The Mandela That I Know
Editors’ Note:
In honor of Nelson Mandela International Day (July 18th), we published an excerpt of the below article, “The Mandela That I Know,” in July 2020.
Introduction
Ah Dalibhunga![i]
During my time as a student activist and as an Academic Officer for the Student Representative Council (SRC) under the leadership of the South African Student Congress (SASCO), I was involved in heated debates over Nelson Mandela’s legacy.
At the center of these deliberations was a dominant narrative that Mandela sold out the struggle for liberation during the 1991–1994 Congress for Democratic South Africa (CODESA) negotiation process. This view of Mandela as a sell-out became more prominent during the Rhodes and Fees Must Fall Movement, one that was held among the leaders of the movement as well as some of my own comrades.
During the Rhodes and Fees Must Fall Movement from 2016 to 2017, I was considered a senior comrade within the student politics circle, though I was a master’s student at the time. I had already crossed over to workers’ politics, representing the workers within my university as an Office Coordinator and at the same time as a spokesperson of the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) with a mandate to crystallize the needs and aspirations of the workers throughout the institutional committees of the university. However, as one who comes from the Mandela lineage, my commitment and contribution to the movement was often viewed with suspicion and questionable judgement, as influenced by this dominant narrative of Mandela as a sell-out.
During this movement, I became a critical link between the students and the workers. I was responsible for mobilizing the workers to participate in various strikes and protests with crystal clear declarations and demands, including for the following: free education for the poor; an end to the outsourcing of service workers within institutions of higher learning, replaced instead by the employment of these workers permanently within the university in order to end their exploitation; and lastly, the decolonization of the academic curriculum. This movement laid bare my generation’s frustrations with the snail’s pace at which the liberation of the majority of Black people has unfolded.
There were arguments that the compromises made during the CODESA negotiations have delayed the complete liberation of all Africans, citing the failures of the land reform process (i.e., the “Willing Buyer, Willing Seller” policy) and the fact that the ANC that Mandela had led during these negotiations only gained a degree of political liberation that afforded them a right to govern but not control of the economy of the country, which still largely rests in the hands of white South Africans. Thus, what the majority of the oppressed people in South Africa gained from this process was an incomplete liberation—that is to say, political freedom without land-based and economic freedom.
It is against this backdrop that my generation relegated Mandela to the position of a sell-out, and while I share many of these sentiments with my comrades and my generation, I have always found myself in sharp contrast with their views of Mandela’s legacy, and I have always vehemently rejected the notion that Mandela was a sell-out. As a scholar of history, politics, and international relations, I often wondered whether my generation suffered from intellectual bankruptcy, or whether they failed to comprehend the political and economic history of South Africa.
“The liberation was indeed betrayed, but Mandela was never a sell-out.”
I echo the sentiments that the revolution was betrayed. However, as Sisonke Msimang argues, I posit that the blame cannot be placed at Mandela’s feet for that betrayal but instead lies squarely with the generation of leaders that followed him.[ii] Unlike Mandela, once these leaders and former freedom fighters emerged into power, they squandered state resources, while the South African parliament degenerated into a house of political merchants who are willing to trade the country to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, corruption and maladministration have become the characteristic of many post-liberation governments in Africa, and South Africa is no exception. The liberation was indeed betrayed, but Mandela was never a sell-out.
In defense of Nelson Mandela’s legacy, I will endeavour herein to clarify some of these historical contradictions, and more importantly, I will advance an argument that Mandela was and will always be remembered as a pragmatic leader and a multifaceted individual who, upon studying the political and economic landscape of his era, made decisions based on balancing the forces and material conditions of his time in order to usher his people into the dawn of a democratic dispensation.
I will attempt also to address the deliberate agenda in many Western countries that seeks to present Mandela’s legacy as a singular story. As much as Mandela was a negotiator and peacemaker, he was also a pragmatic leader of the liberation movement, one who advocated for political violence when the nonviolent policy proved ineffective, while staying true to his ideals of freedom, the coexistence of all races, and political and economic equality for all.
