Remembrance: Nelson Mandela Was Sentenced To Life Imprisonment On June 12, 1964

In 1964, at his trial for high treason against South Africa’s aparthied’s regime, the leader would speak from the dock, telling the court, that, “I have done whatever I did, both as an individual and as a leader of my people, because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background….I do not….deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the whites.”  

The decision for he and the ANC take up armed struggle, the man would argue, was not the introduction to violence in the nation, after all. The whites, first the British and then the Dutch–Afrikaaners–held that dubious distinction.

The leader was born into that South Africa on July of 1918, the same year the Afrikaan Broderbond was founded to consolidate and elevate Dutch power over British rule in South Africa. Although an initially secret organization, by 1948, it was fully open and successful. The Broderbond would install every prime minister for the next 36 years, along with apartheid, the brutal system of governance that was based on the Jim Crow laws of the American South. What under the British had been de facto law, became de jure under the Dutch, and exponentially so.  

Born Into Royalty 

Over forty years, apartheid through its legislation of Black poverty, family separation and community dissolution, and through its direct assaults—massacres—on Black women, men and children—decimated, more lives than will ever be recorded in the history books.  And despite the grievous wounds it left, wounds still seeking salve two and a half generations  on, it would also birth not only an opposition movement that at its height was acclaimed by people across every part of the globe. Its leader became   on every corner of the planet; but a leader who would become perhaps the most beloved and iconic of the 20th century

The decision for the ANC to take up armed struggle, was not the introduction of violence to South Africa. Whites held that dubious distinction.

In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, that leader would declare that “To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one’s birth, whether one acknowledges it or not.”  Even still, he said  he was not trained for rule, but for counsel.  But at his father’s and his extended family’s knees the boy would learn first-hand of the pride and power of the people from whom he came, the Xhosa.  

The boy’s father was the King of the Thembu royal house in the village of Mvezo, and for generations his people had lived in the Transkei province in peace— until they were occupied by British settlers in the early 19th century and forced onto the worst lands of the region. The boy’s father, a dignified man, would eventually be removed from his position by a White magistrate because the Brit deemed him insubordinate when the boy was only a year old.  The family was tossed harshly into poverty and forced to move.  

But the boy loved his simple life—the large polygamous group of kinfolk, the rolling hills on which he could play with his many siblings and cousins.  And he would be informed by its guiding philosophy—Ubuntu, the African notion of and belief in mutuality and compassion—throughout the whole of his life.  

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu described Ubuntu as a reference to, “gentleness, to compassion, to hospitality, to openness to others, to vulnerability, to be available to others and to know that you are bound up with them in the bundle of life.”

Troublemaker

When he was not yet 10, the boy’s father would succumb to a lung disease, and his mother would take him from their small village to Mqhekezweni, The Great Place, where the acting King who had been appointed by the boy’s father, took the child in as his own, loved and educated him, and like his father had done, rooted the boy firmly in the history of the Xhosa people. 

Indeed, in the Transkei province, where the Xhosa lived, more Black leaders than any other region in South Africa were created.  Anthony Sampson, who met the boy some 30 years later when he was a man fully grown, became his official biographer, observing that perhaps above all, “He was fortified by his knowledge of his ancestors. His father was the grandson of Ngubengcuka, the great king of the Thembu people who died in 1832, before the British finally imposed their power on the southern part of the Transkei.”  

The leader shared in his autobiography that “In my youth in the Transkei I listened to the elders of my tribe telling stories of the old days. Amongst the tales they related to me were those of wars fought by our ancestors in defense of the fatherland. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle. This is what has motivated me in all that I have done.” 

His sister, Mabel recalled about her brother, that she always saw it, that thing in him, the visionary, the guide, that we would all eventually come to know. She said that even as a child, “He didn’t like to be provoked. If you provoked him he would tell you directly. . . . He had no time to fool around. We could see he had leadership qualities.

Historian, Dr. Akinyele Umoja, who authored We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (New York University Press, 2013), concurs with the boy’s sister, advising that, “It is instructive that at the age of 16, his elders named him “Dalibunga”, which means meaning “convener of the dialogue” after his rites of passage into manhood. His named signifies the expectations that he was destined for leadership.”

More, perhaps the name his parents gave him, Rolihlahla, was just as signifying. It means troublemaker. 

The African National Congress

Now a young man, the first in the family to attend even primary school, was enrolled at the University of Fort Hare on the Eastern Cape, the most prestigious Black school in the nation.  He met a friend for life at this school, Oliver Tambo, and honed his athletics there, running and boxing. He studied law, political science, anthropology and English.  And he became involved with student organizations, protesting among other things, the poor quality of their food.  

(For this protest, one that as an elder that he would define as foolish, he was removed from the school, but would finish his degree later via correspondence course from the University of South Africa.)

