Long Walk to Freedom

In 1946, 70 thousand African miners in Johannesburg go on strike. The protest is ruthlessly suppressed by the state, and the miners’ union is disbanded. Then, the government passes the Asiatic Land Tenure Act, which severely curtails Indians’ rights in South Africa. The Indian community engages in a two-year struggle of passive resistance, but the campaign is eventually defeated by the government. Though non-Indians’ participation in the campaign is not encouraged, it nevertheless provides Mandela and others an example of the type of mass resistance the ANC always avoided.

Meanwhile, in 1946, Mandela and Evelyn move to Orlando West in Soweto after their first child is born. Early the next year, Mandela completes his apprenticeship at Sidelsky’s firm and needs to finish his bachelor of law degree so he can begin his own practice. That July, Lembede dies suddenly. He is succeeded as President of the Youth League by A.P. Mda, who is friendlier to sympathetic white people and the Communist Party than Lembede. Mandela is still fired up by Lembede’s more exclusionary Africanism and therefore comparatively hostile to white people and the Communist Party in this period. His exclusionary thinking also extends to Indians, whom he does not believe share a common interest with Africans.

Mandela is elected to the Executive Committee of the Transvaal ANC, which he identifies as a defining moment in his life:

I had not yet been directly involved in any major campaign, and I did not yet understand the hazards and unending difficulties of the life of a freedom fighter. I had coasted along without having to pay a price for my commitment (108). 

In 1948, the National Party (NP) that represents the extreme, xenophobic portion of Afrikaner society wins a majority on an open platform of white supremacy and apartheid: “a new term but an old idea…it represented the codification in one oppressive system of all the laws and regulations that had kept Africans in an inferior position to whites for centuries” (111). This is a shock, considering the NP supported the Third Reich. Mandela’s friend Oliver Tambo shocks him by saying he is glad the Nationalists won since it will force people to show where they stand.

The new administration rapidly implements its apartheid program. In response, the ANC Youth League formulates a Program of Action that is adopted by the ANC. Where the ANC had previously limited itself to strictly legal means, it now embraces a strategy involving non-violent violation of unjust laws. The Youth League’s more confrontational approach leads it afoul of the ANC’s President, Dr. A.B. Xuma, and they vote him out at the next ANC conference.

Mandela replaces Dr. Xuma on the ANC’s National Executive Committee. He considers himself a gadfly in the organization up to this point; power and responsibility are new to him, so he thinks more strategically and deliberatively. In retrospect, Mandela believes it is easier to organize people to make an economic demand than a political one.

In 1950, the South African Communist Party (SACP), in alliance with the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), calls for a one-day general strike on May 1. Mandela opposes this, believing the SACP wishes to coopt the liberation movement, and the strike proceeds without ANC participation. In response, the government introduces the Suppression of Communism Act, giving the state the power to outlaw organizations and jail people purely based on membership in certain organizations.

The ANC, in conjunction with other nonwhite rights organizations, leads a National Day of Protest on June 26. As a political demonstration and the first mobilization action taken by the ANC, the Day of Protest is a major risk. However, it is a moderate success that bolsters the morale and public support of the ANC.

Because of Mandela’s friendship with Moses Kotane, head of the SACP and a member of the ANC executive committee, his mistrust of communism and its adherents fades away. He begins to read communist texts and is swayed by many of the arguments.

Besides the Suppression of Communism Act, the NP government also passes the Population Registration Act, which officially assigns every individual to a racial category, and the Group Areas Act, under which “each racial group could own land, occupy premises, and trade only in its own separate area” (121). The Group Areas Act also allows for forced removal of nonwhite populations if the government rezones an area for use by white people. Sophiatown, a vibrant African suburb of Johannesburg, is quickly targeted for forced removal.

In 1951, NP government passes the Separate Representation of Voters Act, which diminishes the power of the Cape’s Coloured community—people of mixed European and African descent—and the Bantu Authorities Act, which replaces the Natives Representative Council with a hierarchy of government-appointed tribal chiefs.

Coloured people’s resistance prompts Walter Sisulu—Mandela’s acquaintance who helped him get the job with Sidelsky and fellow ANC member—to raise the idea of a national campaign of civil disobedience. Mandela agrees but suggests that the campaign only be organized among Africans. Sisulu strongly disagrees, and Mandela’s proposal is voted down.

The Defiance Campaign is set to launch on June 26. The ANC and its allies decide on the nonviolent resistance approach. Mandela supports the strategy but notes that he sees “nonviolence in the Ghandian model not as an inviolable principle but as a tactic to be used as the situation demanded” (127). Two waves are planned. In the first wave, small numbers of disciplined volunteers will deliberately subject themselves to arrest for violating apartheid ordinances. Mass strikes will comprise the majority of the second wave. Ahead of the Campaign, Mandela tells crowds that “unity among the black people—Africans, Coloureds, and Indians—in South Africa had at last become a reality” (128).

More than 250 volunteers are arrested on June 26; over the next five months, roughly 8,500 people are arrested as part of the campaign. The ANC’s profile is significantly raised, and membership quintuples to 100 thousand. Mandela travels widely around the country to help coordinate the protests.

In response, the government passes the Public Safety Act in 1953. This permits declarations of martial law and detention without trial. The Criminal Laws Amendment Act, which authorizes corporal punishment for defiant people, is also passed. Mandela recounts instances of infiltrators sent to discredit the ANC or stir up internal strife.

On July 30, 1952, Mandela is arrested under the Suppression of Communism Act and put on trial with 20 others two months later. Dr. Moroka, president of the ANC, shocks the other defendants by employing his own attorney. He complains to Mandela that he does not want to be tried alongside Communists and, ultimately, makes a deal with the government to testify against his co-defendants. The remaining defendants are found guilty of “statutory communism” on December 2 and sentenced to nine months of hard labor, though with the sentence suspended for two years.

At the time of writing his autobiography, Mandela believed the Defiance Campaign was ultimately successful in raising political consciousness, removing the stigma associated with imprisonment, and swelling the ANC’s membership. Nevertheless, he notes that the campaign continued for too long and was mostly contained to the cities.