I write this exposition on Mandela’s legacy as a tribute to my great-grandfather Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, a descendent of King Ngubengcuka of the Thembu Kingdom. I also write as a descendent of the House of Mandela and a son to the late Nosipho and Boy Mandela. I pledge my allegiance to my ancestors: Madiba, Sophitsho, Yem-Yem, Gqolomsila, Dlomo, Zondwa,[iii] and the House of Mandela, from whom I draw inspiration, protection, and wisdom. I stand on the shoulders of my ancestors.
Every year on the 18th of July, the world commemorates Mandela Day by dedicating 67 minutes to doing charitable work and service amongst our neighbours and communities in celebration of the 67 years that Nelson Mandela, as an advocate for peace and human rights, dedicated to the struggle against colonialism, Apartheid, and all forms of inequality and injustice. On this day, we are called upon the world over to reminisce on the legacy of this giant of history and to emulate the ideals and values he dedicated his life to fighting for in order to create a better life for all.
As I add my voice to many across the world who have studied and are inspired by Mandela, I endeavour to clarify some of the misconceptions and mistakes made with regard to remembering Mandela’s legacy, and I endeavour to put things into perspective in the scholarship around Mandela’s legacy.
Lastly, I endeavour to inspire my generation and the generation yet to come to understand the simple clarion call to action advanced by Frantz Fanon that ‘[e]ach generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.’[iv] I hope this tribute to Mandela, titled “The Mandela That I Know,” will inspire my generation in Africa and across the world to discover our mission, change the world, and fulfill Mandela’s vision of an Africa that is developed and at peace with itself.
Mandela’s Heritage
Nelson Mandela was born in July 1918 at a time when the African National Congress (ANC), which he would later join, was advancing a ‘dialogue and petition’ approach against British colonial rule. Mandela’s father, Gadla Mphakanyiswa Mandela, who was the Chief of the House of Mandela within the Thembu Kingdom, was also a traditional and modern politician dating back to the Thembuland of the 19th Century, as Mangcu notes.[v] Mandela’s father, who was constantly at loggerheads with the colonial administration, was later deposed from his position as the Chief of the House of Mandela by a colonial magistrate and banished from his land, which was an assault on the institution of the Chieftaincy.
Xolela Mangcu correctly problematizes the nature of the framing of Mandela, pointing to some critical and yet elementary mistakes in almost all the biographies that misrepresent his heritage and history, including that of those from the House of Mandela. A common mistake is that Mandela was both Thembu and Xhosa. This is based on the flawed notion that the Thembu and the Xhosa are the same people because they spoke the same language.[vi] The House of Mandela is traditionally located in the Thembu Kingdom, which is led by its own King, from the First House of Dalindyebo. Though the Thembu people speak the language Xhosa, they are not from the Kingdom of the Xhosa people, for the Xhosas have their own King (King Sigcawu), and their traditions and customs are different from those of the Thembu people. These Kingdoms are geographically located in the same province, the Eastern Cape; however, they are different people.
“Mandela was born into a culture of dispute resolution—of peacemakers—and was raised within it and made to understand it.”
The configuration of the Thembu Kingdom contains five houses,[vii] with traditional responsibilities and a Chief allocated to each. Nelson Mandela is the descendent of the fifth, or last, house, the House of Mandela, which is traditionally known as i-Xhiba. The soul existence and traditional responsibility of the House of Mandela is to play the role of mediating royal family disputes. It exists separately from the other houses so that it can play this role dispassionately.[viii]
Thus, Mandela was born into that culture of dispute resolution—of peacemakers—and was raised within it and made to understand it. Beyond the Thembu Kingdom, Mandela would use these skills to bring South Africa together in 1994 and would later help to broker peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Lesotho, to cite but a few examples of his leadership and legacy. Mandela was shaped and formed by the experiences and material conditions of both his heritage and his era, and the strategies and tactics he adopted to confront the challenges of his generation were informed by both his heritage and his experiences.
