21
IN EARLY SEPTEMBER 1955, my bans expired. I had last had a holiday in 1948 when I was an untested lightweight in the ANC with few responsibilities beyond attending meetings in the Transvaal executive and addressing the odd public gathering. Now, at the age of thirty-eight, I had reached the light heavyweight division and carried more pounds and more responsibility. I had been confined to Johannesburg for two years, chained to my legal and political work, and had neglected Mandela family affairs in the Transkei. I was keen to visit the countryside again, to be in the open veld and rolling valleys of my childhood. I was anxious to see my family and confer with Sabata and Daliwonga on certain problems involving the Transkei, while the ANC was eager that I confer with them on political matters. I was to have a working holiday, the only kind of holiday I knew how to take.
The night before I left, a number of friends gathered at my home to see me off. Duma Nokwe, the young and good-natured barrister who was then national secretary of the Youth League, was among them. Duma had accompanied Walter on his trip to the Youth Conference in Bucharest, and that night he entertained us with the Russian and Chinese songs he had learned on his trip. At midnight, as my guests were getting ready to leave, my daughter Makaziwe, then two, awoke and asked me if she could come along with me. I had been spending insufficient time with my family and Makaziwe’s request provoked pangs of guilt. Suddenly, my enthusiasm for my trip vanished. But I carried her back to bed and kissed her good night and as she dropped off to sleep, I made my final preparations for my journey.
I was embarking on a fact-finding mission, which I would combine with the pleasures of seeing the countryside and old friends and comrades. I had been isolated from developments in other parts of the country and was eager to see for myself what was transpiring in the hinterlands. Although I read a variety of newspapers from around the country, newspapers are only a poor shadow of reality; their information is important to a freedom fighter not because it reveals the truth, but because it discloses the biases and perceptions of both those who produce the paper and those who read it. On this trip I wanted to talk firsthand with our people in the field.
I left shortly after midnight and within an hour I was on the highway to Durban. The roads were empty and I was accompanied only by the stars and gentle Transvaal breezes. Though I had not slept, I felt lighthearted and fresh. At daybreak I crossed from Volksrust to Natal, the country of Cetywayo, the last independent king of the Zulus, whose troops had defeated a British column at Isandhlwana in 1879. But the king was unable to withstand the firepower of the British and eventually surrendered his kingdom. Shortly after crossing the river on the Natal border I saw the Majuba Hills, the steep escarpment where a small Boer commando ambushed and defeated a garrison of British redcoats less than two years after the defeat of Cetywayo. At Majuba Hill the Afrikaner had stoutly defended his independence against British imperialism and struck a blow for nationalism. Now the descendants of those same freedom fighters were persecuting my people who were struggling for precisely the same thing the Afrikaners had once fought and died for. I drove through those historic hills thinking less of the ironies of history by which the oppressed becomes the oppressor, than of how the ruthless Afrikaners deserved their own Majuba Hill at the hands of my people.
This harsh reverie was interrupted by the happy music of Radio Bantu on my car radio. While I despised the conservative politics of Radio Bantu served up by the government-run South African Broadcasting Corporation, I reveled in its music. (In South Africa, African artists made the music, but white record companies made the money.) I was listening to a popular program called “Rediffusion Service,” which featured most of the country’s leading African singers: Miriam Makeba, Dolly Rathebe, Dorothy Masuku, Thoko Shukuma, and the smooth sound of the Manhattan Brothers. I enjoy all types of music, but the music of my own flesh and blood goes right to my heart. The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. You may be poor, you may have only a ramshackle house, you may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope. African music is often about the aspirations of the African people, and it can ignite the political resolve of those who might otherwise be indifferent to politics. One merely has to witness the infectious singing at African rallies. Politics can be strengthened by music, but music has a potency that defies politics.
I made a number of stops in Natal, meeting secretly with ANC leaders. Nearing Durban, I took the opportunity of stopping in Pietermaritzburg, where I spent the entire night with Dr. Chota Motala, Moses Mabhida, and others, reviewing the political situation in the country. I then traveled on to Groutville, spending the day with Chief Luthuli. Although he had been confined by banning orders for more than a year, the chief was well-informed about ANC activities. He was uneasy about what he saw as the increasing centralization of the ANC in Johannesburg and the declining power of the regions. I reassured him that we wanted the regions to remain strong.
