All week long, the tributes have soared
for the man who South Africans say
created their country, but an
important chapter seems to have gone
largely missing from the testimonials.
This “giant of history” was compared to
Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King
Jr. and even Jesus Christ – often
wrapped into one.
But only a few, like Jacob Zuma, South
Africa’s current president and himself
a former militant, touched on
Mandela’s controversial embrace of
violence and his plan to topple the
apartheid regime through a campaign
of potentially lethal sabotage.
“To him,” Zuma said during the large
memorial service in Johannesburg on
Tuesday, “for South Africa to attain
peace, the armed struggle was
inevitable, but it was a means to an
end but not an end in itself.”
Not part of the ‘saintly’ image
But some South Africa experts say
there’s a clear reason why the details
of Mandela’s freedom fighting have
been largely airbrushed out of the
memorializing.
“If you were to ask, was the armed
struggle an essential component to the
defeat of apartheid, the answer would
have to be ‘yes.’ One that doesn’t sit
comfortably with the saintly images the
media wish to portray,’’ said Wayne
Dooling, Professor of History at the
University of London’s School of
Oriental and African Studies.
Many argue that the Sharpeville
massacre on March 21, 1960, when
police opened fire on a peaceful
protest in a black township killing 69
people, was the turning point when
black resistance went from a non-
violent campaign to an armed
resistance movement.
Mandela, far from remaining a passive,
non-violent activist, became the first
commander in chief of the African
National Council’s military wing, called
the “Umkhonto we Sizwe,” or “Spear of
the Nation,” (and better known as
“MK” - the South African version of the
IRA) after Sharpeville.
Inspired more by the writings of Mao
Zedong and Che Guevara than Gandhi,
Mandela built up from scratch a small
insurgent force, trained in blowing up
easy targets, like electricity
transmission towers and rail lines. His
recruits learned to make primitive
bombs from ingredients normally
found on South African farms.
The ‘Black Pimpernel’
By 1962, Mandela was already an
underground “terrorist,” wanted by the
police and living an outlaw existence
who the media had dubbed the “Black
Pimpernel” — a twist on the fictional
“Scarlet Pimpernel” who struck at will
and, Zoro-like, always avoided
capture.
That year, according to multiple
historical accounts, he made a secret,
six-month-long trip to a dozen African
states, seeking political support and
money from other African
revolutionary armies. He returned to
South Africa with about $30,000 in
funds and a revived enthusiasm for
guerrilla warfare.
He even underwent his own military
training, having spent weeks on the
firing range and perfecting his
explosives skills in Moroccan and
Ethiopian military camps. The night
before his arrest on charges of treason
and sabotage, Mandela was reportedly
seen at a party in Durban proudly
sporting khaki fatigues, with pistol at
his side.
“He openly talked about the necessity
to move toward guerrilla warfare,”
wrote Max du Preez in his book, “The
Rough Guide to Nelson Mandela.”
Denis Farrel / AP
South African President Frederik Wi
de Klerk, left, and Nelson Mandela,
prior to talks between the ANC and
South African government, Cape To
May 2, 1990.
But Mandela, the guerrilla commander,
said he intended to target the
apartheid regime’s infrastructure, not
the people.
“Now all over South Africa we had
buildings that said ‘Non-Europeans and
Dogs Not Allowed,’” Ahmed Kathrada,
one of Mandela’s earliest surviving
comrades, recalled to NBC News this
week. “So the recruits had to lay
bombs, but an oath had to be taken
that when the bombs are placed,
there’s no injury to human beings. So
this had to be done at night, when
nobody was around.”
But “Plan M” — Mandela’s plan for
insurgent victory — left many good
intentions in its wake. Over the next 30
years, the MK launched more than
3,000 attacks and killed at least 100
people, mostly civilians, according to
subsequent reports from South Africa’s
Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
And while Mandela himself spent most
of those years in prison, he never gave
up on the armed struggle, keeping in
touch with successive MK commanders
on tactics by secret messages passed
through occasional prison visitors,
including his (then) wife Winnie
Mandela and lawyer George Bizos.
“Mandela was not Gandhi,” said
Dooley, the South Africa historian.
“Once he had committed himself to
armed struggle, he did not waver until
the onset of political negotiations in
1990.”
During that era, both the U.S. State
and Defense departments dubbed
Mandela’s political party, the African
National Congress, a terrorist group,
and Mandela’s name remained on the
U.S. terrorism watch list till 2008. The
U.S. government described it as a
“bureaucratic snafu” when it was
finally removed 14 years after he was
elected president and nine years after
he had left power.
Slideshow: Nelson Mandela: A
revolutionary's life
/
View images of civil rights leader Nels
Mandela, who went from anti-aparthei
activist to prisoner to South Africa's fir
black president.
Launch slideshow
Prison life offered path to peace
As Anthony Sampson pointed out in his
book, “Mandela, The Authorized
Biography,” it was prison life that
prepared the hot-tempered militant for
his eventual path to peace.
“Constantly up against other prisoners,
he became more sensitive to other
people’s insecurities and resentments,”
Sampson wrote. “He seemed much less
arrogant, no longer the chiefly
autocrat, but the flexible democrat
who could listen and take note….Trying
to find common ground in the context
of the nation.’’
Zuma, in his tribute to the man,
expressed the belief that Mandela may
have been a terrorist to a white
separatist minority, but was a hero to
the rest of South Africans.
“This freedom fighter had always stated
that the ANC had resorted to arms
because of the intransigence of the
apartheid regime, which responded
with violence, bannings and detentions
to simple demands for equal
citizenship, human rights and justice,”
Zuma said.
Mandela's "long walk" included many
stops along the way: passive resistor,
firebrand revolutionary and, finally,
forgiving statesman. At every stage,
many of his peers say, he led from the
front.
Mandela's freedom fighter days not part of 'saintly' image