Mandela: The Leader of a Nonviolent Movement
Inspired and recruited by his fellow comrade and friend Oliver Tambo, Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC), which was formed in 1912 as a political organization to represent Africans who felt disenchanted with British colonial rule. From its formation, the ANC engaged in peaceful acts of resistance aimed at forcing the colonial government to eventually recognize the rights of Black people in South Africa.
The ANC that Mandela joined engaged in the struggle for freedom and equality through a nonviolent approach inspired by other nonviolent means of revolt against injustice and repression, including the Civil Rights Movement as led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and others in the United States of America, as well as the nonviolent movement as led by Mahatma Gandhi in India. The ANC’s history of resistance against colonialism and Apartheid encompassed three phases: first, dialogue and petition; second, direct opposition; and finally, exile and underground armed struggle.
In 1948, the Afrikaner National Party came into power and introduced the Apartheid system, which advanced an agenda for separate development of different racial groups in South Africa, one driven by an ideology of white supremacy and racism. Apartheid was a social system that severely disadvantaged the majority of the population on the basis of their pigmentation, which was different than the skin color of the ruling class (i.e., the English and Afrikaners).
In basic principles, Apartheid as a political and economic system adopted the same policy of segregation used under British colonial rule in South Africa. What was distinct about the Afrikaner National Party’s Apartheid system was that it made segregation part of the law, and Apartheid cruelly and forcibly separated people and adopted violent and punitive measures to punish those who were at odds with the system.
1960
Nelson Mandela burns the pass that Black South Africans were required to carry under the Apartheid regime.
Following the introduction of the Apartheid system and its laws[ix], the ANC responded by introducing their program of action in 1949, which included strike actions, protests, and other forms of nonviolent resistance.
In 1952, the ANC started the Defiance Campaign, led by Mandela as a volunteer-in-chief who played a significant role in organizing and coordinating its activities.[x] This campaign called on people to purposefully break the Apartheid laws and offer themselves for arrest. This strategy was informed by the idea to collapse the system from within by filling up prisons while mobilizing international support for the ANC-led struggle against Apartheid. As part of this campaign, Black people got onto ‘white buses,’ used ‘white toilets,’ entered into ‘white areas,’ and refused to use passes. The Defiance Campaign led to more than 8,000 people being arrested, yet still the Apartheid regime continued unabated its repressive, racist, and violent system. In the face of the regime’s brutal resilience, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Walter Sisulu became the catalysts for an armed resistance.
Mandela: The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces
There is a dominant mythology evident in both European and Western scholarship that seeks to present Mandela as only a chief advocate of forgiveness and nonviolent forms of resistance, while completely burying his pragmatic approach on the use of political violence during his time as a Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of u-Mkhonto we-Sizwe (The Spear of the Nation) to compel the Apartheid regime to reconsider coming to the negotiation table.
In fact, in the 1980s, Mandela was regarded by Western countries like the United States of America and the United Kingdom as a terrorist advancing a communist agenda in Southern Africa. In this section on Mandela’s legacy, I endeavour to expose this mythology and present Mandela as a Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and a pragmatic leader that convinced the ANC to abandon the ineffective nonviolent approach against a government that had met any opposition to its illegitimate authority with brutal force.
In June 1955, the ANC adopted the Freedom Charter during a conference in Kliptown, articulating the demands and crystallizing the aspirations of the oppressed peoples in South Africa. The Freedom Charter also served as a springboard for the ANC to launch a multiracial ideology and shift away from the perception that it was an African-only organisation.[xi]
“There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking ‘peace and nonviolence’ against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.”
