The Essential Mandela
“In the 20th Century he was one of the few who, in contrast with those who made it infamous for fascism, racism, dictatorship and war, marked the era as one that achieved some human advancement…. Nelson Mandela belongs to the world”. - Nadine Gordimer[i]
In 1993, as South Africa hovered in a twilight time between an Apartheid-past and a post-Apartheid future, two men planned a murder. Janusz Walusz, a neo-Nazi, and Clive Derby-Lewis, a Conservative Party parliamentarian, were readying to ignite a racial-civil war to keep Apartheid alive. Their plan was to kill a popular black leader and provoke the already simmering townships into bloody mayhem. The white-majority military will intervene to protect order and white-lives, they believed; and Apartheid will be saved.
Nelson Mandela
Their chosen target was Chris Hani, the second most popular ANC leader, hero of rebellious young blacks, former head ofUmkhonto we Sizwe[ii], chief of the South African Communist Party and the man widely believed to be Mandela’s handpicked political heir[iii]. Hani had played a key role in the negotiations which ended Mandela’s imprisonment. He was also involved in the talks to end Apartheid and bring about a democratic South Africa.
The first part of the plan worked; Hani was gunned down by Walusz outside his home in the morning of 10th April 1993. A traumatised land teetered on the edge of a calamitous civil conflict, but did not fall. That same evening Nelson Mandela addressed the nation: “This is a watershed moment for all of us”, he told his people waiting for a sign. “We must not let the men who worship war and who lust after blood, precipitate actions that will plunge our country into another Angola.”[iv]
His appeal worked. Though some violence did happen, the Armageddon Hani’s killers were counting on was prevented and South Africa’s march to freedom saved.
Mandela’s plea in that desperately dangerous hour may not have worked so well, had he or the ANC made any compromises with Black-supremacism during their long struggle. But they had not. Their vision and their actions had been uncompromisingly non-racist. They regarded Apartheid not as a crime against blacks but as a crime against humanity. Whites – and other non-white people – were actively encouraged to take part in the struggle. And a minority of committed whites did participate at every level; they too were hunted by the Apartheid state, arrested, tortured and sometimes killed. Black South Africa’s list of heroes and martyrs included quite a few white men and women. It was the ANC’s conscious and consistent refusal to respond to the Apartheid state’s toxic ‘white vs. black’ politics with an equally noxious ‘black vs. white’ politics which saved South Africa from a violent hell 20 years ago.
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