Washingtonpost.com: Mandela- Journey of a Nation



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• Map of South Africa • South Africa Special Report

Time Line 1941-1964
Joined ANC and helped found Youth League			^_1944
Defiance Campaign launched, peaceful protests against apartheid			^_1952
Anti-apartheid leaders charged with treason after issuing the Freedom Charter			^_1956
Sharpeville massacre; state of emergency; ANC banned			^_1960
Treason defendants acquitted; Mandela goes underground			^_1960
South Africa republic declared, independent of U.K.			^_1961
Armed wing of ANC (MK) formed, Mandela as commander			^_1961
Mandela leaves country to raise support and get military training			^_1962
On return, Mandela arrested and sentenced to five years			^_1962
MK leaders and Mandela charged with sabotage and conspiracy			^_1963
Rivonia defendants sentenced to life in prison, Robben Island			^_1964

Johannesburg in the 1940s was a boomtown, drawing thousands of blacks in search of work. Leaving their families at home, most lived in crowded barracks and worked in menial jobs for pitiful pay. Blacks were not allowed to live in the city. Mandela found lodging with a family in Alexandra, a squalid, crowded settlement outside Johannesburg.

After a low period with no money and no job, his fortunes changed profoundly when he met Walter Sisulu, a respected businessman who had a reputation for solving problems in the black community. Sisulu was impressed with the "bright young man," encouraged him to go to law school and led him to a clerk's job in a white law firm, a rare opportunity.

• • •

Gradually, Mandela's identity with his tribe loosened. Life in the multi-ethnic Alexandra altered his world view. Of his 1942 visit home when Chief Jongitaba died, Mandela would write about the conflict he felt between his heritage and duty and the right to choose his own future. Back in Johannesburg, he completed his B.A. degree by correspondence, studied law at the University of Witwatersrand and became an activist.

The African National Congress, a nationalist political body formed in 1913 to unite blacks and defend African rights, was patterned after a model left by the future liberator of India, Mohandas Gandhi. As a young lawyer, Gandhi lived 21 years in South Africa, organizing for Indian rights. In three decades, the ANC had made little progress with its policies of non-violence and polite petitioning to the white government. Mandela first encountered the ANC at the Sisulu house, where young professionals who wanted to make radical changes to the group's tactics often met for discussions. In 1944 these men, who included Mandela's friend from Fort Hare Oliver Tambo, organized the Youth League to energize the ANC leadership. Also that year, Mandela married Evelyn Mase, a nurse.

• • •

Racial climate in South Africa worsened when the National Party won the 1948 elections on a platform of apartheid. Among the first acts of Prime Minister Daniel Malan were the prohibition of mixed marriages and the imposition of a national registry of racial groups that identified every South African as White, Colored or African. The previous uncodified policy of racial discrimination in the country thus became institutionalized. Oliver Tambo remarked that the regime would be good for the ANC – giving the freedom movement a real enemy would serve to mobilize it.

The period saw increased protest activity by the ANC, more repressive violent tactics of the police against demonstrators, and a deeper commitment to the freedom movement from Mandela. In 1952 he was an organizer of the Defiance Campaign Against Unjust Laws, in alliance with the South African Indian Congress. The six-month protest would bring heightened government control and transform the ANC from an elite group to a mass movement. At the height of the campaign, 21 leaders of the ANC and SAIC were arrested under the Suppression of Communism Act. They were found guilty of being "statutory" communists, but given suspended sentences. At the end of the year, Mandela was elected president of the Youth League and president of the Transvaal branch of the ANC, which made him a deputy national president.

• • •

Increasingly a target for arrest and banning, Mandela was in hiding or at secret meetings much of the time. It was taking a toll on his home life. He and Evelyn had three children; and for a long time her work carried the family financially while Nelson studied and pursued ANC activities. During his restrictions, Mandela wrote his examination and was admitted to the legal profession. In 1952, he and Oliver Tambo opened a law practice in Johannesburg. Nelson and Evelyn separated; he would get a divorce in 1957.

The "architect of apartheid," Minister of Native Affairs Hendrik Verwoerd, called his plan for a new racial order a "policy of good neighborliness," but it contained two especially oppressive acts: the Group Areas Act, which would destroy black townships close to white areas and move blacks and Indians to reserves in housing owned by the government, and the Bantu Education Act, which shifted black education from schools run by the churches and missions to government schools, where young blacks would be taught there was no place for them in the white community.

• • •

"We the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people.
(From preamble to the Freedom Charter)

The Freedom Charter was drafted by a planning group for a national convention, called by the ANC to restore a sense of purpose to the anti-apartheid movement. The Congress of the People debated and approved the charter June 1955 at Kliptown, a multi-racial village southwest of Johannesburg. The gathering of 3,000 delegates – Indians, Coloreds, blacks and whites and communists of all professions – was unique in South Africa. The document was basically meant to be an all-race bill of rights. The government, however, condemned it for having "socialist and revolutionary intentions." Armed with warrants, police collected documents and names from delegates at the convention.

