No Easy Walk to Freedom

The final two chapters of the book are where Mandela pleads the case of the movement in the South African court system—not because he finds the court to be a fair and impartial judge but because his trial provides the opportunity to uplift the voices of the masses, publicly indict white supremacy, and explain why the anti-apartheid movement has adopted its strategies. His defense arguments contain important insights about the shift in strategies and tactics against the white supremacist government. Mandela’s defense arguments articulate that the government’s brutal and violent response to the ANC’s initial commitment to nonviolence was directly responsible for the shift and that the ANC specifically, along with the movement overall, developed through clear and sober reflection and analysis regarding how best to defeat the government. 

In Quayson’s editorial note for the Pretoria Trial, he describes Mandela’s defense as a “scathing indictment of White domination” (105). The indictment of white supremacy emerges immediately as Mandela argues for the judge’s recusal. On the grounds that the trial is unfair and unjust, Mandela states:

It is improper and against the elementary principles of justice to entrust Whites with cases involving the denial by them of basis human rights to the African people. 

What sort of justice is this that enables the aggrieved to sit in judgment over those against whom they have laid a charge?

A judiciary controlled entirely by Whites and enforcing laws enacted by a White Parliament in which Africans have no representation— laws which in most cases are passed in the face of unanimous opposition from Africans— (106). 

Going on to argue the second grounds for recusal, Mandela concedes that there are individual white people who believe in racial equality but argues that these individual sentiments are no match for the system:

The existence of genuine democratic values among some of the country’s Whites in the judiciary, however slender they may be, is welcomed by me. But I have no illusions about the significance of this fact, healthy a sign as it might be. Such honest and upright Whites are few and they have certainly not succeeded in convincing the vast majority of the rest of the White population that White supremacy leads to dangers and disasters (109).

By pointing out the all-white judiciary, the lack of African representation, and the adherence of a majority of white South Africans to white supremacist principles, Mandela identifies white supremacy as a systemic and institutional issue, not a matter of personal and individual responsibility. This echoes his PAFMECA address, where he articulated that solidarity and collective effort were key to the resistance movement because the maintenance of white supremacy was a collective endeavor carried out by various governments in collusion with one another. He reiterates the movement’s collectivity when he makes clear that while the media has emphasized his role in the resistance campaign, the collective is responsible for the success of the movement (138-39). 

Furthermore, Mandela suggests his awareness that he represents the collective in his defense, which he frames as not merely a personal matter nor specific to the trial. He opens by stating, “I hope to be able to indicate that this case is a trial of the aspirations of the African people, and because of that I thought it proper to conduct my own defence” (105). He also states, “The point I wish to raise in my argument is based not on personal considerations, but on important questions that [are] beyond the scope of this present trial” (105). Mandela’s strategic use of the court cases as an opportunity to uplift the voices of the masses and the organizations representing them is evidenced by his reading of documents that represent the voices of the people. In Chapter 14, he reads the entirety of both letters written by the NAC to the Verwoerd government during his cross-examination of Verwoerd’s secretary. In Chapter 15, he reads from the Umkonto Manifesto. In both instances, he uses the word “we” to indicate that he speaks for the organization and not only for himself. At the Pretoria Trial, he states:

Always we have been conscious of our obligations as citizens to avoid breaches of the law, where such breaches can be avoided, to prevent a clash between the authorities and our people, where such clashes can be prevented, but nevertheless, we have been driven to speak up for what we believe is right, and to work for it and try to bring about changes which will satisfy our human conscience (131).

He goes on to state:

We are neither monarchists nor admirers of a Voortrekker type of republic. We believe that we were inspired by aspirations more worthy than either of the groups who took part in the campaign on these. We were inspired by the idea of bringing into being a democratic republic where all South Africans will enjoy human rights without the slightest discrimination; where African and non-African would be able to live together in peace, sharing a common nationality and a common loyalty to this country, which is our homeland (133).

