South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero

Three global black leaders-Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and Colin Powell-were widely admired for their grace and natural authority. Three great politicians-Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Kim Dae-jung of South Korea and Czech Republic’s first President after the Velvet Revolution Vaclav Havel-earned unmatched respect and reverence because of their long journeys through prison to top government positions in their respective countries. But Mandela was head and shoulders above them; he was clearly superior to them and others in many respects.

The death of 95-year-old Mandela brings to one’s mind, among other things, the famous remarks of the then US ambassador to the UN in New York, Madeline Albright, who later became the first woman Secretary of State in the history of the US: “[A] tall, handsome man in an African print shirt walked up to me and put his hand. `Hello,’ he said. `I’m Nelson Mandela.’ It was like having George Washington introduce himself. I put my own hand he shook it.” In her memoir “Madam Secretary”, she reflects: “[M]andela was perhaps the globe’s most famous and respected man. He was the embodiment of his nation’s liberation from apartheid and a leader who had taught the world a profound lesson about choosing reconciliation over revenge. Mandela in the mid 1990s also embodied a growing sense of optimism about all of Africa. Predictions were widespread of a new `African Renaissance’ to replace the legacy of colonialism and postcolonial failures. There was substance behind those hopes.”

Mandela’s death also immediately enlivens the images of a profound event of nearly two decades ago that effectively culminated in the first multi-racial democratic elections in 1994, bringing to an end the system of racial segregation that had kept a firm grip on South Africa since 1948. That historic elections were won by the African National Congress (ANC) under Mandela was a historic development that clearly and unambiguously resonated with larger message of Tamer Jacoby: “It is a democracy [that] seems to resonate among secular and religious voters alike”. That Mandela successfully led the peaceful transition from the white-only rule was another historic event that drew a kind of parallel with events in the Soviet Union where perestroika and glasnost introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev led to the largely peaceful unravelling of world’s largest socialist country. That his presence in the Presidency of South Africa as the first black President in the history of that country was a reality that ultimately translated into an even more profound reality 14 years later but in a different continent: the election of the first-ever black President in the history of the US.

In the 1980s, the decade that witnessed one of the worst bouts of violence in South Africa, the United States was having a President (Ronald Reagan) whose policies were in fact seen to be hardly contributing to efforts aimed at bringing an end to apartheid in that country. It was during that decade that the international opinion had turned decisively against the apartheid regime. Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl were the two key European leaders who were also not in favour of sanctions on a country that had been governed by a system of racial segregation enforced through legislations by the National Party governments.

It was during his second term that the US President had to face a huge embarrassment when his veto on a new South Africa sanctions bill was overruled by the Congress. The concessions allowed by Thatcher, the other major Western leader who also did not believe in sanctions, at a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting at Nassau, in fact had emboldened the apartheid regime. An `eminent persons’ group’ formed at the Nassau summit to visit southern Africa witnessed to its utter disbelief widespread raids against the African National Congress (ANC) activists not only in South Africa but also in Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

By 1989, the year that marked the fall of the Iron Curtain, Thatcher and the new US President, George H W Bush, began to favour economic sanctions, the release of Mandela and a negotiated settlement with his ANC. Previously, the Reagan-Thatcher duo had harbored a kind of hostility and animosity towards ANC because of the party’s Marxist moorings. While the two leaders were opposed to the continuing imprisonment of Mandela (but Dick Cheney wanted him to stay in prison forever), they were of the view that capitalism can help improve the lot of black Africans in an effective and meaningful manner.

In her biography “The Downing Street Years,” Thatcher argued passionately: “[O]ne thing which the opponents of apartheid-perhaps because so many of them were socialists-never seemed fully to grasp was that capitalism itself was probably the greatest force for reform and political liberalisation in South Africa, as it was in the communist countries. South Africa could not fulfil its economic potential unless black labour was brought in to the cities and trained. Capitalism in South Africa was already creating a black middle class which would ultimately insist on a share of power.”

Thatcher’s view of ANC was largely shaped by her country’s stance towards this organisation; she had kind of mixed feelings for it. For example, the US and the UK in particular had classified the ANC as a terrorist organisation, but the latter had allowed it to have its office in London from 1978 to 1994. But she was quite clear and vocal in her views in relation to the activities of another major militant organisation of Africa, Mozambique’s RENAMO; she described them as terrorists although many right-wing Americans continued to regard the RENAMO as “anti-communist freedom fighters”.

Last but not least, the fight against racism and racial discrimination was a point of convergence between the two competing superpowers of the Cold War era: the US and the Soviet Union. It is plausibly argued that had the Soviet Union pursued this objective with less vigour and focus, the US might have abandoned the race in this area long ago. It was, therefore, under the principal rival power’s pressure that the then US President, Dwight D Eisenhower, had to send federal troops to Arkansas to forcefully enforce desegregation in this landlocked US state.

The writer is newspaper’s News Editor and Member of the American Economic Association (AEA)