I recently read “Long Walk to Freedom,” Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. Besides being an amazing tale of one of the world’s great leaders, Mandela’s account of the development of his political consciousness fascinated me.
Throughout, Mandela writes about lessons learned in the politics of the anti-apartheid movement. The story he tells is, of course, one of struggle and ultimately triumph, but it’s also a story about politics. While reading I bookmarked some of Mandela’s descriptions of life under apartheid, his childhood and his outlook.
Here’s Mandela, who practiced law in Johannesburg, describing life for black South Africans under apartheid:
Africans were desperate for legal help in government buildings: it was a crime to walk through a Whites Only door, a crime to ride a Whites Only bus, a crime to use a Whites Only drinking fountain, a crime to walk on a Whites Only beach, a crime to be on the streets past eleven, a crime not to have a pass book and a crime to have the wrong signature in that book, a crime to be unemployed and a crime to be employed in the wrong place, a crime to live in certain places and a crime to have no place to live.
Mandela spent 27 years in prison after being convicted on charges of sabotage and conspiring to overthrow the apartheid government. In the following passage he discusses his incarceration.
Prison and the authorities conspire to rob each man of his dignity. In and of itself, that assured I would survive, for any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose because I will not part with it at any price or under any pressure.
Mandela goes on to discuss the hopefulness that enabled him to survive his incarceration.
I never seriously considered the possibility that I would not emerge from prison one day. I never thought that a life sentence truly meant life and that I would die behind bars. Perhaps I was denying this prospect because it was too unpleasant to contemplate. But I always knew that someday I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man.
Mandela’s father died when Nelson was a boy. Jongintaba, a Xhosa chief whom Mandela’s father had befriended, offered to become Nelson’s guardian. Mandela was sent to live with Jongintaba’s family at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni, the provisional capital of Thembuland. Tribal meetings that Mandela attended at the Great Place provided him with lessons in leadership, including the following:
As a leader, I have always followed the principles I first saw demonstrated by the regent at the Great Place. I have always endeavored to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion. Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a consensus of what I heard in the discussion. I always remember the regent’s axiom: a leader, he said, is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.
In the book’s penultimate paragraph, Mandela writes of the challenge ahead for his nation.
When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.