Mandela Dies
Three silver-haired men sat together and
recalled a court case 50 years ago that rocketed their friend and fellow
freedom fighter to fame. To one man in the group that friend is simply
"Nel." To the rest of the world he is Nelson Mandela, Nobel Peace
Prize winner, South Africa's former president, and a man who spent 27 years in
jail for a cause he told a court in 1964 that he was prepared to die for.
Mandela, hospitalized since June 8,
remains in critical condition. A grandson, Ndaba Mandela, said Tuesday that his
grandfather is "very much alive" and responds when spoken to, though
he is on life support in the form of mechanical ventilation. Mandela turns 95
on July 18.
Thursday marks the 50th anniversary
of an event known in South African history as the Raid on Lilies leaf, a simple
home in a Johannesburg suburb of Rivonia that served as the nerve center of
activists seeking to overturn the white racist rule of South Africa's apartheid
era. Those arrested in the raid were charged with sabotage. Mandela had already
been convicted of separate charges and was later tried and sentenced with those
from Lilies leaf.
Goldberg retains the liberal
feistiness that would have been required for a white man fighting for freedom for
his black countrymen in the 1960s. He is 15 years younger than Mandela, and one
of the select few family members and friends who have visited Mandela since he
was hospitalized June 8. Last week he said, Denis Goldberg, 80, was one of the
grey-haired men recalling the raid at a memorial for the event Monday evening.
South Africa's apartheid government, playing Cold War politics to win U.S.
support, labeled those arrested as terrorists and communists.
“Mandela was conscious and responsive which
came in contradiction to papers filed in a Mandela family court case that
described the former president as being in a vegetative state. The trial
allowed those prosecuted in what became known as the Rivonia Trial to get their
anti-apartheid views out to the public. Mandela was a thinking man, not a
hot-headed leader."
Goldberg and two contemporaries were
invited to see Mandela by Graca Michel, Mandela's wife. Goldberg said,
“Graca sat the three down and told them what
she thought they should know about Mandela's condition. He told Machel he would
share the information about Mandela with the world. "I fought for
democracy and I'm going to speak out."
Graca Machel said,
'Yes, do that,'"
“It's sad to see an old friend — once a strong
physical presence — lying in bed with a tube down his throat. Mandela never
addressed me by name; for me he's Nel and I'm boy."
Bob Hepple, who was arrested at Lilies leaf
but fled to England and did not face trial said,
"It was a failed revolution at
the time, but it was the spark that lit the flame. It's great having a vision
of freedom but you have to act to get freedom. It doesn't fall from the
trees."
Mandela had previously traveled to
Algeria to receive training for guerrilla warfare — violence that he never
personally carried out but a strategy that he determined should be pursued by
the African National Congress. Writings discovered by the apartheid police in
the Lilies leaf raid showed that Mandela had carefully pondered and endorsed
the use of violence against apartheid.
Nelson Mandela was the greatest leader of our age. He died today at 95
of a lung infection connected to the tuberculosis he contracted while serving
27 years as a political prisoner. All South Africans, and everyone around the
world who admires his heroic adherence to his principles and his extraordinary
decision to embrace and forgive his former oppressors, is in deep mourning over
his loss.
He often said. “If you want to
make peace with your enemy you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes
your partner,”
Following his jail term, with the
violent, racist apartheid system crumbling under world pressure, he embraced
President F.W. de Klerk and then served alongside him in a transitional
coalition of national unity. The two men won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
One of Mandela’s other huge
achievements: Instead of prosecuting the crimes of many apartheid-era
commanders and enforcers, in 1995 he agreed to set up the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, where victims of racist violence and torture could
tell their stories and perpetrators told theirs. The commission granted violent
former government officials and employees amnesty in exchange for their honesty
about what they did. Though controversial, the process was also hailed as a
triumph of mercy and a meaningful step toward healing the country’s deepest
wounds.
When Mandela was born in 1918, in a
rural village in the Cape Province, apartheid had not yet been completely
enshrined as law. But a system of strict, violent racial segregation was
already in place. Mandela’s given name, Rolihlahla, was apt. In the Khosa
language it means “troublemaker.”
He was a member of the royal Thembu
family, which controlled the Transkei region, an area relegated to blacks by
the white government. At a local Methodist school, his first teacher gave him
the Christian name Nelson. He is also widely known by his clan name, “Madiba.”
Nelson Mandela, the former South
African President and anti-apartheid activist, died December 5th at age 95. In
this picture, Mandela saluted the crowd in Galeshewe Stadium near Kimberley,
South Africa, before a "People's Forum" Friday, Feb. 25, 1994
His father died when he was nine years old, and a Thimbu chief raised
him. When he was 23, he ran away from a marriage the chief had arranged for him
in the Transkei, moving to Johannesburg where he studied law as one of a
handful of black students at Witwatersrand University. That same year he joined the African National
Congress, and later he co-founded the ANC’s youth league together with Oliver
Tambo and Walter Sisulu.
In 1944, three years after
leaving home, he married his first wife, Evelyn Mase. They had four children. In
1948 the National Party came to power and started passing a series of laws enforcing
racial segregation, which became known as apartheid. Four years later, Mandela
opened the country’s first black law office with Tambo, representing defendants
who were oppressed by the system. In 1955 he banded together with South
Africans of Indian descent, mixed race South Africans, and trade union
representatives to draft the Freedom Charter, calling for the creation of a
democratic, non-racial state with the nationalization of major corporations.
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.
DR. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
To read more of the Freedom Trial go
to: w.w.w.karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com
