Called apartheid, it was a poisonous system that would only end with the liberation from prison of one of the moral giants of our time, Nelson Mandela.
This is the story of one of the most celebrated human beings of the 20th century – a black man who fought for freedom in his own homeland and after paying a high price, won it.
A Rainbow in the Night: The Tumultuous Birth of South Africa
Dominique Lapierre
Published by: Full Circle
Pages: 288; Price: Rs 275 |
It is all about South Africa, the various tribes that inhabited it and how they were conquered and maltreated by first a small group of Dutch farmers way back in 1652 and then by successive migrants from the Netherlands to be followed by migrants from Britain who saw in South Africa, a land rich in gold and other minerals.
A clash between the Dutch and the British was inevitable given the stakes in which the Dutch – known as the Boers – came out as losers. It cost both parties a lot in manpower. The so-called Boer War was to result in 7,000 dead and 55,000 wounded on the British side and 33,000 dead on the African side. But victor or victim both had one aim: to keep the blacks under thumb. This was called apartheid.
Apartheid limited the freedom of the blacks in every department of life: housing, education, employment, sports, even personal relationship. Blacks were banned from the use of Park benches, buses and trains, public urinals, theatres, etc.
It was vicious. And blacks felt it was necessary to fight the humiliation thrust upon them. It led to the formation of the Afri¬can National Congress led by a 29-year old descendant of a royal family in the Xhosa county. His name was Nelson Mandela.
Working closely with him were two other colleagues, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu. The ANC was born in 1912 with the aim of fighting apartheid through non-violent means. Its aim was to oppose racism and make black Africans full citizens on par with the white men. As Mandela would later write: “We hoped that the government and ordinary South Africans would see that the principles they were fighting in Europe were the same ones we are advocating at home.”
Persuaded that the ANC needed new blood to confront the white extremists, Mandela along with others, created in 1943 a Youth League as the ANC’s subsidiary to func¬tion as “a power station of the spirit of African nationalism”. The ANC had as its credo the ideal of non-violence as propounded by Mahatma Gandhi. “But it was not going to last. The African white were hell-bent on keeping the Blacks as their permanent slaves.
As a leader of the Union of South Africa Hendrik Verwoerd said: “What is the point of teaching mathematics to a black child if he will not be called upon to use it? There is no place for the native in European society above the level of certain menial jobs. We must get into the blacks’ head that they will never be equal to whites.”
Understandably there was a black uprising when during one such demonstration blacks were ruthlessly shot at leaving some eighty people dead and over 200 injured, following that declared Mandela: “The time for passive resistance has ended. Violence is the only weapon that will destroy apartheid.”
Thereafter the African National Congress decided that Mandela should be sent to Ethiopia and Algiers to receive terrorist Commando training.
He had hardly returned from his training when his presence in the country was detected and he was arrested and tried in a Court which sentenced him to life imprisonment. There was an island prison where Mandela was despatched to spend the rest of his life.
It was August 13, 1964. Life there was terrible. There were no clocks insight anywhere. One could only guess how time passed. There was no calendar either. Mandela was put in a cell 6ft by 6ft in area and furnished only with a sisal mat on the bare ground and a skylight protected by the bars that burnt night and day. As Mandela recalled long after “losing a sense of time is an easy way to lose one’s sanity”. Mail was seldom provided.
Mandela had to wait nine months before a guard handed him his first letter from his wife Winnie. Things turned for the worse in South Africa. All resistance was forcibly crushed.
Entire black colonies were deported, leaving thousands homeless, blanks could not contain their anger. In a notorious town called Sharpville, rioters who suspected the deputy mayor of conniving with the white administration in harming blacks slit his throat and set fire to cars, burning their occupants to cinders. Despite desperate appeals from Bishop Tutu, anti-white violence knew no bounds.
In the province of the Eastern Cape, civil servants find their children were beaten to death, then doused in petrol and burnt.
In Pretoria a bomb hidden in a car parked outside a cafe exploded and killed twenty and injured over two hundred. Meanwhile, the world had woken up to the evils of apartheid, even as South Africa was slowly sinking into anarchy. Country after country was appealing to South Africa’s chief Frederick Willem de Klerk to give up apartheid.
As the author says: “All across the planet Nelson Mandela stood for the shining hope for a racially reconciled South Africa…Pope John Paul II publicly expressed support and admiration for Mandela.”
De Klerk took the hint. On Sunday, February 11, 1990, after ten thousand days and ten thousand nights without freedom, the oldest political prisoner on the planet cast off his chains. In Cape town’s City Hall he gave a speech that made history and brought tears to his listeners’ eyes.
A new – and free – South Africa was born. Reading this highly emotive work, even a quarter century later is enough for one to dab his eyes with a kerchief. If one has a complaint it is that there is no reference whatsoever to the role of Mahatma Gandhi in all the fight for freedom. Following his release Mandela was to get elected as the country’s first President.
Writes Lapierre: “An exemplary peaceful transition took the country from repression and injustice to democracy, freedom and equality, an unparalleled achievement in the history of human conflict and an exceptional lesson in humanity for the whole planet.” In history miracles can happen. In the case of Nelson Mandela it did.
M.V. KAMATH