Through its repressive laws, the Apartheid regime intensified its segregationist and racist policy. The events of the late 1950s and early 1960s compelled the ANC, through its Youth League led by Mandela, to reconsider the strategies and tactics used in advancing a relentless struggle for freedom and equality. The most significant catalyst that led to the armed struggle was the Sharpeville Massacre on March 21st, 1960, during which the government violently crushed a peaceful anti-pass demonstration organized by the Pan African Congress, resulting in the death of 67 people (with 186 wounded).
For Mandela, who was then advancing the struggle underground, this was a turning point. Addressing the local and international press in a safe house, he argued that,
There are many people who feel that the reaction of the government to our stay-at-home—ordering a general mobilization, arming the white community, arresting ten thousands of Africans—this show of force throughout the country, notwithstanding our clear declaration that this campaign is being run on peaceful and nonviolent lines, closes the chapter as far as our methods of political struggle are concerned.
There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking ‘peace and nonviolence’ against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people, and I think the time has come for us to consider, in the light of our experiences in this stay-at-home, whether the methods which we have applied so far are adequate.[xii]
At an ANC Working Committee meeting in June 1961, the 43-year-old Mandela presented a proposal for a military wing. After weeks of deliberation within the organization and amongst other allies in the liberation movement, Nelson Mandela (ANC) and Joe Slovo of the South African Communist Party were mandated to form a new military organization and its high command.
On December 16th, 1961, u-Mkhonto we-Sizwe was launched as the armed wing of the African National Congress. The aim of u-Mkhonto we-Sizwe, or MK as it was commonly known, was to “hit back by all means within our power in defence of our people, our future and our freedom.”[xiii]
The MK began with acts of sabotage by bombing electric power stations, police stations, and other infrastructure. These actions were aimed at destabilizing the government and bringing the country to its knees while avoiding direct and open battle with a heavily armed regime.[xiv] Mandela became the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces within the MK and was responsible for recruiting and facilitating the training of MK soldiers. Mandela received his own military training in Liberia and Ethiopia while mobilizing international monetary and military support for the armed struggle against the Apartheid regime from countries that sympathized with the struggle for liberation in South Africa, including Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Nigeria, Liberia, and Ethiopia in Africa, as well as Russia and Cuba, to cite a few.
Mandela: The Freedom Fighter
Throughout his life, Mandela exhibited his pragmatic leadership style both within and outside the African National Congress, the executive committee of which Mandela was recruited to join in the 1950s. As stated above, the ANC had engaged in a nonviolent approach to the struggle for liberation and equality since its inception in 1912. As a political organization established by Black, educated elites, the ANC vehemently rejected armed action as a means to wage the struggle against British colonialism and Apartheid. However, after a critical examination of the tactics used by the government in response to the nonviolent resistance to Apartheid, Mandela convinced the ANC that it was time to resort to coordinated political violence and armed struggle against the minority regime.
“Today, forgiveness is seen as a central component of Mandela’s legacy. However, this excessive focus on forgiveness diminishes Mandela’s political legacy and blunts his power.”
Mandela was unequivocal about the meaning of freedom as a total dismantling of the Apartheid regime and its institutions, and his life was totally dedicated to uprooting oppression and restoring dignity. Yet, when we talk of Mandela today, we focus on his message of peace and healing. Today, forgiveness is seen as a central component of Mandela’s legacy. However, this excessive focus on forgiveness diminishes Mandela’s political legacy and blunts his power.
The “rainbow nation” and forgiveness narrative that is so dominant in South Africa when invoking Mandela’s legacy puts white people at the center of the frame. As a result, the narrative of political transition in South Africa in the popular imagination has become a tale of forgiveness rather than a story of justice. In Mandela’s 75-year career as a leader and an activist, he never dithered in his commitment to those who have been the greatest victims of Apartheid, and those victims were Black people.[xv]
Mandela was shaped by his experiences with Apartheid and his participation in both nonviolent and armed struggle against it. He later joined the National Executive ranks of the ANC and dedicated his life to dismantling the illegitimate regime and institutions of Apartheid and fighting for freedom and equality.