My next stop was a meeting in Durban with Dr. Naicker and the Executive Committee of the Natal Indian Congress, where I raised the sensitive issue that the National Executive Committee believed that the Indian Congress had become inactive of late. I was reluctant to do this as Dr. Naicker was my senior and a man who had suffered far more than I, but we discussed ways to overcome government restrictions.
From Durban I drove south along the coast past Port Shepstone and Port St. Johns, small and lovely colonial towns that dotted the shimmering beaches fronting the Indian Ocean. While mesmerized by the beauty of the area, I was constantly rebuked by the buildings and streets that bear the names of white imperialists who suppressed the very people whose names belonged there. At this point, I turned inland and drove to Umzimkulu to meet with Dr. Conco, the treasurer-general of the ANC, for further discussions and consultations.
With excitement mounting, I then set off for Umtata. When I turned into York Road, the main street of Umtata, I felt the rush of familiarity and fond memories one gets from coming home after a long exile. I had been away for thirteen years, and while there were no banners and fatted calves to greet this prodigal son upon his return, I was tremendously excited to see my mother, my humble home, and the friends of my youth. But my trip to the Transkei had a second motive: my arrival coincided with the meeting of a special committee appointed to oversee the transition of the Transkeian Bunga system to that of the Bantu Authorities.
The role of the Bunga, which consisted of 108 members, one-quarter of whom were white and three-quarters African, was to advise the government on legislation affecting Africans in the area and to regulate local matters like taxes and roads. While the Bunga was the most influential political body in the Transkei, its resolutions were advisory and its decisions subject to review by white magistrates. The Bunga was only as powerful as whites permitted it to be. Yet, the Bantu Authorities Act would replace it with an even more repressive system: a feudalistic order resting on hereditary and tribal distinctions as decided by the state. The government suggested that Bantu Authorities would free the people from the control of white magistrates, but this was a smoke screen for the state’s undermining of democracy and promotion of tribal rivalries. The ANC regarded any acceptance of Bantu Authorities as a capitulation to the government.
On the night of my arrival, I met briefly with a number of Transkeian councillors and my nephew, K. D. Matanzima, whom I called Daliwonga. Daliwonga was playing a leading part in persuading the Bunga to accept Bantu Authorities, for the new order would reinforce and even increase his power as the chief of Emigrant Thembuland. Daliwonga and I were on separate sides of this difficult issue. We had grown apart: he had opted for a traditional leadership role and was cooperating with the system. But it was late, and rather than begin a lengthy discussion, we resolved to meet the following day.
I spent that night in a boardinghouse in town, rose early, and was joined for coffee in my room by two local chiefs to discuss their role in the new Bantu Authorities. In the middle of our conversation the mistress of the boardinghouse nervously ushered a white man into my room. “Are you Nelson Mandela?” he demanded.
“And who is asking?” I said.
He gave his name and rank as a detective sergeant in the security police.
“May I see your warrant, please?” I asked. It was obvious the sergeant resented my audacity, but he grudgingly produced an official document. Yes, I was Nelson Mandela, I told him. He informed me that the commanding officer wanted to see me. I replied that if he wanted to see me he knew where I was. He then ordered me to accompany him to the police station. I asked him whether I was under arrest, and he replied that I was not.
“In that case,” I said, “I am not going.” He was taken aback by my refusal but knew I was on firm legal ground. He proceeded to fire a succession of questions at me: when had I left Johannesburg? where had I visited? whom had I spoken with? did I have a permit to enter the Transkei and how long would I be staying? I informed him that the Transkei was my home and that I did not need a permit to enter it. The sergeant stomped out of the room.
The chiefs were taken aback by my behavior and upbraided me for my rudeness. I explained that I had merely treated him in the manner that he had treated me. The chiefs were unconvinced, and clearly thought I was a hotheaded young man who would get himself in trouble. These were men I was trying to persuade to reject Bantu Authorities, and it was apparent that I had not made a very good impression. The incident reminded me that I had returned to my homeland a different man from the one who had left thirteen years before.