But if that leadership was nurtured by his father and then at The Great Place and then at University, it would take its wings a universe away, in Soweto, just outside Johannesburg where the young man, had escaped to during cover of night in order to avoid a looming arranged marriage to a woman he found none too pleasing. 

And Johannesburg, the big city—this would be where he would meet men and women who had ideas about what freedom looked like and how Black South Africans could have their rightful share of it.  Even before the Afrikaaner’s National Party would take over in 1948, and institute apartheid, the cultural norms established by the British, already had subjugated Black people, forcing them onto the worst land, provided them the worst jobs, forbade their ability to move freely or organize or strike or voice their opposition to that which was undermining the quality of their lives when it wasn’t outright killing them.  

Even then there was a movement, not yet global in recognition or support, but strong nonetheless and the man would begin the gradual process of becoming the leader of that movement. Walter Sisulu, a prominent African businessman first enjoined him to take those first steps along a path that would, by its end, transform a nation.  “I had come under the wise tutelage of Walter Sisulu,” the man recounted. “Walter was strong, reasonable, practical, and dedicated.  He never lost his head in a crisis; he was often silent when others were shouting .”

Eventually, the leader became a  law student—he never actually did achieve a law degree although he did become a respected practitioner—at the University of Witwatersrand. A well-regarded multi-racial school, it was here where the leader’s sense of politics took the form that the world would come to know. With Sisulu’s assistance, he would clerk at a Jewish-led law firm that also employed another Black man, Guar Radebe.  Radebe took the man to his first African National Congress meeting and in 1944, on Easter of that year, the young man would go on to co-found its Youth League.

The Youth League was responsible for the mass mobilization of Africans against their oppression. It was the same year he would marry for the first time. His wife was Evelyn Mase. a young nursing student and the mother of four of his six children. Four years into their union, in 1948, the Afrikaaners won the white-only election and apartheid became the rule of law. 

No Alternative To Armed Resistance

In the face of this and with his push, the ANC would become ever more radicalized and militant, calling for direct action against the racist and murderous government.  Working closely with Sisulu and Tambo—with whom he formed the first Black South African law firm—strikes and boycotts were the order of the day.  Membership in the ANC grew from 20,000 to 100,000.  He was arrested during this period of mass detainment and martial law. 

In 1952, he and 19 others were tried and convicted for violating the Suppression of Communism Act and sent to hard labor for nine months. He returned to a world where the atrocities committed against Africans were only ratcheting up. It was a world where he was named regional president of the ANC. He accepted that role knowing that the ANC would eventually be banned, which is why he created an underground cell structure. The cells were small, individualized groups of soldiers who functioned as their own secret, tiny armies against apartheid.  With a cell structure firmly in place he would reason correctly that no matter what, the fight for freedom would continue because the fight was not bound to the life or death or imprisonment of any one leader.  

And whatever struggles he may have still held about direct, military action, likely ended in 1955, when Sophiatown, a vibrant artistic and multiracial suburb of Johannesburg was destroyed by South African police who forcibly removed all the Black people who lived there. Police forces flattened the area entirely and removed it from all official maps. The leader’s position was clear: There was, “no alternative to armed and violent resistance.”  

His influence among Blacks and Whites grew as the regime’s brutality and the resistance movement did. But his children wondered where Daddy lived and Evelyn became a Jehovah’s Witness, which mandated she not be involved in politics. She accused her husband of having affairs with women in the ANC.  Her accusations were not unwarranted but the leader, rather than refuting them or perhaps even changing his ways, immersed himself ever more deeply in the struggle for freedom. Their union dissolved and in1957, while in the midst of his first trial for treason, he and first wife were officially divorced.

Spear Of The Nation

But not long before the divorce was official, during a visit to Oliver Tambo’s office to consult about the trial, the man would meet a lovely young woman.  She was 16 years younger than him and her name was Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela.  The world would come to speak of her as Winnie. Across the nation, many today still call her Mama Africa. 

He’d seen her once before, though just fleetingly, as he’d driven by the hospital where she was employed as Johannesburg’s first Black medical social worker.  He telephoned her the following day and asked her to help raise funds for the treason trial but it was really, “…a pretext to invite her to lunch.”  She was, as he would describe her three-and-half decades later, “dazzling.”  Smitten by the young, beautiful social worker’s spirit, passion and youthfulness—she had been raised in a politically involved family that was also from the Transkei—the man knew that first date where they dined upon Indian food, that, “I wanted to marry her—and I told her so.”  And in June of 1958, that’s just what happened. 

