Bob Crew - Mandela: His Life and Legacy for South Africa and the World

Contents

: How Nelson Mandela Became an Icon and Got His Christian Name

: An Agonizing Political History

: In the High Bright Shadow of Nelson Mandela

: Nelson Mandelas Miserables

: To Kill a President

: Good and Bad Zulus and Good and Bad Dutch-Afrikaners

: Have the Dutch-Afrikaners Really Forgiven the Dutch in Holland?

: The Mysterious Death of Heidi Holland

: Citizen Number One or Enemy of the People?

: In Conclusion: No Zuma or ANC for 2013?

Chapter One

How Nelson Mandela Became an Icon and Got His Christian Name

N elson Mandela was educated by his black family and relatives for the purpose ofand with a view tobecoming nothing more than a minor civil servant and therefore knowing his place in the white mans wicked scheme of imperial things in the days of apartheid, leaving the grander designs of rebelling, freedom fighting, political leadership, and power politics to others.

All this is clear from reading his aforementioned autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom , and also from listening to others who knew him or remember him (I have done both). We know that, in his early life, he was parentally and tribally destined to accept an arranged marriagefrom which he escaped when he rejected it and ran away to Johannesburgand that he was also groomed to keep his nose out of racial politics. But not being one to bow to his prescribed destiny, he went his own way.

He was parentally and educationally trained to get a good Christian education and become a civil servant dealing with black people and leaving the wicked white men to do their own wicked apartheid thinginstead of which he locked horns with whites and did his own freedom fighting, presidential, and global politics thing, carving for himself and South Africas blacks a hitherto unimagined place in history (that slowly became very imaginable indeed, painfully slowly!).

Most minor civil servantsof any race or skin colordid not do this sort of thing because they were not temperamentally or otherwise equipped for it or suited to it. They did not have the character for it, which is doubtless why Nelson Mandela did not become the minor civil servant that he was intended to become. His personal character and his nature took over from his nurture and the aims and objects of his education when he finally decided to become the first democratically elected founding-president of South Africa instead! And he became the president impressively so, which was all down to his genes and his character, and not to his family situation, in which, like many of his fellow black men and women, he could have steered clear of leadership in interracial politics and rebellion and settled for being either a cozy civil servant or lawyer. Other outstanding blacks had similarly powerful characters and personal qualities with which to become South Africas first black presidentMandela was by no means the only onebut his was the character that eventually proved to be the most durable and capable.

Just as he rejected in his early twenties what appeared to him to be the unjust and high-handed behavior of his white Scottish college principal at South Africas prestigious University of Fort Hare when he went there, by the same token he also rejected outright the decisions and laws of the white mans apartheid later in his life.

When Mandela and other students resigned in disgust from the students union at the University of Fort Hare in a quarrel with the principal about their inferior foodand the college principal insisted that they could not stay in the college and complete their education unless they rejoined the students unionMandela walked out of the college and into the sunset, never to return!

Mandela then enrolled, later on, at Wits University in Johannesburg in order to get the longed-for university degree that he had sacrificed. But his walking away from Fort Hare turned out to be a blessing in disguise, since his law degree gave him opportunities for earning more money and advancement than the civil service diploma he would have received at Hare would have enabled him to do.

But who stands on such a small point of principle?

Well, Nelson Mandela, of course. Lets not forget that his tribal first nameRolihlahlameant troublemaker! Clearly, Nelson could be an impetuous and very stubborn young man of ironclad principle from the get-go!

But was he a rebel with or without a cause, or both?

It seems to me that both is the answer to this question, given that making such a big deal over such a small matter as college canteen food was not such a big deal and not worth sacrificing ones (educational and career) cause for such a relatively small principle.

It seems to me that Nelson Mandela was a rebel by nature , with or without a cause, regardless of his nurture (which was not to rebel at Fort Hare against his tribal family), and that it was his nature that led him to become a rebel with a very big cause in the fight against apartheid in due course. Had it not been in his nature, even before the cause came along for him personally (it was already there for the taking), the chances are that he would not have succeeded as he did.

Think of Britains very feeble Neville Chamberlain at the outbreak of World War IIwhose nature was inadequate for the task of taking on Hitler and his Nazi government and its massive armyand then think of Winston Churchill, whose nature was more than adequate, and you will get the picture. Think also of the instinctive admiration that Nelson Mandela had for Winston Churchill for standing up to Hitler, as he joined other students at Fort Hare with their ears glued to a single small radio in their dormitory as they listened to Churchills famously stirring speeches. In my opinion, Mandela acquired his own Churchillian accent (Africa-style) subliminally in this way, and this accent lasted for the rest of his life. It is one that Archbishop Desmond Tutu imitates fondly and with glee to this day (he did so on television at the time of Mandelas death).

This is a great little true story that sheds much light on the swiftly forming character and attitudes of Nelson Mandela in his early life. In chapter two of his autobiography, Mandela tells us that he was sabotaging his academic career at Fort Hare over an abstract moral principle that he realized mattered very little, yet he could not help himself for all that. He concedes that it was foolhardy for him to leave Fort Hare, but at the moment I needed to compromise, I could not do so. And the reason he could not do so was because he resented his principals absolute power over my fate, the injustice of which rankled with him. So here we see his very stubborn and highly principled character from the beginning.

He remained obsessive about abstract moral principles, however small they may bethe mark of a truly moral and intellectual characterand he seriously resented the unjust power of others over his fate (the mark of a man whose character was without doubt his fate, determining its own fate, and would not under any circumstance suffer an unjust fate at the hands of others, however trifling or abstract the injustice and the power may be!).

For those of us who have to put up with all manner of minor or not-so-minor injustices and compromise our principles in our daily lives in order to get our jobs done or generally to survive the rough and tumble of everyday life, we detect a kind of veiled fanaticism in Mandelas character here. This is because many of us in our educational or working lives have walked away and let the college principal or our boss have his or her own way, in order not to sabotage our education, career prospects, jobs, or promotions, and to get a result, if only to repay those who have provided for us to go into higher education with our gratitude at least, or to provide for our families in life rather than to sacrifice them for our own principles (Nelson Mandela was unable to provide for his own family for twenty-seven years when he was behind bars on Robben Island).