The road he traveled to achieve such an aim was long and difficult. Mandela was arrested on several occasions and stood trial four times between 1952 and 1964. It was during the Rivonia Trial of 1964 that Mandela faced the possibility of a death sentence. He delivered a powerful speech from the Dock on April 20th, 1964, declaring, “I am prepared to die [for a democratic South Africa].”[xvi] At this trial, Mandela was sentenced with seven of his comrades to life imprisonment and went on to serve 27 years of his sentence before he was unconditionally released.[xvii]
Mandela: The Peace Negotiator
As cited above, the history of resistance against colonialism and Apartheid by the African National Congress experienced three phases. The first was dialogue and petition; the second was direct opposition; and the third was a period of exile and underground armed struggle.[xviii] At each stage, Mandela and his comrades waged the struggle for liberation without any certainty that they would live to see its successful outcome.
In November 1985, Mandela once again demonstrated pragmatic leadership and seized an opportunity for breakthrough by unilaterally going against the wishes of the ANC to initiate talks with the illegitimate Apartheid regime. This dialogue would come to be known as the ‘talks about talk.’ The ‘talks about talk’ between Mandela (who was still in prison) and the leaders of the Apartheid regime about the possibility of being at a negotiation table with the ANC and The Congress Alliance occurred during the period between 1985 to 1989. During this period, Mandela met with both of the last two presidents of the illegitimate Apartheid government, P. W. Botha in July 1989 (from whom Mandela had rejected conditional release in February 1985), and F. W. de Klerk in December 1989 (who later released Mandela and other political prisoners unconditionally on February 11th, 1990).
The ‘talks about talk’ between prisoner Mandela and the leaders of the illegitimate Apartheid regime culminated in the 1991–1994 Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) negotiation process in which Mandela demonstrated pragmatic leadership. In 1992, the CODESA negotiation process reached a stalemate. This was a peak period of progressive anti-Apartheid momentum, and Black-on-Black violence sponsored by the Apartheid regime ravaged the country. The year 1993 became a watershed event when Chris Hani, the influential General-Secretary of the South African Communist Party and Chief of Armed Forces for the ANC, was assassinated in April by the right-wing Janusz Walus. In the aftermath, violence motivated by racially fuelled riots became the order of the day.
South Africa was at the brink of a civil war that even the illegitimate Apartheid government was not in a position to avert, and the principled and pragmatic Mandela was called into action to steer the South African ship into calm waters. Mandela (and not the president of the illegitimate Apartheid government) appeared for the first time on national television as though he was the president of the country. He addressed the nation and appealed for calm. His people heeded his call. The stalemate was resolved, and the CODESA negotiation process resumed, shortly thereafter heralding the dawn of democratic dispensation in April 1994 when Mandela was elected as the first Black president of a democratic South Africa.
Mandela: The First Black President of the Republic of South Africa
Even, and especially, as president, Mandela was a pragmatic leader. Though he was loyal to the ANC until his departure, he openly made a clarion call to South Africa that “you must support the African National Congress only so far as it delivers to its promises, and if it fails to stay true to the mandate given by the people, you must do to it as you have done to the Apartheid regime.”[xix]
Nowhere have I heard in Africa a sitting president who could confidently make such a declaration, nor have I witnessed an administration in Africa that has remained as true to the mandate given by its people as that of Mandela’s transitional government. When one critically examines Mandela’s legacy, they will find a leader who was principled and pragmatic, always prepared to throw away a theory or an idea that did not serve his cause, which was not forgiveness but instead the liberation of oppressed Black people.
Mandela set out to reconstruct and develop the newly democratic South Africa. His government adopted policies and established institutions along this line in order to bring about redress and deliver the dividends of peace to his people. Among the outcomes of these policies was the Rural Development Programme (RDP), which had a mandate to provide social housing for the previously disadvantaged majority of Black people, as well as the provision of social grants for the poor, orphans, and the elderly.
