Nelson Mandela dies; former president of South Africa was 95

[aymaan noor]

“I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people,” Mr. Mandela wrote in his memoir.

Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Mr. Mandela organized and agitated on behalf of the ANC. He held positions in the ANC’s youth wing and in the main organization. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings, Mr. Mandela was initially committed to nonviolent resistance. He worked in concert with the Natal Indian Congress, an anti-racism group that Gandhi had helped found.

A growing struggle

Mr. Mandela practiced law and raised two sons and a daughter with his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase, whom he married in 1944. Another daughter died in infancy.

By 1952, Mr. Mandela had become president of the ANC’s largest branch, in the Transvaal. That year, he and Tambo opened the only firm of black lawyers in South Africa. They provided free or low-cost legal counsel to blacks.

Mr. Mandela was arrested for the first time in 1952 while organizing an ANC defiance campaign. A court decreed that he could not legally be in the presence of more than two people at a time. Such repression drove activists like Mr. Mandela underground; in 1954, Mr. Mandela devised what he called the “M Plan” of small street cells to carry out nonviolent defiance of apartheid.

In 1955, the year he separated from Evelyn, Mr. Mandela met Winnie Madikizela, a young social worker. A year later, he and 155 others were charged with treason. They originally were jailed but were released as the case dragged on. It ended in 1961 with verdicts of not guilty.

Mr. Mandela and Madikizela had married in 1958, and their union became part and parcel of the liberation struggle. She became an activist in her own right.

As the ANC stepped up its activism, so did a related group, the Pan Africanist Congress. In what would emerge as a turning point in the black liberation struggle, the PAC organized a protest on March 21, 1960, in the black township called Sharpeville. As demonstrators marched to decry laws that required blacks to carry a pass to enter cities or other white areas, police opened fire, killing 69 people.

The government clamped down with a state of emergency, during which several leading figures were jailed, including Mr. Mandela.

In 1961, Mr. Mandela and others in the ANC formed an armed wing, called Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the Nation. Popularly known as “MK,” the wing carried out a sporadic underground sabotage and guerrilla campaign.

In 1962, just after returning from MK fundraising travels across Africa, Mr. Mandela was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for incitement and illegally departing the country.

The next year, police arrested almost the entire leadership of MK. Along with Mr. Mandela, they were charged with treason, but when the case went to trial, the charges were changed to sabotage and conspiracy. They were convicted and expected to be hanged.

[aymaan noor]

At sentencing, in the last public statement that Mr. Mandela would utter until 1990, he said: “During my lifetime, I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have described the cherished ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Instead of death, Judge Quartus de Wet sentenced him to Robben Island prison, where he would spend 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment by the apartheid regime, confined to a tiny cell and forced to do hard labor in the prison quarry.

Revered on world stage

During Mr. Mandela’s years in prison, South Africa’s townships became increasingly restive, leading to the 1976 Soweto uprising, in which police killed several schoolchildren. State repression deepened. In 1977, anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who helped launch the Black Consciousness movement, was beaten to death in police custody.

In the 1980s, as the state employed a series of states of emergency against opponents, the international campaign to change South Africa gathered steam. Economic sanctions were imposed and various boycotts were launched. At the center of the campaign was an effort to free Mr. Mandela.

In 1982, Mr. Mandela was transferred to the Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland near Cape Town. A few years later, a series of secret talks began between Mr. Mandela and President P.W. Botha, who offered to release Mr. Mandela if he renounced violence. Mr. Mandela would not.

At the same time, Afrikaners of the National Party began tentative talks with the ANC in exile, led by Tambo, Mr. Mandela’s old law partner. Those talks were the precursors to Mr. Mandela’s release in 1990 and the removal of the ban on anti-apartheid organizations.

De Klerk and the National Party of 1990 thought they could free Mr. Mandela and still negotiate reforms that would leave the nation’s white minority with a veto power over black rule. But Mr. Mandela’s walk to freedom in 1990 set in motion a chain of events that would lead to free and fair elections and majority rule four years later.

Mr. Mandela suffered some setbacks to his image as president. He tolerated inept cabinet members who had been loyal comrades in the anti-apartheid struggle. Some blacks believed he spent too much time seeking reconciliation with whites. Others resented his penchant for granting an audience to just about any kind of visiting celebrity, from the Spice Girls to American Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

In 1998, Mr. Mandela married Graça Simbine Machel, the widow of Mozambican President Samora Machel. Besides Machel, survivors include a daughter from his first marriage, Makaziwe; two children from his second marriage, Zindzi and Zenani; and grandchildren.

In retirement, Mr. Mandela did not recede from the public eye. In 2008, a frail Mr. Mandela attended a star-studded London concert to celebrate his 90th birthday. He struggled to walk to the podium. But then, in a strong voice and flashing his trademark smile, he urged everyone to support his campaign against global poverty and oppression.

On his 93rd birthday, an estimated 12 million South African students sang “Happy Birthday” to him in a nationwide sing-a-long.

[aymaan noor]

Student movement pays tribute to Nelson Mandela


December 5th 2013

The anti-apartheid campaigner who became the first black president of South Africa, won the Nobel Peace Prize, inspired millions of students across the world.

NUS worked with the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) from the 1960s, supporting the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) and developing links with the South African Students’ Organisation and the African National Congress (ANC). NUS gave its support to the March for Freedom - Sanctions Now demonstration in March 1986 and supported economic boycotts with the AAM.

As part of the campaign to secure his release, Nelson Mandela was elected honorary president of NUS (for the first time in 1969) and NUS’ headquarters in Holloway Road was renamed Nelson Mandela House, with a plaque unveiled by Princess Thumbumuzi Dlamini–Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s daughter.

Toni Pearce, NUS President said: “For decades, Nelson Mandela has been an icon and role model to the student movement.

“So long as we keep Mandela’s memory and legacy alive, his incredible influence and his achievements will never be forgotten. We mourn his loss today.

“Students across the UK formed a pivotal part of the anti-apartheid movement and in supporting Mandela in his long walk to freedom.

"We should never forget those who stood by and to their eternal shame, labelled him a terrorist. Mandela’s humility and humanity in the face of that adversity and his refusal to be consumed by bitterness taught a truly humbling lesson to the world.

“More than forty years ago, NUS conference declared its complete opposition to the racialist regimes in South Africa, and that legacy proudly endures in the reaffirmation of our continuing commitment to tackling racism in all its forms. Today we salute the greatest champion of anti-racism the world has known.”