The police were unsophisticated in the Transkei, and from the moment I left the boardinghouse, they followed me everywhere I went. After I talked to anyone, the police would confront the person and say, “If you talk with Mandela, we will come and arrest you.”
I met briefly with a local ANC leader and was dismayed to learn of the organization’s lack of funds, but at that moment, I was thinking less about the organization than my next stop: Qunu, the village where I was raised and where my mother still lived.
I roused my mother, who at first looked as though she was seeing a ghost. But she was overjoyed. I had brought some food — fruit, meat, sugar, salt, and a chicken — and my mother lit the stove to make tea. We did not hug or kiss; that was not our custom. Although I was happy to be back, I felt a sense of guilt at the sight of my mother living all alone in such poor circumstances. I tried to persuade her to come live with me in Johannesburg, but she swore that she would not leave the countryside she loved. I wondered — not for the first time — whether one was ever justified in neglecting the welfare of one’s own family in order to fight for the welfare of others. Can there be anything more important than looking after one’s aging mother? Is politics merely a pretext for shirking one’s responsibilities, an excuse for not being able to provide in the way one wanted?
After an hour or so with my mother, I left to spend the night at Mqhekezweni. It was night when I arrived, and in my enthusiasm I started to blow the horn of my car. I had not considered how this noise might be interpreted and people emerged fearfully from their huts, thinking it might be the police. But when I was recognized, I was met with surprise and joy by a number of villagers.
But instead of sleeping like a child in my old bed, I tossed and turned that night wondering whether or not I had taken the right path. But I did not doubt that I had chosen correctly. I do not mean to suggest that the freedom struggle is of a higher moral order than taking care of one’s family. It is not; they are merely different.
Returning to Qunu the next morning, I spent the day reminiscing with people, and walking the fields around the village. I also visited with my sister Mabel, the most practical and easygoing of my sisters and of whom I was very fond. Mabel was married, but her union involved an interesting tale. My sister Baliwe, who was older than Mabel, had been engaged to be married, and lobola had already been paid. But two weeks before the wedding, Baliwe, who was a spirited girl, ran away. We could not return the cattle, as they had already been accepted, so the family decided that Mabel would take Baliwe’s place, and she did so.
I left late that afternoon to drive to Mqhekezweni. Again I arrived at night and announced my presence with loud hooting, only this time people emerged from their homes with the idea that Justice, their chief, had returned. Justice had been deposed from his chieftaincy by the government and was then living in Durban. Though the government had appointed someone in his stead, a chief is a chief by virtue of his birth and wields authority because of his blood. They were happy to see me, but they would have been happier still welcoming home Justice.
My second mother, No-England, the widow of the regent, had been fast asleep when I arrived, but when she appeared in her nightdress and saw me, she became so excited she demanded I drive her immediately to a nearby relative to celebrate. She hopped into my car and we set off on a wild ride through the untamed veld, to get to the remote rondavel of her relative. There we woke up another family, and I finally went to sleep, tired and happy, just before dawn.
Over the next fortnight I moved back and forth between Qunu and Mqhekezweni, staying by turns with my mother and No-England, visiting and receiving friends and relatives. I ate the same foods I had eaten as a boy, I walked the same fields, and gazed at the same sky during the day, the same stars at night. It is important for a freedom fighter to remain in touch with his own roots, and the hurly-burly of city life has a way of erasing the past. The visit restored me and revived my feelings for the place in which I grew up. I was once again my mother’s son in her house; I was once again the regent’s charge in the Great Place.
The visit was also a way of measuring the distance I had come. I saw how my own people had remained in one place, while I had moved on and seen new worlds and gained new ideas. If I had not realized it before, I knew that I was right not to have returned to the Transkei after Fort Hare. If I had returned, my political evolution would have been stunted.
