Australia and the World Past and Present

The defendant was being charged with sabotage. At the end of his trial, he would be sentenced to life imprisonment. He would spend a total of 27 years in prison before being released in 1990. He was involved in negotiating the dismantlement of Apartheid and served as the President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. His name was Nelson Mandela.

Mandela’s defense at the Rivonia Trial is not as well known as it should be. In his defense, Mandela lays out out many of the most destructive elements of the Apartheid system. His words are concise and measured. Analytical and without rancor.

Mandela outlined the birth of the African National Congress (ANC) from its creation in 1912. He mentions the Defiance Campaign in 1952 (in which more than 8,500 people defied apartheid laws and were incarcerated). There was the shooting at Sharpeville in 1960, the subsequent State of Emergency and the banning of the ANC.

The ANC had been committed to non-violence since its inception. For 50 years the ANC had sought change through non-violence. There was constant debate within the ANC over whether peaceful methods of pressure would be enough to bring about change to the laws and institutions in South Africa. Mandela himself was often seen as an ‘old timer’ and irrelevant by the younger, more revolutionary prisoners arriving at Robbin Island in the 1980s and 1990s.

By the 1960s, the Cold War was in full swing and Southern Africa was not spared from having to grapple with the prevailing geopolitical climate. The Nationalist-dominated post war governments were stridently anti-communist. There were insurgency groups operating within many of the states in southern Africa.

There were groups fighting the Portuguese colonial governments in Mozambique and Angola.

In what was then Rhodesia, newly-formed opposition groups were agitating for social and political change. Leaders like Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe were founding organisations, confronting the government and would end up in prison by the mid 1960s.

Were these groups nationalist or communist? It is an important distinction. One group is based upon ethnic considerations such as shared history, shared culture and language while the other is based on class. In southern Africa at the time, there was often significant overlap between one’s ethnicity and one’s position in the social and economic hierarchy.

As it happened, many Communist Party members in South Africa were also members of the ANC. This increased the government’s suspicion that the ANC was in fact a communist organisation. On the question of Communism within the ANC, Mandela said;

“The Communist Party sought to emphasize class distinctions whilst the ANC seeks to harmonize them”

In fact, when he was younger, Mandela had moved to expel Communists from the ANC although he was not successful.

Mandela went on to say that he admired British political institutions and the British justice system. He regarded the British Parliament as “the most democratic institution in the world”. He also mentions his admiration for the US system with its separation of powers.

At the end of his Rivonia address, Mandela left the courtroom with the following sentiment;

“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 achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die”