Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2013—15
, Nelson Mandela: A Tribute
In Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, South Africa finally found the man who gave the lead to the people of South Africa in all their “human varieties” to resolve the intractable challenge of apartheid regally and heroically
BY EMEKA ANYAOKU
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N the gallery of world states men of the 20th century, Nelson Mandela occupies an exceptional position. His name will be forever linked with the struggle of the South African people to end apartheid, the coping stone of the racism and the injustices to which they had been subjected for so long. However, this is not the heart of the matter. What sets Mandela apart in world history is the charity with which he led the struggle against apartheid and at the rendezvous of victory, successfully barred the way to any form of recrimination or racial vainglory on the part of the victorious majority. It was the end to which every step Emekanot Anyaoku in his long and eventful journey told them.” would be one in his honour to had been directed. We briefed Mandela on the dis- provide him with an opportunity I will leave it to his countrymen cussions at the Nassau Common- to engage with major business and comrades who were by his wealth Heads of Government companies with interests in side in the heat and dust of the Meeting that had led to the ap- South Africa. My wife and I struggle, to tell the world of the pointment of the EPG and its man- hosted the dinner on 5 July 1990 unique qualities of leadership he date. He listened attentively, and at the headquarters of the Royal brought to bear; and confine my- expressed wholehearted support Commonwealth Society. Nelself to only what I saw of him as for the mission. However, in the son, and his former wife, Winnie we worked together to achieve a same breath, he stressed that attended, together with the repnegotiated end to apartheid es- while he personally supported the resentatives of 42 major compapecially in the wake of his release objectives, he could not speak for nies operating in South Africa. from prison in February 1990. the ANC. On another one of his visits to At the beginning of 1986, I visOnly the leadership in Lusaka London, at the end of a lunch I ited South Africa with the Com- could speak on behalf of the party, hosted for him in my residence, monwealth Eminent Persons and he hoped we would go there Mandela made the following Group (EPG) appointed by Com- to seek the party view. This epito- remarks which again epitomised monwealth leaders to bring about mised Mandela’s unique humil- the special person he was. In a negotiations between the apartheid regime and the opposing political parties. Mandela was still in prison at What sets Mandela apart in world Pollsmoor, and it was there that history is the charity with which he we met him. He had been incarled the struggle against apartheid cerated for 23 years, but the years of incarceration appeared to have and at the rendezvous of victory, left no mark on his spirit that I successfully barred the way to any could detect. A number of other form of recrimination or racial things also struck me about him: his personality was both warm and vainglory on the part of the victomagnetic; he exuded a natural rious majority and effortless authority; and although already well into his sixties, he remained ramrod straight ity and modesty. The world might reminiscent vein, he spoke in spite of his unusual height. Here, I concluded, was one of regard him as the embodiment and about the divisions within South nature’s true aristocrats. I knew conscience of the struggle but he African society that the Second and felt that we were in the pres- insistently saw himself at that mo- World War had brought about, ence of a special being, and so ment and always, as no more than and the contrasting positions bewhen later I came to write about an individual within the party, tween his father’s generation him, I recalled William Hazlitt’s deferring to the party leadership and his own. The older generation was amessay on ‘Mind and Motive’ at every turn. In July 1990, four months after bivalent as to which side to supwhere he paid tribute to those “who walked by faith and hope,” Mandela had finally been re- port. In their view, there was who “live in the midst of arrows leased from prison, I assumed of- nothing to commend the white and of death” but on whom the fice as Commonwealth Secretary- South African Government General. In May of the same year, which was supporting Britain world has no hold. The apartheid regime’s Minis- during Mandela’s visit to Nigeria, with the Prime Minister General ter for Prisons, Kobie Coetsee, had we had begun to plan on how to Smuts in the in the forefront of requested that he and his officials work together to ensure the suc- the war effort. They could not be present at our meeting with the cess of the negotiations between overlook the fact that they had inmate, Nelson Mandela. It was the South African Government and taken Britain’s side in the Angloleft to the two EPG Co-Chairmen all other political parties. Over that Boer war only to have their hopes and myself first to ascertain period, a warm friendship devel- of a better deal betrayed. Mandela observed that his Mandela’s reaction to the request. oped between us leading to his I still remember the magisterial writing the Foreword both to my own generation took a different position. As they viewed the confidence with which he told us: Memoirs and to my biography. It was in that May that we agreed situation, the stakes involved in “Let him and his team be at our discussions because there is noth- that my very first official dinner in the Second World War were ing I will say to you that I have my first week in office in London, much greater than any local
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grievances, however protracted, and for this reason, they worked and prayed for a British victory. The higher good, not the parochial advantage: that was what always guided Mandela. In December 1991, the long expected and hoped for negotiations between the Government and the political parties were finally launched at Kempton Park in Johannesburg within the framework of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). I sent a small but high powered group of senior Commonwealth Statesmen to the inauguration, not only to show support for the process, but also to underscore the importance that the Commonwealth attached to the success of the negotiations. However, just as the talks were beginning to make progress, a wave of violence broke out in many parts of the country, including a massacre of no less than six supporters of the ANC at Boipatong. Following discussions with Mandela in Dakar, Senegal where he had been invited to an OAU summit meeting, I hurried back to South Africa to negotiate with the State President F. W. de Klerk and the leaders of the opposition political parties, for international observers to be sent to the country. As a consequence, the Commonwealth, the United Nations, the European Union and the Organisation for African Unity (OAU), in effect the entire International community, sent observers to contain and help end the violence. If the violence had been allowed to subvert the negotiations, it would have been the end of everything that Nelson Mandela and his generation had worked for. To be sure, the struggle would have resumed, but in those circumstances it would have been practically impossible to keep it within the old, established moral perim-
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eters: non-racialism and minimum violence. These were values that the ANC leadership had worked so hard to inculcate into black South Africans over the years, values that had been overwhelmingly accepted. The South Africa that might have emerged from such a renewed struggle would be one reared on dust and ashes and Mandela did not care to think of such a society. In this affirmation, the real Mandela stood out. It remains an unforgettable image in my mind and, I am sure, in the minds of many others who were present at the Union Buildings amphitheatre in Pretoria on May 10, 1994 to witness Nelson Mandela take the oath of office as the first democratically elected President of South Africa. I still remember the tears of joy that rolled down the faces of so many at that wonderful occasion. At the end of apartheid there were voices within the country that wanted some of the egregious racist criminals, in the days of apartheid, to be tried and punished. They may not have put their demands in terms of Nuremberg, but that was clearly the spirit of what they were asking for. The decision to replace a Nuremberg-style process with a Truth and Reconciliation process was a dramatic exemplification of the best of a national leader, allowing his head to see further than his heart when confronted with an intractable moral problem. The world has been several shades saner and safer for that rare example of statesmanship. At the beginning of the twentieth century, another South African, Olive Schreiner said that “the problem which this century will have to solve is the accomplishment of this interaction of distinct human varieties on the largest and most beneficent lines, making for the development of humanity as a whole.” Olive Schreiner saw a special role for South Africa in contributing to bring about this “interaction of distinct human varieties” and concluded that on the power of South Africans “to solve it regally and heroically depends our greatness.” In Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, South Africa finally found the man who gave the lead to the people of South Africa in all their “human varieties” to resolve the intractable challenge of apartheid regally and heroically. Nelson Mandela was a rare human being. What an honour and privilege it is to have been associated with him. Hamba Kale, Madiba. Go well, and may your succession never end.
Chief Emeka Anyaoku was Commonwealth Secretary-General (1990-2000).