Nelson Mandela: 20 years after the walk that changed the world

The events culminating in the walk of freedom, started from a surprise speech made to parliament by then State President FW de Klerk, on February 2, 1990. The speech called for a new constitution, lifted the ban on political movements like the ANC and the South African Communist Party and the release of all political […]

The events culminating in the walk of freedom, started from a surprise speech made to parliament by then State President FW de Klerk, on February 2, 1990. The speech called for a new constitution, lifted the ban on political movements like the ANC and the South African Communist Party and the release of all political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela. A conference to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of de Klerk’s speech to parliament was recently held in South Africa. De Klerk told a radio station in an interview that “what I announced went far beyond the expectations”. FW de Klerk was the last president of apartheid South Africa, ruling the country from 1989 to 1994.  He shared the Nobel peace prize with Mandela in 1993, for their joint work in ending apartheid and ensuring a democratic transition. “As I walked into parliament, I knew it would change South Africa forever”, said de Klerk, once a hardliner in the National Party, the apartheid-era ruling party in South Africa.

The Executive Director of the Institute for Democracy in Southern Africa, Paul Graham, told AFP, that de Klerk’s move “was a brave move. A very brave move in the face of potential disaster”. While Laurence Caromba, a political analyst added that “for a white president to stand up and say, as De Klerk effectively did, that the South African government was willing to reconsider the principle of white minority rule was, at the time, an earth-shattering political development”. But the background to the surprise move was the fact that the country was tethering on the brink of an all out civil war while the economy was collapsing under the weight of international sanctions. Paul Graham added that South Africa was “a steadily deteriorating pariah” internationally. Jay Naidoo, then General Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and now Chairman of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, told VOA, it was a moment of real joy “so, we exploded with joy, I mean it was a significant movement forward, and it put a peg onto the ground that this transformation to democratic state was now unstoppable”. Nine days after the ground breaking speech in parliament, on February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years and he took that famous walk into a world that had undergone tremendous change since he went into prison!

It is remarkable that twenty-five years ago, on February 10, 1985, Mandela had announced to the world his rejection of a conditional offer of release by the then South African President, PW Botha. His words were read out at a rally in Soweto, organized by the United Democratic Front (UDF), held to celebrate the Nobel Peace Prize given to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The speech which came to be known as “My father says” or “I am not prepared to sell the birthright of my people” speech, was presented by Mandela’s youngest daughter, Zindzi. Zindzi also remembered the speech in recent days saying that “I was very proud that I had to do this for him-it was a great honour because he was not only my father, but my comrade”. She added that “it was a difficult thing for a child: wanting my father to come home, but at the same time understanding why he had to reject the offer. Mrs. Mandela was under house arrest at the time but seizing the permission given to see her doctor in Johannesburg, she attended the rally in disguise.

Mandela’s release set in motion the political dynamism which turned South Africa into a multi-racial democracy after the historic 1994 elections and his inauguration as the first black president of South Africa. Mandela’s presidency helped to drive a process of national reconciliation in South Africa. He won over conservative white hardliners with genuine gestures of accommodation and commenced the process of empowerment of the majority black population that had been deliberately sidelined by apartheid and white supremacy. Significantly, the South African economy under the African National Congress (ANC) was to witness a long period of impressive growth on record, until the recent financial crisis. In the twenty years since Mandela’s release and the institution of a multi-racial democracy, a strong black middle class has emerged and the generation of children born after 1994, known as the “born frees”, have grown up in a multiracial country. The South African political analyst, Nic Borain noted that “the only black people you interacted with (prior to 1990) as a normal kind of person were servants and deeply poverty-stricken people. That is no longer the case and there is a general de-racialism of wealth at least”.

The ANC remains the leading political party in the country and seems set to remain like that into the foreseeable future, largely because of the role it played as the party of national liberation, whose non-racial platform provided a basis for South Africans of all races to take part in the struggle against apartheid. It has also been able to provide the leadership for a difficult process of transition which allowed the hopes for change held by the majority of the population to be creatively balanced with the reality that the preponderance of the productive forces of the country remained in the hands of the white minority. Mandela’s leadership, after the 1994 election, made it easy to pull people together, even with small but significant gestures, such as appearance at the rugby world cup to cheer the Springboks, the mainly white South African national team, in a game that the white population is mad about; or holding a meeting with the widow of Dr. Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid after 1948.

Twenty years after the long walk that changed the world, Nelson Mandela’s South Africa still faces a lot of challenges as international television channels have shown repeatedly this week. Many black South Africans, the main base of support for the ANC and Mandela, still live in deep poverty in squalid township shanties and while the official rate of unemployment is about 25%, analysts in South Africa say the rates are higher. Crime is rife and the country has one the highest rates of violent crime in the world. Income inequality between race groups has increased since 1995 with the World Bank describing South Africa as a country with “extreme differences in income and wealth”. Furthermore, the World Bank said at least 34% of the estimated 50million people of the country live on less than $2 per day. Yet, the problems still remaining to solve in South Africa cannot diminish the progress that has been made in the twenty years that Nelson Mandela took those fateful steps into freedom: they were small steps for a legend but giant strides in the building of a new society in one of the most important countries in Africa.

But more importantly, Nelson Mandela taught the world the meaning of reconciliation and forgiveness; it is a world that for long has been dominated by the vengefulness and cruelty which the dominant nations of the West have used to dominate international relations. Mandela dug deep into the humanism that is intrinsic to the African world view to help people learn to overcome the pains which came with the atrocities of apartheid, itself a bastard offspring of the Western colonial intrusion into Africa. Nelson Mandela is one of the greatest sons of Africa and his incredible sacrifice in the struggle against apartheid, which kept him in prison for twenty-seven years, years that he described as long, lonely and wasted, would have cemented his place in world history as a true freedom fighter. But he added an incredible compassion and a unique ability to forgive heal rifts and wounds, which a most inhumane world, dominated by imperialism, needs to continuously, learn from. It is a matter of pride to all Africans, that this venerable old man and freedom fighter, the one affectionately called Madhiba, comes from our continent to become a unique example for all of humanity. Nelson Mandela belongs to the generation of the ANC Youth League which in 1944, swore a determination to achieve “FREEDOM IN OUR LIFETIME”; and they did after a most heroic struggle! Twenty years down the line, it is still historically relevant to ask people: where were you or what were you doing on the day that Nelson Mandela walked into freedom twenty years ago?