These two statements suggest the principles of democracy and equality that undergirded the ANC, as well as its attempts to bring about those ideals through peaceful and lawful agitation. However, given the government’s violent repression of the nonviolent strategy, the ANC was realistic about the situation they faced and recognized that the fight for democracy and equality necessitated other strategies. Thus, by 1961, the ANC was considering the shift: 

We had no doubt that we had to continue the fight. Anything else would have been abject surrender. Our problem was not whether to fight, but was how to continue the fight. We of the ANC had always stood for a non-racial democracy, and we shrank away from any action which might drive the races further apart than they already were. But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights (148). 

He also articulates the decision to employ violent means of resistance:

At the beginning of June 1961, after a long and anxious assessment of the South African situation, I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the Government met our peaceful demands with force (149).

Mandela directly implicates the Government in the shift in tactics and the formation of Umkonto. In Chapter 14, these brutal tactics become a part of the public record as Mandela draws them out through witness testimony. For example, Hazelhurst must admit publicly that there were raids on the homes and offices of political opponents and country-wide arrests (118-19). One of the police witnesses admits to the veracity of the Transkei regulations and acknowledges that any violation of the regulations were to be met with police force (120-21). In addition, Moolla must admit that the Group Areas Act “mean[t] that a large number of Indian merchants would lose their trading rights in areas which have been declared White Areas” (123), as well as that “a large number of members of the Indian community” would have to leave their homes in those white areas (124). 

In Chapter 15, the Rivonia Trial record includes details of government tactics, including the arrest of more than 8,500 peaceful protestors and the passage of the Public Safety Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1949 (146). Mandela provides statistics on the numbers of African people that police and white civilians killed in Port Elizabeth, Bulhoek, South-West Africa, and Sharpeville (154). The dates of these instances range from 1920 to 1960, indicating a long history of Africans dying at the hands of a white supremacist administration. Similarly, Chapter 14 includes Mandela’s mention of the 1921 massacre in Bulhoek and the 1923 massacre in Bondelswart (135), indicating that the government’s violence and brute force were not new strategies but part of a longer trajectory that justified the African people responding in turn. Likewise, he writes in Chapter 14, “They set the scene for violence by relying exclusively on violence with which to answer our people and their demands” (134). He further indicts the government for its antagonistic role towards the African masses and its failure to respond appropriately to nonviolent resistance when he states that government violence breeds counterviolence and that the freedom struggle would finish in mass violence and force against the government (135). 

The final two chapters emphasize not only that the shift was a response to government repression and violence, but also that it was a calculated shift based on the developing situation. When Mandela takes up the discussion of Umkonto we Sizwe in Chapter 15, he emphasizes that in regards to the African population, the atmosphere of civil war created by government violence was “increasingly taking the form, not of struggle against the Government—though this is what prompted it—but of civil strife amongst themselves” (149), indicating the ANC’s concern that “violent forms of political struggle” were taking the shape of “terrorism against Africans, as well as Whites, if not properly directed” (149). The formation of Umkonto and its organized strategy of “properly controlled violence” was in part an attempt to direct the violence at the institutional structure and not inward towards the African population (151). 

In short, it aimed to minimize the loss of life. Mandela explains:

In the light of our political background the choice was a logical one. Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government would become a reality (151). 

He further articulates: 

Attacks on the economic life lines of the country were to be linked with sabotage on Government buildings and other symbols of apartheid. These attacks would serve as a source of inspiration to our people. In addition, they would provide an outlet for those people who were urging the adoption of violent methods and would enable us to give concrete proof to our followers that we had adopted a stronger line and were fighting back against Government violence (152). 

Violence on the part of the resistance movement did not aim, as government violence did, to murder innocent people but rather to curtail the murders of innocent people and to add dynamism to the attack on the South African economy. Umkonto attacked “empty buildings and power stations” and were expressly prohibited from endangering life (153). 

In addition, military training of Umkonto members was adopted only in light of the compulsory military training of the white population, in case the conflict between the resistance movement and the government escalated to civil and guerilla war (154). At the same time, there was a plan to “build up a nucleus of men trained in civil administration and other professions, so that Africans would be equipped to participate in the government” of South Africa when the time came to do so (155). Again, this points to the considered strategy and careful planning of the leaders of the movement. It demonstrates dynamism, foresight, and a commitment to a long struggle.