• • •

For involvement with the Freedom Charter, Mandela and 155 others around the country were rounded up the following year and charged with high treason. The accused included nearly the entire leadership of the anti-apartheid movement. A defense lawyer would remark that the trial was the only place in South Africa without a color bar.

The Treason Trial in Pretoria continued for years, consuming the energies of the freedom movement, as the government intended. During a break in the trial, Mandela met Nonzamo Winifred Madikizela, a social work student. They married in June 1958.

An upheaval in a small township on March 21, 1960, halted the trial and changed South Africa. In Sharpeville, police fired on a large group of unarmed apartheid protesters, killing 69 and wounding 400. It was a massacre that brought world condemnation and thousands demonstrating at home. The Nationalists ordered a state of emergency in the country and banned the ANC and other opposition groups.

A month later, the Treason Trial resumed and, finally, in May 1960, the 99 remaining defendants were acquitted. The trial had carried on for nearly five years. The ANC, now an illegal body, chose Mandela to organize a national constitutional convention and sent him immediately underground. Winnie packed his bag. He did not enter the house.

• • •

The Black Pimpernel was the name an interested press gave Mandela for eluding the police. For 17 months, as he organized support for the convention, Mandela moved around the country in hiding, staying at a network of safe houses, going out only at night, always in disguise. The ANC three-day stay-at-home began May 29, 1961, to coincide with the government's declaration of South Africa as a republic, independent of the British crown. The unexpected counter to the protest by the government was the largest show of force the Nationalists had ever staged. Mandela told reporters that the chapter on the question of non-violence would close, that passive resistance was effective only when the opponent plays by the same rules.

Firmly against armed struggle, the ANC finally gave permission for a separate military wing. In June, Mandela, Sisulu and ANC colleagues joined with the Congress of Democrats, a small communist body, to form Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which means Spear of the Nation. The group named Nelson Mandela commander-in-chief and decided to employ acts of sabotage, which would hamper the state but inflict the least damage to individuals. The examples of revolutions in Cuba and elsewhere in Africa made the inexperienced "warriors" think their plan possible.

Vigorously anti-communist in his early political period, Mandela had drawn closer to communist activists over the years. The South African Communist Party, who shared the goal to eliminate apartheid, had supported and strengthened the Africans' struggle for rights. ANC head, Chief Luthuli, was also philosophical about a relationship with the group, saying he would accept help from others subscribing to ANC aims and leave the differences to liberation day.

In January 1962, Mandela left the country to seek support for the freedom struggle and education in guerilla fighting. He and others were received by heads of state and senior officials through independent Africa and in England. While Mandela was training with the Ethiopian military in Addis Ababa some months later, the ANC called him back to South Africa to exhibit solidarity. Not long after he returned wearing army fatigues, Mandela, who had grown careless, was recognized by police and charged with inciting workers to strike and leaving the country illegally.

• • •

In a gesture to gain visibility, Mandela handled his own defense, which gave him a chance to expound against the government. To emphasize he was "a black African in a white man's court," he entered the court wearing beads and a Xhosa leopard-skin "kaross." Winnie also wore traditional dress as did many in the gallery who had come all the way from the Transkei. Mandela's clenched-fist salute brought a standing response. In November 1962, the judge pronounced Mandela guilty and noted the defendant's lack of remorse. The sentence of five years in prison was the stiffest yet imposed in the country for a political offense.

Mandela's articulate defense of human rights and his bearing and skill in the courtroom marked him as a "leader of distinction," biographer Martin Meredith wrote. Though Mandela's words made little impact in South Africa, where they were banned, his performance gained worldwide attention and marked the start of his international reputation.

• • •

While Mandela was in prison, South African authorities raided a Rivonia farmhouse on July 11, 1963, and seized many weapons and documents belonging to the ANC military command. Some of the documents had been signed by Mandela himself. Less than a year into his first sentence, Mandela was put on trial again, along with seven comrades. The prosecution was a grand coup for the State, which this time sought the death penalty for crimes of sabotage and conspiracy.

The Rivonia Trial began late in October 1963. For three months, the prosecution produced 173 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits. The evidence for conspiracy was overwhelming and a sentence of death by hanging a real threat. Tense crowds of supporters were at the courthouse every day. Nelson Mandela began the defense case with a four-hour statement from the dock in which he never denied the charges – a tactic which frustrated the prosecutor because Mandela would not be open to cross-examination. This time his words appeared in the local press, and the entire trial and all the defendants were closely covered by international news.

On the day of sentencing, June 12, 1964, the judge spoke so quietly when he ordered the men to spend life in prison, that the crowd, including Winnie, their two daughters and Mandela's mother, did not hear. In the confusion, the prisoners were whisked out of the courtroom to cells in the basement. They started their prison years at notorious Robben Island, a maximum-security prison off the coast near Cape Town.

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