15

AT THE ANC annual conference at the end of 1952, there was a changing of the guard. The ANC designated a new, more vigorous president for a new, more activist era: Chief Albert Luthuli. In accordance with the ANC constitution, as provisional president of the Transvaal, I became one of the four deputy presidents. Furthermore, the National Executive Committee appointed me as first deputy president, in addition to my position as president of the Transvaal. Luthuli was one of a handful of ruling chiefs who were active in the ANC and had staunchly resisted the policies of the government.

The son of a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary, Luthuli was born in what was then Southern Rhodesia and educated in Natal. He trained as a teacher at Adam’s College near Durban. A fairly tall, heavyset, dark-skinned man with a great broad smile, he combined an air of humility with deep-seated confidence. He was a man of patience and fortitude, who spoke slowly and clearly as though every word was of equal importance.

I had first met him in the late 1940s when he was a member of the Natives Representative Council. In September of 1952, only a few months before the annual conference, Luthuli had been summoned to Pretoria and given an ultimatum: he must either renounce his membership in the ANC and his support of the Defiance Campaign, or he would be dismissed from his position as an elected and government-paid tribal chief. Luthuli was a teacher, a devout Christian, and a proud Zulu chief, but he was even more firmly committed to the struggle against apartheid. Luthuli refused to resign from the ANC and the government dismissed him from his post. In response to his dismissal, he issued a statement of principles called “The Road to Freedom Is via the Cross,” in which he reaffirmed his support for nonviolent passive resistance and justified his choice with words that still echo plaintively today: “Who will deny that thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door?”

I supported Chief Luthuli, but I was unable to attend the national conference. A few days before the conference was to begin, fifty-two leaders around the country were banned from attending any meetings or gatherings for six months. I was among those leaders, and my movements were restricted to the district of Johannesburg for that same period.

My bans extended to meetings of all kinds, not just political ones. I could not, for example, attend my son’s birthday party. I was prohibited from talking to more than one person at a time. This was part of a systematic effort by the government to silence, persecute, and immobilize the leaders of those fighting apartheid and was the first of a series of bans on me that continued with brief intervals of freedom until the time I was deprived of all freedom some years hence.

Banning not only confines one physically, it imprisons one’s spirit. It induces a kind of psychological claustrophobia that makes one yearn not only for freedom of movement but spiritual escape. Banning was a dangerous game, for one was not shackled or chained behind bars; the bars were laws and regulations that could easily be violated and often were. One could slip away unseen for short periods of time and have the temporary illusion of freedom. The insidious effect of bans was that at a certain point one began to think that the oppressor was not without but within.

Although I was prevented from attending the 1952 annual conference, I was immediately informed as to what had transpired. One of the most significant decisions was one taken in secret and not publicized at the time.

Along with many others, I had become convinced that the government intended to declare the ANC and the SAIC illegal organizations, just as it had done with the Communist Party. It seemed inevitable that the state would attempt to put us out of business as a legal organization as soon as it could. With this in mind, I approached the National Executive Committee with the idea that we must come up with a contingency plan for just such an eventuality. I said it would be an abdication of our responsibility as leaders of the people if we did not do so. They instructed me to draw up a plan that would enable the organization to operate from underground. This strategy came to be known as the Mandela-Plan, or simply, M-Plan.

The idea was to set up organizational machinery that would allow the ANC to make decisions at the highest level, which could then be swiftly transmitted to the organization as a whole without calling a meeting. In other words, it would allow an illegal organization to continue to function and enable leaders who were banned to continue to lead. The M-Plan was designed to allow the organization to recruit new members, respond to local and national problems, and maintain regular contact between the membership and the underground leadership.

I held a number of secret meetings among ANC and SAIC leaders, both banned and not banned, to discuss the parameters of the plan. I worked on it for a number of months and came up with a system that was broad enough to adapt itself to local conditions and not fetter individual initiative, but detailed enough to facilitate order. The smallest unit was the cell, which in urban townships consisted of roughly ten houses on a street. A cell steward would be in charge of each of these units. If a street had more than ten houses, a street steward would take charge and the cell stewards would report to him. A group of streets formed a zone directed by a chief steward, who was in turn responsible to the secretariat of the local branch of the ANC. The secretariat was a subcommittee of the branch executive, which reported to the provincial secretary. My notion was that every cell and street steward should know every person and family in his area, so that he would be trusted by the people and would know whom to trust. The cell steward arranged meetings, organized political classes, and collected dues. He was the linchpin of the plan. Although the strategy was primarily created for more urban areas, it could be adapted to rural ones.

The plan was accepted, and was to be implemented immediately. Word went out to the branches to begin to prepare for this covert restructuring. The plan was accepted at most branches, but some of the more far-flung outposts felt that the plan was an effort by Johannesburg to centralize control over the regions.

As part of the M-Plan, the ANC introduced an elementary course of political lectures for its members throughout the country. These lectures were meant not only to educate but to hold the organization together. The lectures were given in secret by branch leaders. Those members in attendance would in turn give the same lectures to others in their homes and communities. In the beginning, the lectures were not systemized, but within a number of months there was a set curriculum.

There were three courses, “The World We Live In,” “How We Are Governed,” and “The Need for Change.” In the first course, we discussed the different types of political and economic systems around the world as well as in South Africa. It was an overview of the growth of capitalism as well as socialism. We discussed, for example, how blacks in South Africa were oppressed both as a race and an economic class. The lecturers were mostly banned members, and I myself frequently gave lectures in the evening. This arrangement had the virtue of keeping banned individuals active as well as keeping the membership in touch with these leaders.

During this time, the banned leadership would often meet secretly and alone, and then arrange to meet the present leaders. The old and the new leadership meshed very well, and the decision-making process was collective as it had been before. Sometimes it felt as if nothing had changed except that we had to meet in secret.

The M-Plan was conceived with the best intentions, but it was instituted with only modest success and its adoption was never widespread. The most impressive results were once again in the eastern Cape and Port Elizabeth. The spirit of the Defiance Campaign continued in the eastern Cape long after it vanished elsewhere, and ANC members there seized on the M-Plan as a way of continuing to defy the government.

The plan faced many problems: it was not always adequately explained to the membership; there were no paid organizers to help implement or administer it; and there was often dissension within branches that prevented agreement on imposing the plan. Some provincial leaders resisted it because they believed it undermined their power. To some, the government’s crackdown did not seem imminent so they did not take the precautions necessary to lessen its effect. When the government’s iron fist did descend, they were not prepared.