But then came March 21, 1960 and what became known as the Sharpeville Massacre. Between 5,000 and  7,000 Black people had come together to protest against the racist “pass laws” that inhibited the movements—and consequently, lives—of African people, in the Black Township of Sharpeville, located in the TransvaalProvence. Despite their peaceful protest, however, the white Afrikanner cops, opened fired upon the gathering, slaughtering 69 unarmed people who wanted simply to have a chance at living on a level playing field

Immediately following, the leader was detained eight days later while the nation was put under a state of emergency. Roughly a week after that,   the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) were banned. It was in the wake of these events that the leader co-founded Umkhonto We Sizwe—Spear of the Nation or the MK as it was known to South Africans. The MK was the armed wing of the ANC.

It publicly announced its existence with 57 bombings on December 16th, 1961.

No Power On Earth Can Stop Us

One year later, the leader and a multitude of other Africans were charged with high treason. But he, along with 27 additional members of the ANC/MK were acquitted at trial. They went underground, leaving their homeland for more military training in other nations and from other occupied peoples, notably in and from Ghana, with President Nkrumah’s support and from Palestinian LIberation Organization. That time, that training, fortified the MK but when those who’d traveled abroad returned to South Africa by way of Botswana in July of 1962, they were promptly arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, for incitement and leaving the country illegally.

The leader remained defiant and devoted to the mission of freedom. In addressing the court, he asserting that, “No power on earth can stop an oppressed people determined to win their freedom.” 

By May of ‘63, he was transferred to the infamous prison on Robben Island Prison where some 199 charges would be leveled against he and his comrades, with 193 being allowed to stand. The top charge at the Trial at Rivonia, was high treason. As the case moved toward conclusion in 1964, the ANC’s leader would make a three-hour statement from the dock that April. It would go on to become one of the world’s most quoted speeches, which in its conclusion maintained that:

Our fight is against real, and not imaginary, hardships…We fight against two features which are the hallmarks of African life in South Africa and which are entrenched by legislation which we seek to have repealed. These features are poverty and lack of human dignity…This then is what the ANC is fighting….During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

The conviction stood nevertheless and on June 12th, this day, in 1964, he was sentenced to hard labor on Robben Island, a scratch of land surrounded by sharks. Along with his fellow freedom fighters, he was  forced into hard labor, breaking rocks in a quarry for years. The dust would damage his eyes and tear ducts so, that as elder, he would be unable to even cry.  

But for the 27 years he spent locked away, 27 years when the world did not see him, it was his Winnie who would become his face and voice before a now global audience.  One letter every six months.  Intermittent visits, always through glass. Years without contact for Winnie too would be arrested, held in solitary, banned, but faith, courage, vision and memory bound them in their own great bundle of life.

It was in this way that their love, begun in the public tumult of political resistance and trials, would grow revolutionary, a single heart beating for all those who believed another world was possible. And the transformational power of their revolutionary love helped ensure that from a tiny prison cell on Robben Island, prisoner number 46664 and his wife, from her locations in exile, led a movement. 

The world– except came to know him as a hero, a political prisoner. The call for his release was global. It seemed the only two people outside of the Afrikanners who opposed it were America’s president, Ronald Reagan and Britain’s prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. They held that the man was a Communist terrorist, not worthy of freedom. 

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

Undeterred, the pressure against the man’s imprisonment and apartheid, mounted. American students occupied their campuses and demanded disinvestment from the barbaric regime and an offer for freedom was finally made:  Prisoner number 46664 would be released….if he denounced armed struggle.  

He declined. Sat out years more in prison. Waited until his release was unconditional, an event that took place with the entire world watching and cheering, on February 11, 1990. This man, this leader, once a small boy from the village of Mvezo in the Transkei who had been disappeared for 27 years, walked onto the most public stage ever, hand-in-hand and out of prison with his beloved Winnie. Far and wide, we called his name…Mandela!  Nelson Rolihlahla  Mandela! 

Madiba if you call him by his Xhosa clan name.  

President if you call him by the title he would assume after  the first free, democratic elections ever held in South Africa four years later. 

And Tata, Father of a Nation, if you call him, as South African president Jacob Zuma did in announcing his death on December 5th, 2013.  

But when we do more than call his name now, more than decade after his death, when we begin trying to explain him to our children—who will not know unless we tell them the whole story, the truth beyond the nostalgia—say he was soldier and a strategist, say he was a statesman and scholar but above all, this: say he was symbol of dignity and strength for his children and ours to forever know that here is what a back unbent looks like, and how spirit never broken, soars.

With the multiple attacks on education that keep our children from knowing their own history, NewsOne is dedicated to ensuring that our work is done in the tradition of our most treasured keepers of the culture, the history, the truth.  If you are aware of a critical piece of Black history that hasn’t been told, or rarely has been told, please email me at [email protected] using Important History as the subject line.

SEE MORE:

How Long Was Nelson Mandela In Prison

Nelson Mandele Freed From Prison On This Day In 1990

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