Mandela epitomised African humanist philosophies – Denis Goldberg

Continued from last week What were your thoughts during those down times?I took part in the struggle because I believe in justice and equality. I grew up seeing the Nazi era and World War II. I saw the danger of allowing prejudice to rule and I saw what it was doing to the people of […]

Continued from last week

What were your thoughts during those down times?
I took part in the struggle because I believe in justice and equality. I grew up seeing the Nazi era and World War II. I saw the danger of allowing prejudice to rule and I saw what it was doing to the people of my country and didn’t want to be part of that oppression. I had to be involved. There came a point when we decided to undertake armed struggle, I suppose I could have stepped aside as so many did.
My first political campaign was to draw up the Freedom Charter. The Charter ends with the words, “These freedoms we will fight for, side by side, throughout our lives until we have won our liberty.” That was an oath for me. How could I then say, “you go on, I’ve had enough?” That would be a betrayal of everything I believed in and of my comrades.
How did I survive? I wasn’t going to let them defeat me. White prisoners were treated worse than the blacks. They would say to me from every rank of prison guard, “We don’t like Nelson Mandela. But we respect him for fighting for his people. But you, we hate you. You betrayed us.” The letters and visitors, they stopped. They did things to destroy my family and me. It took 15 years to demand and get their respect.
But I say it without false modesty, that I was a leader in prison. We weren’t allowed access to any form of news for 15 years. But I was eventually able to lead a court case for the right to access news, which we won. The first judge said these prisoners think they live in a hotel except they haven’t got the keys. So we had to go to appeal. Four judges were against us, one was for us. The chief judge said, “This is a serious matter. So serious we have to take it seriously, but not so serious that we can do a change of policy.”
My strategy was to embarrass them before the world. And it worked. It was a sense of victory when I was told we could now buy newspapers. The commanding officer asked me to tell my fellow prisoners and I said, no, “you do it.” When he came in and said, “you can now buy newspapers”, they simply looked up and said, “thank you” and continued reading.

With South Africa preparing for elections, what would you say the nation has learnt from Mandela?
This outpouring of grief that also celebrates his life gives us hope to draw from these moments lessons and values. We talk of African humanist philosophies of Ubuntu: I’m who I am only through others. I’ve to live in a society with people. Mandela epitomised this, along with Tambo, Sisulu and others, many of them unknown. These are the lessons that should help us in the future. Whether it’s going to help the ANC or not, that’s up to our people.
We’ve worked hard for democracy and if we can’t deliver, then somebody else has got to. It’ll pain me to see the ANC lose support but I think we will. Instead of 66 per cent, we could go down to 60 or 59 per cent.

Why do you think so?
Because it’s easier to be in opposition than to rebuild. Because when you’re rebuilding there are so many different factions who want what you have. And we can’t keep them down.
If you have built nearly three million houses in 20 years, those who got the houses keep quiet or complain that the houses are now too small with the kids growing up. You can never satisfy everybody. There’s half a million families who don’t have houses. Millions have clean running water, many don’t. Many have safe sanitation, not necessarily water borne, millions don’t.
And so there will always be protests. Like in Cape Town, they took their buckets and threw them on the city hall steps. This is painful. The blame is on the party in opposition to the ANC. But it could be an ANC city. We simply can’t solve all the problems at once. Therefore, government loses support. To have 60 per cent isn’t bad, but it’s also a wake-up call for us.
People are forming new political parties. They believe they’ve something to offer. Many people would abstain from voting for the ANC but would not vote for anybody else.
We haven’t overcome the racial divisions of the past. Many loyalties depend on skin colour, race, language, etc. It’s going to take generations to overcome allegiances and the unwillingness not to forget the atrocities and the uncomfortable parts of our history and to move on in the interests of all of us. It takes a huge effort.
People are now backing away from the ANC to join opposition parties. It’s not a bad thing to have a good, strong opposition. It makes us rethink.
There are protests in South Africa now on corruption. To what extent do you think corruption has affected administration in the country?
Our government put forward “The Secrecy of Information Bill”. They wanted a law which would allow some official documents declared as secret. It was fought against until it got changed to documents affecting only certain cabinet ministers, military police, defence police and the secret service.  
The penalties for disclosing them are huge and you dare not even have them in your possession to start with.
There is also the battle for Freedom of Information… How do you deal with corruption if the needed documents are secret?
Construction companies, for jobs on the 2010 FIFA World Cup which we hosted, overpriced their work by 9 billion rand, then pay 1.3 billion rand in penalty.
What happened to the rest?
It went into somebody’s pocket. Journalists said, “How are we going to conclude these big projects if we put them in prison?” In no time the story died and the companies continued work and their corrupt practices were overlooked. This is the inequality of our media. Who pays the dirty money? But then there is this huge outcry in the papers about private sector corruption. There are two sides to corruption. But we tolerate it because the private sector is not unexpected not to be corrupt.
For certain reasons, I admire President Zuma, although I’ve my concerns. I think he’s done very well; he’s helped the creation for our 20-year National Development Plan.
You saw your wife only twice in 20 years while you were in prison. Then between 2000 and 2006, you lost her, your daughter and a second wife. How have you coped with these invaluable losses?
Maybe I’m just stubborn. But those six years, I must admit, I took a battering. It took me two painful years to come back to life.
My ANC comrades in my neighbourhood – blacks, coloured and whites – dragged me back to life. An old friend came to see me and provided comfort and love, and helped me through it.
It’s very nice when a loving relationship ends up in a loving friendship. It’s a great privilege. I’ve been a fortunate man. There’ve always been people around there for me between mutual reliance and loving relationships.
Underlying it all is the belief that what makes us human is that we serve the interest of others. A famous Austrian/German psychiatrist who survived Nazi camp, puzzled how people survived or died, titled his first book after release “Despite everything, yes to life”.
Life is beautiful. It’s a great privilege to be alive and to share it with ordinary people and great people who do extraordinary things.

In all of this, when would you say that memories and remembrance count and should be a valid part of judgment and decision-making?
You ask a very complex question and you want a quick answer. Interestingly, there were times when I needed counseling – on jealousy, on frustration, on tired of being tied down and not have choices over things like when my lights go out, on what I can do and don’t do and on getting depressed.
But you have to get through it. I couldn’t ask for therapeutic help in prison because I couldn’t put my mind in the hands of the enemy. That would destroy me. I discovered I’d to be my own therapist.
For me, sanity is knowing how one should live and compel your emotions in line with what you believe to be correct. Psychotherapists help their patients achieve this. But I had to be my own therapist.
When is memory constructive and when is it destructive? Is my commitment to building a new South Africa for all our people? Would I allow the memories of atrocities take over me? When do we get to the point where we say we collectively make terrible mistakes and we have to move on? Not to forget but to learn from them.
We build the future with people who are damaged goods; the perpetrators and the victims. We have to make things better. That’s my philosophy. You don’t have to be religious and you don’t have to be non-religious. You just have to be a human being and respect other human beings.
There are limits, there are people who are so intolerable, and society has to deal with them. But you don’t just arbitrarily kill people. Memory is constructive when we choose to make it so.
It’s not a case of remembering and then forgetting or forgiving. It’s a case of saying suffering took place, I can’t forget it, but I’m not going to let it destroy my children.

You touched on religious philosophy. To what extent did religion assist in the fight against apartheid?
The church was initially supporting apartheid. It wasn’t until much, much later that some of them began talking out in support of the fight against the injustice.
Concluded