In 1918, in a small village in the Transkei, a child was born. His name was Rolihlahla. In the Xhosa language, it meant "troublemaker." 👶
Rolihlahla was the son of a Thembu chief. He lost his father at nine and was raised under the guardianship of the regent. He attended a Western-style school, where a teacher gave him an English name: Nelson. But in his village, he remained Rolihlahla.
He joined student protests at Fort Hare University and was expelled. He fled to Johannesburg to escape an arranged marriage. There, he witnessed the reality of racial discrimination. Within the same city, Black and white residents lived under different laws, earned different wages, and carried different passes.
Rolihlahla became a lawyer. ⚖️ In 1944, he joined the African National Congress (ANC). At first, he led nonviolent resistance. In 1948, apartheid was codified into law. In 1960, 69 peaceful protesters were shot dead by police in Sharpeville. He changed his conclusion. He founded the armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe and directed sabotage operations.
In 1962, he was arrested. In 1964, at the Rivonia Trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was sent to Robben Island. There, he was no longer Rolihlahla.
466/64. 🔒
It meant the 466th prisoner admitted in 1964. For eighteen years, 466/64 broke limestone in the quarry. The harsh glare damaged his eyesight. He contracted tuberculosis. He could not attend his mother's funeral, nor his eldest son's.
466/64 studied Afrikaans in prison. 📖 It was the language of the white guards. His fellow inmates were puzzled. He told them: "You must understand your enemy to persuade him."
466/64 spent twenty-seven years behind bars. Outside, his name grew larger. International sanctions tightened. From the mid-1980s, the South African government began secret negotiations with him. Separated from ANC leadership, 466/64 sat alone across the table from government officials and drafted the future.
On February 11, 1990, he walked out. He was seventy-one years old. Four years later,
on May 10, 1994, he took the oath of office as President of the Republic of South Africa in front of the Union Buildings in Pretoria. 🕊️
From that day, he was Nelson Mandela.
At his inauguration, three white men sat in the seats of honor. They were prison guards who had kept him for twenty-seven years. Mandela had invited them personally. The reason: they had treated him as a human being.
In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, he wrote: "As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison."
Mandela's term lasted five years.
What he accomplished. In 1996, he enacted a new constitution. South Africa became the first country in the world to constitutionally prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The death penalty was abolished. Access to housing, healthcare, education, and water was written in as a right.
Through the Reconstruction and Development Programme, about 750,000 low-income homes were built. 🏠 Electricity reached two million households. Clean water reached three million people. Free healthcare was provided to children under six and to pregnant women.
He established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Perpetrators who confessed the truth could receive amnesty. About 7,000 applied; roughly 850 were granted. There was criticism: reconciliation without justice. But South Africa did not take the road of Rwanda or Yugoslavia.
He stepped down after a single five-year term. In Africa, leaders rarely surrendered power voluntarily.
Yet Mandela's tenure also had its failures. 💔
The 1996 GEAR policy effectively abandoned the ANC's socialist commitments. The mines were not nationalized. Land redistribution barely advanced. At the end of apartheid, white South Africans owned 87 percent of agricultural land; at the end of his term, that figure had hardly moved. Unemployment rose from about 20 percent in 1994 to about 30 percent in 1999. The economic gap between Black and white South Africans did not close.
The response to HIV/AIDS was slow. During his term, adult infection rates rose from around 7 percent to nearly 20 percent. Mandela himself later admitted: "I should have spoken out more strongly when I was president."
Violent crime surged. The limits of administrative capacity became apparent. As the ANC effectively became the state itself rather than a political party, the soil for future corruption was prepared. Mandela himself was incorruptible, but he did not dismantle that structure.
Mandela died in 2013. The leaders who came after him inherited neither his restraint nor his integrity. The "state capture" of the Jacob Zuma era was what happened when the internal problems of the ANC, untouched by Mandela, finally festered.
South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. Its Gini coefficient stands at around 0.63.
That is why, even today, people in South Africa speak of returning to the Mandela era. Not because it was perfect. But because, at least then, there was hope.
Source: Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela
No comments:
Post a Comment