There is no other government in Africa that has provided the social services that the Mandela administration instituted, and there is no transitional government in Africa that survived without the country relapsing into the violence of a civil war immediately after a peace deal—except for South Africa as led by Mandela.
1994
President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Representative Kweisi Mfume, at an event at the Library of Congress. (Photographer: Maureen Keating)
In a bid to mend the wounds of the past, Mandela’s administration established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission based on the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act No. 34 of 1995. The Commission was devised as a peace and reconciliation tool to bring together both the victims and perpetrators of the violent Apartheid regime to deliberate on what happened in the past. The victims of violence came to the hearings in hopes of finding closure on the disappearance and death of their relatives, while the perpetrators gave testimony and requested amnesty from prosecution.[xx]
The mandate of the Commission was to bear witness to, record, and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations. The mandate was also to engage the nation around reparations and rehabilitation. The TRC became a critical component of the transition to full and free democracy in South Africa. In contrast to its successes, however, the TRC’s flaws included the inability to bring most of the leaders of the Apartheid regime—such as F. W. de Klerk, its last president—to testify before the Commission; the inability to uncover the full story of some of the atrocities committed during the violent Apartheid regime; and a failure to provide reparations and rehabilitation to the victims, citing inadequate funding from the government.
While Mandela became a committed and unwavering champion of forgiveness, it was crystal clear that if forgiveness had been standing in the way of justice or in service to maintaining oppression, he would have stopped advocating for it.[xxi]This pragmatic and resolute leadership style was exemplified by Mandela both during the liberation struggle and in his administration as the president of the transitional government.
Recognizing this aspect of Mandela’s legacy is by no means a way to devalue forgiveness as an important step towards reconciliation, but as Msimang contends, forgiveness cannot be seen as the only story about Mandela’s legacy. The challenge that Msimang rightly points out regarding the forgiveness story is that it is used to appeal to white fears and anxiety about Black rage—and these white fears and anxiety always supersede Black people’s pain and Black people’s need for justice.[xxii]
Conclusion
In my last section in this exposition on Mandela’s legacy, perhaps it is an opportune moment for me to allow Madiba to speak for himself and address the dominant narrative among my generation that he was a sell-out.
In 1985, the then president of the illegitimate Apartheid regime, P. W. Botha, offered to release Mandela on the condition that he denounce political violence and abandon the armed struggle.
As his response, Mandela delivered a letter outlining his rejection of Botha’s offer, and it was read by his youngest daughter, Zindziswa Mandela, who died on July 13th, 2020, four days before the writing of this paper. In the letter, Mandela writes:
I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. Too many have died since I went to prison. Too many have suffered for the love of freedom. I owe it to their widows, to their orphans, to their mothers and to their fathers who have grieved and wept for them. Not only I have suffered during these long, lonely, wasted years. I am not less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell my birth right, nor am I prepared to sell the birth right of the people to be free. I am in prison as the representative of the people and of your organisation, the African National Congress, which was banned… I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated. I will return.[xxiii]
Though Mandela was imprisoned for five more years after rejecting an offer to sell out the liberation struggle, the principled and pragmatic Mandela did return on February 11th, 1990. When he did, he ushered his people to a democratic dispensation as their first democratically elected president, and went on to lead an ethical government answerable to the people.
It is important to note that the legacy of Mandela will never be complete without including the role that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela played before and after Mandela was imprisoned. It was Winnie, his wife, who kept the memory of Mandela alive—who ran the ‘Free Mandela’ campaign and mobilized young people into persistent protests in defense of her husband and his comrades. I suppose, in this exposition on Mandela’s legacy, the unexplored role of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is among its limitations, including the understanding of Mandela as a lawyer, and of Mandela as a prisoner.