When the Special Committee considering the introduction of the Bantu Authorities had adjourned, Daliwonga and I went to visit Sabata in hospital in Umtata. I had hoped to talk with Sabata about the Bantu Authorities, but his health made it impossible. I wanted Sabata and his brother, Daliwonga, to begin talks on this issue as soon as Sabata was well enough to do so, and made this clear. I felt proud to be organizing a meeting between the descendants of Ngubengcuka, and mused for a moment on the irony that I was finally fulfilling the role of counselor to Sabata for which I’d been groomed so many years before.
From Umtata, Daliwonga and I drove to Qamata, where we met his younger brother George, who was then a practicing attorney. His two articled clerks were well known to me and I was pleased to see them both: A. P. Mda and Tsepo Letlaka. Both were still firm supporters of the organization who had given up teaching and decided to become lawyers. In Qamata, we all sat down to examine the issue of the proposed Bantu Authorities.
My mission was to persuade Daliwonga — a man destined to play a leading role in the politics of the Transkei — to oppose the imposition of the Bantu Authorities. I did not want our meeting to be a showdown, or even a debate; I did not want any grandstanding or faultfinding, but a serious discussion among men who all had the best interests of their people and their nation at heart.
In many ways, Daliwonga still regarded me as his junior, both in terms of my rank in the Thembu hierarchy and in my own political development. While I was his junior in the former realm, I believed I had advanced beyond my onetime mentor in my political views. Whereas his concerns focused on his own tribe, I had become involved with those who thought in terms of the entire nation. I did not want to complicate the discussion by introducing grand political theories; I would rely on common sense and the facts of our history. Before we began, Daliwonga invited Mda and Letlaka and his brother, George, to participate, but they demurred, preferring to listen to the two of us. “Let the nephew and the uncle conduct the debate,” Mda said as a sign of respect. Etiquette dictated that I would make my case first and he would not interrupt; then he would answer while I listened.
In the first place, I said, the Bantu Authorities was impractical, because more and more Africans were moving out of the rural homelands to the cities. The government’s policy was to try to put Africans into ethnic enclaves because they feared the power of African unity. The people, I said, wanted democracy, and political leadership based on merit not birth. The Bantu Authorities was a retreat from democracy.
Daliwonga’s response was that he was trying to restore the status of his royal house that had been crushed by the British. He stressed the importance and vitality of the tribal system and traditional leadership, and did not want to reject a system that enshrined those things. He, too, wanted a free South Africa but he thought that goal could be achieved faster and more peacefully through the government’s policy of separate development. The ANC, he said, would bring about bloodshed and bitterness. He ended by saying that he was startled and disturbed to learn that in spite of my own position in the Thembu royal house I did not support the principle of traditional leadership.
When Daliwonga finished, I replied that while I understood his personal position as a chief quite well, I believed that his own interests were in conflict with those of the community. I said that if I were in a similar position to his, I would try to subordinate my own interests to those of the people. I immediately regretted that last point because I have discovered that in discussions it never helps to take a morally superior tone to one’s opponent. I noticed that Daliwonga stiffened when I made this point and I quickly shifted the discussion to more general issues.
We spoke the whole night, but came no closer to each other’s position. As the sun was rising, we parted. We had embarked on different roads that put us in conflict with one another. This grieved me because few men had inspired me as Daliwonga had, and nothing would have given me greater joy than to fight beside him. But it was not to be. On family issues, we remained friends; politically, we were in opposite and antagonistic camps.
I returned to Qunu that morning and spent another few days there. I tramped across the veld to visit friends and relatives, but the magic world of my childhood had fled. One evening I bade my mother and sister farewell. I visited Sabata in hospital to wish him a speedy recovery, and by 3 A.M. I was on my way to Cape Town. The bright moonlight and crisp breeze kept me fresh all the way across the Kei River. The road winds up the rugged mountains, and as the sun rose my mood lifted. I had last been on that road eighteen years before, when Jongintaba had driven me to Healdtown.
I was driving slowly when I noticed a limping man at the side of the road raising his hand to me. I instinctively pulled over and offered him a ride. He was about my own age, of small stature, and rather unkempt; he had not bathed in quite a while. He told me that his car had broken down on the other side of Umtata and he had been walking for several days toward Port Elizabeth. I noticed a number of inconsistencies in his story, and I asked him the make of his car. A Buick, he replied. And the registration? I said. He told me a number. A few minutes later, I said, “What did you say that registration number was?” He told me a slightly different figure. I suspected he was a policeman, and I decided to say very little.
