Today is the twentieth anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela. After 27 years of imprisonment he helped negotiate a peaceful transition to majority rule in South Africa, something no one thought was possible. Check out the BBC News slide show.
I’ll never forget that day, as I was on my way back to Africa to facilitate a series of workshops on agroforestry for extension workers. Each one included a three week stay to organize and complete the workshop, usually at a school or training center. I visited Senegal (twice), Mali, and Niger.
I had a layover in Brussels. It’s hard to really sleep on a transatlantic flight from New York. I enjoyed having just enough time, seven or eight hours, to check into a hotel by the airport. When I woke and turned on the TV there was Mandela, walking out of the last prison camp he was held in. He was surrounded by ecstatic, singing supporters and accompanied by his wife Winnie. I learned later that he was determined to leave the prison on his own.
At the time everyone was afraid that South Africa would disintegrate into a bloody civil war. The apartheid government had done its best to hold on to power and to divide the Africans. It created the “independent” homelands and encouraged the Zulus to press for their own independence.
The US government was ambivalent towards Mandela and the African National Congress. In the Cold War period we always preferred a dictatorship, provided they were anti-communist. The Reagan administration was especially opposed to the ANC, It had tied itself into rhetorical knots to encourage the Afrikaners to change; while opposing the ANC.
I remember driving the ANC office in Dakar, Senegal. It was just a small storefront. I always wondered if they really had terrorists there.
Perhaps only Nelson Mandela had the moral courage and convictions to force the change. It was also fortunate that Botha, the last white president, knew that his country had to change and was willing to let it happen.
There have been many books written about Mandela and the ANC, not least of which is his own autobiography. I am proud to say that I witnessed, at least through television, and lived through the time of that long walk out of prison into freedom in 1990!