Despite these limitations, my main assertion remains: Mandela was a multifaceted individual and a pragmatic leader, and thus, any study of his life has to proceed from the premise that there is no singular understanding of his legacy.
“Not only I have suffered during these long, lonely, wasted years. I am not less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell my birth right, nor am I prepared to sell the birth right of the people to be free.”
About the Author
Siyabulela Mandela is the Team Leader for Journalists for Human Rights in South Sudan and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations and Conflict Resolution in the Department of Politics and Conflict Studies at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa.
[i] Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s royal salutation as the traditional Chief of the House of Mandela, within the Kingdom of the Thembu people.
[ii] Nelson Mandela Lecture 2019 by Sisonke Msimang. See https://www.zammagazine.com/nelson-mandela-lecture/blog100/825-sisonke-msimang-live-stream.
[iii] These are the clan names commonly used by the people from the Thembu Kingdom. They are the names of the ancestors and Great Leaders of the Thembu Kingdom.
[iv] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks,1952.
[v] Xolela Mangcu, “Mandela: The Untold Heritage,” Journal of Southern African Studies 45, no. 6 (2019): pg. 1033–1050, DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2019.1688000.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] The other houses in the Thembu Kingdom are the Houses of Dalindyebo (where the King comes from), Mtirara, Mathanzima, and Mnqanqeni. All other house are led by their Chiefs, who report to the King. Nelson Mandela was the Chief of the House of Mandela.
[viii] Xolela Mangcu, “Mandela: The Untold Heritage,” Journal of Southern African Studies 45, no. 6 (2019): pg. 1033–1050, DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2019.1688000.
[ix] The most significant and violent laws introduced during the Apartheid system included the Group Areas Act of 1950, the Population Registration Act of 1950, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949, the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, and the Separate Representation of Voters Act of 1951.
[x] Trials and Prisons chronology, Nelson Mandela Foundation Archives, https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/trials-and-prison-chronology.
[xi] The Freedom Charter, Kliptown, 1955.
[xii] Mandela speaking underground with local and foreign press on the ANC adopting armed struggle against the Apartheid regime during his first TV interview in 1961 with ITN reporter Brian Widlake. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrBCgiFhmNA.
[xiii] Manifesto of u-Mkhonto we-Sizwe (published as a leaflet issued by the Command of u-Mkhonto we-Sizwe, dated 16 December 1961).
[xiv] Tsepe Motumi, “UmKhonto we Sizwe – Structure, Training and Force Levels (1984 to 1994),” African Defence Review 18 (1994), https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/umkhonto-we-sizwe-structure-training-and-force-levels-1984-1994-tsepe-motumi-african.
[xv] Nelson Mandela Lecture 2019 by Sisonke Msimang. See https://www.zammagazine.com/nelson-mandela-lecture/blog100/825-sisonke-msimang-live-stream.
[xvi] Nelson Mandela, “Speech from the Dock,” 20 April 1964. See https://www.un.org/en/events/mandeladay/court_statement_1964.shtml.
[xvii] Trials and Prisons chronology, Nelson Mandela Foundation Archives, https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/trials-and-prison-chronology.
[xviii] South African History Online, accessed July 2020.
[xix] Nelson Mandela, Address to the Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) Special National Congress, Vista University Soweto, 10 September 1993.
[xx] South African History Online, accessed July 2020.
[xxi] Nelson Mandela Lecture 2019 by Sisonke Msimang. See https://www.zammagazine.com/nelson-mandela-lecture/blog100/825-sisonke-msimang-live-stream.
[xxii] Ibid. The land question and land reform debate in South Africa could be cited here as a case in point.
[xxiii] Statement by Nelson Mandela read on his behalf by his daughter Zindzi at a UDF Rally to celebrate Archbishop Tutu receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Jabulani Stadium – Soweto, 10 February 1985. See http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/before/850210_udf.htm.
