We have a lot to be positive about in South Africa. With all our problems, it’s easy to feel bleak. But hold those thoughts, because Legends might be just the tonic you need to drive off the gloom. This book tells the stories of a dozen remarkable people – some well-known, others largely forgotten – who changed Mzansi for the better. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, Legends reminds South Africans that we have a helluva lot to be proud of.
The Last Great Man?
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela looms over our history (and this book) like a colossus. He is the most famous and perhaps the greatest man South Africa has produced. But he was also, as he himself often noted, a human being with human flaws. This excerpt is taken from Chapter 9 of Legends: People Who Changed South Africa for the Better.
Bedside manner
The apartheid government chose a curious setting to make its first attempt at serious negotiations. After undergoing prostate surgery at Volks Hospital (now Mediclinic Cape Town) in 1985, Mandela awoke to find Kobie Coetsee, the new minister of justice, at his bedside. Back at Pollsmoor Prison, Mandela was moved from the ‘penthouse suite’ he’d been sharing with Walter Sisulu, Raymond Mhlaba and Andrew Mlangeni to a cell on the ground floor of the prison, near the common rabble. He wasn’t happy, but he quickly realised that the change
was not a liability but an opportunity … my solitude gave me a certain liberty, and I resolved to use it to do something I had been pondering for a long time: begin discussions with the government. I had concluded that the time had come when the struggle could best be pushed forward through negotiations. If we did not start a dialogue soon, both sides would soon be plunged into a dark night of oppression, violence and war. My solitude would give me an opportunity to take the first steps in that direction, without the kind of scrutiny that might destroy such effort.
The following year Mandela and Coetsee met six times, and in 1988 there was ‘a major change of gear’ when Mandela began a series of forty-seven meetings – some of which lasted eight hours – with Coetsee and Niël Barnard, the head of the National Intelligence Service. These meetings weren’t just kept secret from the South African public. Mandela also took ages to mention them to his closest comrades. Even Sisulu was kept in the dark.
Coetsee and Barnard belonged to a new breed of Nats who were convinced that ‘change was necessary and that apartheid no longer secured white interests. But they tiptoed down the path suggested by this logic, aware that President Botha was a formidable roadblock in their way.’ Their chance to break into a jog came in 1989 when, following a stroke, Botha grudgingly agreed to allow F.W. de Klerk to replace him as state president. At the opening of his first Parliament on 2 February 1990, De Klerk shocked the world by announcing sweeping reforms that included lifting the state of emergency; unbanning the ANC and other political parties; and releasing political prisoners, including Mandela. ‘My God, he’s done it all,’ Allister Sparks whispered to a fellow journalist as he watched F.W.’s speech.
11 February 1990
Mandela woke at 4.30 a.m. on the day of his release from Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. After completing ‘a shortened version of my usual exercise regime’, he met with comrades including Cyril Ramaphosa and Trevor Manuel to work on his speech. His release was set for 3 p.m., but the plane carrying Winnie and Walter was delayed. Punctuality was everything to Mandela, and he admitted to being ‘restless’ when they finally left his cottage well behind schedule.
As requested by the SABC, Nelson and Winnie got out of the car to walk the last few hundred metres to the prison gates. During his twenty-seven years in prison, he’d seldom been with more than two or three people at a time, and his recollection of the moment is worth quoting at length:
I saw a tremendous commotion and a great crowd of people: hundreds of photographers and television cameras and newspeople as well as several thousand well-wishers. I was astounded and a little bit alarmed. I had truly not expected such a scene; at most, I had imagined that there would be several dozen people, mainly the warders and their families …
Within twenty feet or so of the gate, the cameras started clicking, a noise that sounded like some great herd of metallic beasts … When a television crew thrust a long, dark, furry object at me, I recoiled slightly, wondering if it were some newfangled weapon developed while I was in prison. Winnie informed me that it was a microphone.
“I felt as though the crowd might very well kill us with their love.”
Mandela’s driver, fearing mayhem on the N1, took the back route to Cape Town, passing families of white farmers who’d come to get a glimpse of the motorcade. ‘Some, perhaps a dozen, even raised their clenched fists in what had become the ANC power salute,’ wrote Mandela. ‘This astounded me … At one point I stopped and got out of the car to greet and thank one such white family.’
But nothing could prepare Madiba for the crowds that thronged the car when they reached Cape Town. ‘Inside it sounded like a massive hailstorm,’ he wrote. ‘Then people began to jump on the car in their excitement. Others began to shake it and at that moment I began to worry. I felt as though the crowd might very well kill us with their love.’
The driver freaked out and drove, aimlessly, away from City Hall. Mandela took control of the situation and directed him to the home of his friend Dullah Omar. Omar was astonished, but he invited them all in for cooldrinks. They’d only been there for a few minutes when Desmond Tutu phoned to warn that there ‘might be an uprising’ if Mandela didn’t show face soon.
The driver composed himself and, eventually, Mandela was able to walk out onto the City Hall’s balcony. Mandela raised his fist and said: ‘Amandla!’ And 100 000 people responded: ‘Ngawethu!’ When things died down enough for him to begin his speech, he realised that he’d forgotten his reading glasses. Luckily, Winnie’s prescription was similar to his. Finally, several hours behind schedule, he addressed the nation:
Friends, comrades and fellow South Africans. I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all. I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.
While it did contain some good bits, Mandela’s first proper speech since Rivonia was something of a let-down. He even admitted as much in his autobiography when he described reading through a ‘mountain’ of telegrams the following morning. ‘They came from all over the world, from presidents and prime ministers, but I remember one in particular from a white Cape Town housewife that amused me greatly. It read: “I am very glad that you are free, and that you are back among your friends and family, but your speech yesterday was very boring.”’
This was a sentiment shared in the coverage by the veteran British journo John Carlin:
Maybe it was the gathering evening gloom and the relative flatness of the public mood, or perhaps it was simply that the day’s dramas had drained his energy. Perhaps it was the lifelessness of most of the words he read, a shopping list of predictable demands and tired slogans. Whatever the case it was not an uplifting speech.
Carlin went on to write, ‘I ended that historic day, as many others did, with misgivings, wondering whether Mandela would fail to live up to the world’s expectations.’ He needn’t have worried. The next morning, Carlin was in the audience at Mandela’s first-ever press conference. The forty-minute event was ‘an exercise in seduction from start to finish. At the time we had no idea how artfully we were being manipulated.’
Mandela engaged in banter with the journos, paying particularly close attention to local reporters. He stressed his status as a disciplined member of the ANC and reiterated the fact that the continuation of the armed struggle was ‘a defensive act against the violence of apartheid’. He briefly referenced his personal struggles in prison, and the even greater pressures faced by his family. But he chose to spend more time talking about the qualities of his jailers. ‘Declaring that all bitterness had been erased was not so much the impulse of a saint, but the most striking example of Mandela’s ability to bury his feelings in the interests of his political goals.’ When the press conference came to a close, remembered Carlin,
Something happened that I had never seen before or have ever seen again in 30 years reporting on politicians. Hypnotizing us into forgetting we were working journalists, making a mockery of our pretensions to objectivity, he drew from us a long burst of spontaneous, heartfelt applause.
Extracted from Legends by Matthew Blackman and Nick Dall, out now.
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