“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
Nelson Mandela
Introduction
Apartheid was a dark cloud that engulfed South Africa for many years, a political ethos that built a ring of steel around the black inhabitants of this country, slamming the door firmly shut on their basic human and coexistence. Growing up, I remember reporters such as Trevor McDonald doing news reports from the shanty towns of places such as Soweto, a picture of poverty with residents living in fear under the watchful eye of overzealous police officers and government officials. Hated by the Africaans’ farmers, given a labelled bench in the park and chastised by the Botha government.
The Invisible Prisoner
From 1948 until the 1990s, apartheid, the Afrikaans for apartness was the ball and chain of black South African society. A black population that was under an iron fist of a small white minority and a grip that would decades to prise apart, riddled with discrimination and racism. A policy that first saw the light of day when the National Party came to power in 1948, a party that expressly believed in white supremacy and empowered white South Africans that were descended from Dutch and British settlers. A system that was rooted in the slavery and colonisation of South Africa’s past when black slaves were used as a commodity to turn the country from a rural society to an industrialised one. The Dutch settlers in the 17th century relied on these slaves to develop South Africa and when slavery was abolished in 1863, diamonds were discovered.
Despite slavery having been abolished, these rich men still managed to keep a stranglehold on these former slaves, all but enslaving them in the sweat and toil of newly opened diamond mines dotted across the country, using intimidation and discrimination as their sticks of submission. They did this by using pass laws, a barbaric method of controlling black workers, making them carry identity papers at all times and restricting their movement in certain areas. These laws were deep rooted and continued through British occupation until 1948 when the white Afrikaner supremacists made the laws more draconian.
The False Promise
The original aim of apartheid was to allow different races to grow on their own but instead it forced black South Africans into poverty and hopelessness. It prohibited black people from entering urban areas unless they had a job. They had to carry a pass book, couldn’t marry white people and couldn’t set up businesses in white areas. Every which way you turned, segregation had its hold on black society from hospitals to beaches and education was completely restricted. A wrong that caused the African National Congress Party to mobilise its supporters, boycotting white businesses, going on strike and carrying out non-violent protests. Yet still these actions were met with police and state brutality. Protesters were handled, beaten, tried and thrown into prison and reform was still decades away.
Mandela
In 1960, the South African police killed 69 peaceful demonstrators in Sharpeville causing nationwide condemnation and a wave of strikes ensued. Amongst this band of brave men and women was Nelson Mandela who believed that an armed response was necessary, forming a paramilitary wing of the ANC in 1960. A decision that would lead Mandela to be tried for sabotage in 1964 and given a life sentence, sent to a remote prison on Robben Island. A 27 year sentence that was split between here, Pollsmoor and Victor Verster prisons. This punishment would lead the government to declare a state of emergency with many protesters deciding to ramp up the pressure but many of leaders were forced to retreat into exile. A spark that led to the death in police custody of the activist Steve Biko in 1976, dying from his injuries.
Nelson Mandela may have been incasarated but his political message eminateed from the walls of his prison cell. Such was his iconic status in South Africa that apartheid gradually imploded, culminating in the resignation of P.W. Botha and his successor F.W. de Klerk seeing the errors his country’s ways, deciding to use negotiation to try to end this vile way of life. Intensive talks began between Mandela and the National Party. Mandela was released in 1990 at the request of de Klerk. Described as the “Father of the Nation”, Nelson Mandela and the ANC swept to power in 1994, changing the constitution and leading a programme of reforms that revolutionised South Africa.