My reserve went unnoticed by my companion as he talked the entire way to Port Elizabeth. He pointed out various curiosities and was well versed in the history of the region. He never asked who I was and I did not tell him. But he was entertaining, and I found his conversation useful and interesting.
I made a stop in East London and spoke to a few ANC people. Before leaving I had a conversation with some other people in the township, one of whom struck me as an undercover policeman. My companion had learned my identity, and a few minutes after we were back in the car, he said to me, “You know, Mandela, I suspected that one chap at the end was a policeman.” This raised my own suspicions, and I said to my companion, “Look here, how do I know you’re not a policeman yourself? You must tell me who you are — otherwise I will dump you back on the road again.”
He protested and said, “No, I will introduce myself properly.” He confessed that he was a smuggler and had been carrying dagga (marijuana) from the Pondoland coast when he ran into a police roadblock. When he saw the roadblock, he jumped out of the car and tried to make a break for it. The police fired, wounding him in the leg. That explained his limp and his lack of transportation. He waved me down because he assumed the police were hunting for him.
I asked him why he had chosen such a dangerous livelihood. He had originally wanted to be a teacher, he told me, but his parents were too poor to send him to college. After school he had worked in a factory, but the wages were too meager for him to live on his own. He started to supplement them by smuggling dagga, and soon found it so profitable that he left the factory altogether. He said in any other country in the world he would have found an opportunity for his talents. “I saw white men who were my inferiors in ability and brains earning fifty times what I was.” After a long pause, he announced in a solemn tone, “I am also a member of the ANC.” He told me that he had defied during the 1952 Defiance Campaign and had served on various local committees in Port Elizabeth. I quizzed him on various personalities, all of whom he seemed to know, and later in Port Elizabeth I confirmed that he was telling me the truth. In fact, he had been one of the most reliable of those who went to jail during the Defiance Campaign. The doors of the liberation struggle are open to all who choose to walk through them.
As an attorney with a fairly large criminal practice, I was conversant with such tales. Over and over again, I saw men as bright and talented as my companion resort to crime in order to make ends meet. While I do think certain individuals are disposed to crime because of their genetic inheritance or an abusive upbringing, I am convinced that apartheid turned many otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals. It stands to reason that an immoral and unjust legal system would breed contempt for its laws and regulations.
We reached Port Elizabeth at sunset, and Joe Matthews, Z. K. Matthews’s son, arranged accommodation. The next morning I met with Raymond Mhlaba, Frances Baard, and Govan Mbeki, whom I was meeting for the first time. I knew his work, for as a student I had read his booklet “The Transkei in the Making.” He had been running a cooperative store in the Transkei which he was soon to give up to become an editor of the weekly New Age. Govan was serious, thoughtful, and soft-spoken, equally at home in the world of scholarship and the world of political activism. He had been deeply involved in the planning of the Congress of the People and was destined for the highest levels of leadership in the organization.
I departed in the late morning for Cape Town, with only my radio for company. I had never before driven on roads between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, and I was looking forward to many miles of entrancing scenery. It was hot, and the road was bordered by dense vegetation on either side. I had hardly left the city when I ran over a large snake slithering across the road. I am not superstitious and do not believe in omens, but the death of the snake did not please me. I do not like killing any living thing, even those creatures that fill some people with dread.
Once I passed Humansdorp, the forests became denser and for the first time in my life I saw wild elephants and baboons. A large baboon crossed the road in front of me, and I stopped the car. He stood and stared at me as intently as if he were a Special Branch detective. It was ironic that I, an African, was seeing the Africa of storybooks and legend for the first time. Such beautiful land, I thought, and all of it out of reach, owned by whites and untouchable for a black man. I could no more choose to live in such beauty than run for Parliament.
Seditious thoughts accompany a freedom fighter wherever he goes. At the town of Knysna, more than a hundred miles west of Port Elizabeth, I stopped to survey the surroundings. The road above the town affords a panoramic view as far as the eye can see. In every direction, I saw sprawling, dense forests and I dwelt not on the greenery but the fact that there were many places a guerrilla army could live and train undetected.
