Nelson Mandela: A True Leader

No politician is sacrosanct, but perhaps Mandela comes closest to this ideal.

There are few events within my lifetime that can accurately be classed as truly historic moments. The fall of the Berlin Wall. 9/11. Perhaps the election of Barack Obama will qualify when all is said and done. Earlier this month, however, we saw a reminder of another event which certainly so qualifies – when South Africa marked the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. It was a reminder of perhaps the most remarkable societal turnaround in history: South Africa’s peaceful transition from Apartheid to racial equality and democracy. That transition was epitomized by Mandela’s story. On February 11, 1990, Mandela was unconditionally released after 27 years of politically motivated imprisonment. Four years later, with the moral stain that was the Apartheid system dismantled, he would be elected President of the nation that had imprisoned him.

Mandela’s story is as well known as it is improbable. In 1948, the South African government had instituted Apartheid, a system of strict, legally enforced racial segregation. Legislation was passed which classified all South Africans according to a descending scale of worthiness based on their race: white, indian, coloured, or black. These groups were then forcibly segregated into separate residential areas, with the government also segregating education, medical care, free movement, and virtually all public services. Whites received the most, blacks the least, with the other two racial groups falling in between. Only whites were seen as being sufficiently human as to be entitled to vote (though in 1983 limited voting rights were also granted to “indians” and “coloureds”). In the face of this system, Nelson Mandela, a young lawyer who had represented the poor and disenfranchised blacks, became involved in politics. He joined the African National Congress (ANC) party – before they were outlawed for opposing Apartheid – and was central to the party’s creation and adoption of the Freedom Charter, which called for South Africa to become a non-racialized nation with equality and full participatory democracy for everyone, regardless of race.

Inspired by Ghandi’s example, Mandela was initially committed to nonviolent resistance to Apartheid. Years later, when convinced that non-violent resistance was futile, he became the leader of the then outlawed ANC’s armed wing, and conducted sabotage campaigns against military and government infrastructure and edifices, but not civilian targets. Mandela was arrested in 1956 and tried for treason. After a four year trial, he was acquitted, but almost immediately thereafter in 1962, he was rearrested and charged with leading workers to strike and leaving the country illegally (which he had been doing to speak out against Apartheid). For this he was sentenced to five years, and while imprisoned was then tried once again, along with other ANC leaders, for sabotage and “plotting a foreign invasion of South Africa.” In 1964, he was sentenced to life in prison.

His subsequent imprisonment, 18 years of which were served at the brutal Robbins Island facility, only raised Mandela’s profile and stature, generating an international campaign against Apartheid, which pressed for his release. In 1985, South African President P.W. Botha officially offered to release Mandela, in return for his renouncing the armed struggle against Apartheid and the government. Mandela refused, stating “What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate.” Over the years of his imprisonment, South Africa grew increasingly isolated from the world community, with internal strife, political repression, and violence exploding within its borders. By the late 1980s, the government had imposed a half-decade-long state of emergency, some 30,000 people had been detained, and state orchestrated disappearances, interrogations, and torture were commonplace. Violent anti-Apartheid groups retaliated with orchestrated bombing campaigns. With the country seemingly on the verge of chaos, South Africa’s new president, F.W. DeClerk, reversed the ban on the ANC and other anti-Apartheid groups, and released Mandela in 1990.

After being freed, Mandela led the ANC in the negotiations with DeClerk’s government to end Apartheid. In the 1994 elections that followed – a vote open to all South Africans, regardless of race – Mandela was elected president. Appointing DeClerk his deputy, Mandela peacefully shepherded South Africa through the tense transition period that followed.

All of this is well known, though perhaps better outside of North America. But as telling as what Mandela did was what he did not do. It seems almost inconceivable now – in a time where we have become accustomed to seeing political leaders use their power, and the machinery of government, to strike out at their political adversaries, to suppress or marginalize dissenting voices, and to smear, if not try to utterly destroy the political opposition – but Mandela did not do this. If anyone had cause or a reason for using their power to strike out at their enemies, it was Mandela. Over the course of almost 30 years, he had been jailed, beaten, tortured, and treated in the worst ways possible, yet when he emerged from his long confinement and became the most powerful man in the self-same country that had persecuted him, he did not retaliate. He also refused to whitewash history, rebuking those who downplayed the violence and atrocities committed by the anti-Apartheid forces, as well as the conduct of the Apartheid government of the past.

This is because, whatever else can be said of him, and there is a great deal, Mandela was a leader in the truest sense of the word. He became a politician, but unlike so many, this meant that he willingly assumed and lived up to the responsibilities of truly leading, rather than merely accepting the perks of an elected official. Instead, Mandela served as a moral compass for his people, and unlike so many politicians the world over, he pointed the spire of that compass upwards – inspiring his countrymen and setting an example of practicality and forgiveness, rather than playing to their fears, basest motivations or hatreds. Mandela prized and, indeed, demanded unity, rather than divisiveness. Realizing divisiveness would tear the country apart, he took the high road, and for the most part, his formerly oppressed countrymen trod it with him.

The enormity of what this meant is difficult for foreigners to truly understand. The first time I was in South Africa, I had some business with a major university there. On the way there, the driver they had sent to meet me described some of the landmarks we passed. A former student of the university during the Apartheid era, as we pulled into the school’s front gates, he noted, “This was where we used to have anti-Apartheid rallies.” Then he pointed across the street to a crumbling tower, and calmly finished “and that’s where the police and security forces used to shoot at us from.” The most remarkable thing about the story was how matter-of-factly and calmly he spoke of those times. His voice didn’t betray any bitterness or resentment. Another time, as we drove, he answered my question about a street by noting that it was named for one of the architects of the policy of Apartheid. When I exclaimed that they should have changed the street name long ago, he only laughed and said that if they thought that way, the country would have long since exploded.

That was Mandela’s philosophy, and it is an impressive one. Few people any of us know would have the strength to be able to so forgive, and unfortunately it’s becoming increasingly difficult to imagine anyone in power, in this day and age, who would even see the value in trying.

In a word, that’s leadership. And that is the reason, above all, that while no public figure is sacrosanct or unassailable – and no one should be – it is probably Nelson Mandela who comes closest.