. I imagined my friends out hunting for small birds, drinking the sweet milk from the cow's udder, cavorting in the pond at the end of the stream. Above all else, my eyes rested on the three simple huts where I had enjoyed by mother's love and protection. It was these three huts that I associated with all my happiness, with life itself....I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind."
Relating to his first experience at a University: "Perhaps as a result of all this unfamiliarity, I yearned for some of the simple pleasures that I had known as a boy.....Although I felt myself to be a sophisticated young fellow, I was still a country boy who missed country pleasures."
His favorite Marxist quote: "From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs."
"The oppressed people and the oppressors are at loggerheads. The day of reckoning between the forces of freedom and those of reaction is not very far off. I have not the slightest doubt that when that day comes truth and justice will prevail.....The feelings of the oppressed people have never been more bitter. The grave plight of the people compels them to resist to the death the stinking policies of the gangsters that rule our country.....To overthrow oppression has been sanctioned by humanity and is the highest aspiration of every free man."
"A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire."
Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.....Education was not compulsory for Africans and was free only in the primary grades. Less than half of all African children of school age attended any school at all, and only a tiny number of Africans were graduated from high school. "
"I have discovered that in discussions it never helps to take a morally superior tone to one's opponent."
"I returned to Qunu that morning and spent another few days there. I tramped across the veld to visit friends and relatives, but the magic world of my childhood had fled".
"It stands to reason that an immoral and unjust legal system would breed contempt for its laws and regulations. "
"I do not like killing any living thing, even those creatures that fill some people with dread."
"I felt the urge to give this woman money. In that moment I realized the tricks that apartheid plays on one, for the everyday travails that afflict Africans are accepted as a matter of course, while my heart immediately went out to be bedraggled white woman. IN South Africa, to be poor and black was normal, to be poor and white was a tragedy."
"The idea was to preserve the status quo where three million whites owned 87% of the land and relegate the eight million Africans to the remaining 13 percent."
"I always thought that a man should own a house near the place he was born, where he might find a restfulness that eludes him elsewhere."
"It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones---and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizens like animals. "
"I went from having an idealistic view of the law as a sword of justice to a perception of the law as a tool used by the ruling class to shape society in a way favorable to itself. I never expected justice in court, however much I fought for it, and though I sometimes received it."
"Although I am a gregarious person, I love solitude even more."
"These young men were a different breed of prisoner than we had ever seen before. They were brave, hostile, and aggressive; they would not take orders, and shouted 'Amandia' at every opportunity. Their instinct was to confront rather than cooperate. The authorities did not know how to handle them, and they turned the island upside down. During the Rivonia Trial, I remarked to a security policeman that if the government did not reform itself, the freedom fighters who would take our place would someday make the authorities yearn for us. That day had indeed come on Robben Island.....In these young men we saw the angry revolutionary spirit of the times. I had had some warning. At a visit with Winnie a few months before, she had managed to tell me through our coded conversation that there was a rising class of discontented youth who were militant and Africanist in orientation. She said they were changing the nature of the struggle and that I should be aware of them."
"The young man, who was no more than eighteen years old, was wearing his prison cap in the presence of senior officers, a violation of regulations. Nor did he stand up when the major entered the room, another violation. The major looked at him and said, "Please, take off your cap". The prisoner ignored him. Then in an irritated tone, the major said, "Take off your cap". The prisoner turned and looked at the major, and said, "What for? I could hardly believe what I had just heard. It was a revolutionary question: What for? The major also seemed taken aback, but managed a reply. "It is against regulations," he said. The young prisoner responded, "Why do you have this regulation? What is the purpose of it?" This questioning on the part of the prisoner was too much for the major, and he stomped out of the room, saying, "Mandella, you talk to him." But I would not intervene on his behalf, and simply bowed in the direction of the prisoner to let him know that I was on his side."
"The Black Consciousness Movement helped fill a vacuum among young people. Black Consciousness was less a movement than a philosophy and grew out of the idea that blacks must first liberate themselves from the sense of psychological inferiority bred by three centuries of white rule. Only then could the people rise up in confidence and truly liberate themselves from repression."
"A garden was one of the few things in prison that one could control. To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend to it and then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom."
Mandella's response when the Government offered to release him from prison if he would renounce violence. "I am surprised at the conditions what the government wants to impose on me. I am not a violent man....It was only the, when all other forms of resistance were no longer open to us, that we turned to armed struggle. Let Botha show that he is different to Malan, Strijdom and Verwoerd. Let him renounce violence. Let him say that he will dismantle apartheid. Let him unban the people's organization, the African national Congress. Let him free all who have been imprisoned, banished, or exiled for their opposition to apartheid. Let him guarantee free political activity so that people may decide who will govern them. I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. Too many hae died since I went to prison. Too many hafe suffered for the love of freedom. I owe it to their widows, to their orphans, to their mothers, and to their fathers who have grieved and wept for them. Not only I have suffered during these long, lonely, wasted years. I am not less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell my birthright, nor am I prepared to sell the birthright of the people to free."
"We had right on our side, but not yet might"
Visiting his youthful village after his release from prison: "What endured was the warmth and simplicity of the community, which took me back to my days as a boy. But what disturbed me was that the villagers seemed as poor if not poorer than they had been then. Most people still lived in simple huts with dirt floors, with no electricity and no running water. When I was young, the village was tidy, the water pure, and the grass green and unsullied as far as the eye could see. Kraals were swept, the topsoil was conserved, fields were neatly divided. But now the village was unswept, the water polluted, and the countryside littered with plastic bags and wrappers. We had not known of plastic when I was a boy, and though it improved life in some ways, its presence in Qunu appeared to me to be a kind of blight. Pride in the community seemed to have vanished."
"I was not born with a hunger to be free. I was born free---free in every way that I could know. Free to run in the fields near my mother's hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village, free to roast mealies under the stars and ride the broad backs of slow-moving bulls. As long as I obeyed my father and abided by the customs of my tribe, I was not troubled by the laws of man or God.
It was only when I began to learn that my boyhood freedom was an illusion, when I discovered as a young man that my freedom had already been taken from me, that I began to hunger for it. At first, as a student, I wanted freedom only for myself, the transitory freedoms of being able to stay out at night, read what I pleased, and go where I chose. Later, as a young man in Johannesburg, I yearned for the basic and honorable freedoms of achieving my potential, of earning my keep, of marrying and having a family---the freedom not to be obstructed in a lawful life.
But then I slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers and sisters were not free. I saw that it was not just my freedom that was curtailed, but the freedom of everyone who looked like I did. That is when I joined the African National Congress, and that is when the hunger for my own freedom became the greater hunger for the freedom of my people. It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal, that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home, that forced a life-loving man to live like a monk. I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that I could not even enjoy the poor and limited freedoms I was allowed when I knew my people were not free. Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one o my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.
It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.
When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way the respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter. I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.