I arrived in Cape Town at midnight for what turned out to be a two-week stay. I stayed at the home of Reverend Walter Teka, a leader in the Methodist Church, but I spent most of my days with Johnson Ngwevela and Greenwood Ngotyana. Ngwevela was the chairman of the Cape western region of the ANC and Ngotyana a member of its executive. Both were Communists as well as leading members of the Wesleyan Church. I traveled every day to meet ANC officials in places like Worcester, Paarl, Stellenbosch, Simonstown, and Hermanus. I planned to work each day of my stay and when I asked what had been arranged for Sunday — a working day for me in the Transvaal — they informed me that the sabbath was reserved for churchgoing. I protested, but to no avail. Communism and Christianity, at least in Africa, were not mutually exclusive.
While I was walking in the city one day, I noticed a white woman in the gutter gnawing on some fish bones. She was poor and apparently homeless, but she was young and not unattractive. I knew of course that there were poor whites, whites who were every bit as poor as Africans, but one rarely saw them. I was used to seeing black beggars on the street, and it startled me to see a white one. While I normally did not give to African beggars, I felt the urge to give this woman money. In that moment I realized the tricks that apartheid plays on one, for the everyday travails that afflict Africans are accepted as a matter of course, while my heart immediately went out to this bedraggled white woman. In South Africa, to be poor and black was normal, to be poor and white was a tragedy.
* * *
As I was preparing to leave Cape Town, I went to the offices of New Age to see some old friends and discuss their editorial policy. New Age, the successor to earlier banned left-wing publications, was a friend of the ANC. It was early in the morning of the twenty-seventh of September, and as I walked up the steps I could hear angry voices inside the office and furniture being moved. I recognized the voice of Fred Carneson, the manager of the newspaper and its guiding spirit. I also heard the gruff voices of the security police who were in the process of searching the offices. I quietly left, and later discovered that this had not been an isolated incident but part of the largest nationwide raid undertaken in South African history. Armed with warrants authorizing the seizure of anything regarded as evidence of high treason, sedition, or violations of the Suppression of Communism Act, the police searched more than five hundred people in their homes and offices around the country. My office in Johannesburg was searched, as well as the homes of Dr. Moroka, Father Huddleston, and Professor Matthews.
The raid cast a shadow over my last day in Cape Town, for it signaled the first move in the state’s new and even more repressive strategy. At the very least, a new round of bannings would take place, and I was certain to be among them. That evening, Reverend Teka and his wife had a number of people over to the house to bid me farewell, and led by the reverend, we knelt in prayer for the well-being of those whose homes had been raided. I left the house at my favored departure time of 3 A.M., and within half an hour I was on the road to Kimberley, the rough-and-ready mining town where the South African diamond business had begun in the last century.
I was to stay at the home of Dr. Arthur Letele for one night. Later to become the treasurer-general of the ANC, Arthur was a scrupulous medical practitioner. I had a cold, and when he greeted me on my arrival, he confined me to bed. He was a brave and dedicated man, and had led a small group of defiers to jail during the Defiance Campaign. This was a risky action for a doctor in a town where political action by blacks was rare. In Johannesburg, one has the support of hundreds and even thousands of others who are engaging in the same dangerous activities, but in a conservative place like Kimberley, with no liberal press or judiciary to oversee the police, such an action requires true valor. It was in Kimberley during the Defiance Campaign that one of the ANC’s leading members was sentenced to lashes by the local magistrate.
Despite my cold, Arthur allowed me to address an ANC meeting in his house the following evening. I was preparing to leave the next morning at three o’clock, but Arthur and his wife insisted I remain for breakfast, which I did. I made good time on the way back to Johannesburg and arrived home just before supper, where I was met with excited cries from my children, who well knew that I was a father bearing gifts. One by one, I handed out the presents I had purchased in Cape Town and patiently answered their questions about the trip. Though not a true holiday, it had the same effect: I felt rejuvenated and ready to take up the fight once more.