Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
Revolutionary Guerrilla Leader (1960s)
Mandela with Moses Kotane outside the Old Synagogue, Pretoria, on the day when the last of the accused were finally acquitted. © Bailey's African History Archives
In 1959, with the Treason Trial still in progress, the ANC planned an anti-pass laws campaign to begin on 31 March 1960. However, the campaign was pre-empted by the newly formed Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which called for mass anti-pass protests on 21 March 1960. Heavily armed police outside a police station in the small southern Transvaal township of Sharpeville opened fire on a peaceful gathering of protesters killing 69 people and wounding more than 200 others. Most victims were shot in the back as they fled. The Sharpeville Massacre changed the face of South African politics. On 1 April the government declared a state of emergency and Mandela and 2000 political activists across all the liberation movements were detained.
Mandela and the treason trial accused were taken from prison to attend the trial. On 8 April the government banned the ANC and PAC. The banning of the political organisations and the shutting down of space of political protest prompted Mandela to begin thinking very seriously about armed struggle. The discussion to take up arms against the apartheid regime was also being discussed independently by activists detained under the emergency regulations as well as some leaders who had gone underground across all the left anti-apartheid groupings. The underground Communist Party had already smuggled a small group out of the country to receive military training in China.
Mandela and Tambo’s law firm had virtually collapsed and he rarely saw his family because of his semi-clandestine life. In August, when the state of emergency was lifted, Tambo were smuggled out of South Africa to establish an ANC office abroad.
With the release of political detainees Mandela immediately became involved in discussions about convening a national convention. He was made secretary of the All-In Africa Conference organising committee and secretly travelled around the country preparing for the meeting.
The All-In Conference was held in Pietermaritzburg on 22 March 1961 and was attended by 1400 representatives from 145 political, cultural, sports and religious organisations. Mandela's banning order expired on the eve of the conference. Anticipating that it would be renewed, he went into hiding and made a dramatic appearance at the conference, where he made his first public speech since his first banning in 1952. The conference appointed him honorary secretary of the All-In National Action Council, who’s task was to organise a three day stay-at-home on 29, 30 and 31 May 1961 to coincide with the proclamation of South Africa as a Republic on 31 May. This was the last public meeting he addressed for the next 29 years.
Immediately after his speech Mandela went underground. He and Sisulu travelled secretly around the country organising the strike, and Mandela (nicknamed the Black Pimpernel at the time) remained a fugitive for the next 17 months. Mandela called off the stay-at-home protest on its second day after massive police repression of strikers. The failure of this action was important in changing his political thinking and he became more committed to the formation of Umkhonto We Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation) as a military wing of the ANC.
At about this time, Mandela and some of his colleagues concluded that violence in South Africa was inevitable and that it was unreasonable for African leaders to continue with their policy of non-violent protest when the government met their demands with force. The decision to form Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), however, was not made by the ANC itself, but by a small leadership group comprised of Mandela, Sisulu and others representing the ANC and Joe Slovo, representing the underground Communists Party. Mandela was appointed MK's first Commander-in-Chief. The decision to form MK was endorsed by a secrete meeting of the Congress Alliance chaired by Chief Albert Luthuli.
Early in 1962 Mandela travelled under a pseudonym to Botswana and on 11 January made a surprise appearance at the Pan-African Freedom Movement Conference in Addis Ababa. His address to the conference, a few weeks after the first sabotage attacks by Umkhonto we Sizwe, explained and justified the turn to violent action. During this trip he received guerrilla training in Algeria before travelling to London where he met with leaders of British opposition parties. He returned to South Africa in July and he travelled to Stanger in Natal to meet with banned ANC President Albert Luthuli. After visiting friends in Durban, he began driving back with his white friend Cecil Williams to Johannesburg disguised as his chauffeur. On 5 August they were stooped and arrested just outside the Natal midlands town of Howick. The police were informed of Mandela’s movements by an American CIA agent based in Durban. Mandela was tried in Pretoria's Old Synagogue and in November 1962 sentenced to five years' imprisonment for incitement and illegally leaving the country. He was imprisoned at Pretoria Central Prison were he met his old friend and political opponent Robert Sobukwe, the leader of the breakaway PAC. Mandela spent seven months at Pretoria Central Prison before he was transferred to Robben Island.
In July police raided the underground safe house of the South African Communist Party at Lilliesleaf Farm, Rivonia. Among those arrested Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Ahmed Kathrada, Dennis Goldberg and Lionel Bernstein. Police found Mandela's diary of his African tour, documents relating to the manufacture of explosives, and copies of a draft memorandum titled 'Operation Mayibuye' which set out the stages and requirements for a guerrilla war.
The Rivonia trial, as it came to be known, commenced in October 1963. Mandela was brought from Robben Island to stand trial with the other eight accused on charges of sabotage, conspiracy to overthrow the government by revolution, and assisting an armed invasion of South Africa by foreign troops. Mandela and his co-accused were convinced that they would be executed. Mandela, in a statement from the dock at the end of their trial, gave a powerful address in which he explained why he had turned from non-violent protest to armed struggle. ‘I am Prepared to Die’, as the statement became known, received worldwide publicity and enhanced his status as the acknowledged leader of the South African liberation struggle.
