TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/86/86capwoy.5

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 5.9 KB | 115 lines

                                                                                January 5, 1987

NELSON AND WINNIE MANDELA

Two Voices That Will Not be Stilled


Put an inspirational leader in prison, and the movement he leads
may turn into a crusade.  That happened to Mahatma Gandhi in
India and to Martin Luther King Jr. in the U.S.  In 1986 the
mantle of leadership settled heavily upon South Africa's most
famous prisoner, Nelson Mandela.  As the divided country of 5
million whites and 28 million non-whites slipped deeper into
repression and confrontation, he emerged as never before as the
spiritual head of the struggle against apartheid.

Mandela spent the year alone in a spacious cell on the third
floor of a maximum-security wing at Pollsmoor prison, ten miles
south of Cape Town.  And although he has been behind bars since
August 1962 for conspiracy and sabotage, his shadow fell with
stark drama across the racial conflict that in the past year
claimed 1,000 more lives.

The prisoner, now 68, no longer looks like even his most recent
photograph, which was taken 20 years ago.  Still an erect,
broad- shouldered six-footer, he is much thinner, though he
tells visitors that is because he wants to keep his weight down.
 His hair is gray, and his once round face has become elongated
but is still unlined.  A fitness fanatic all his life, Mandela
rises at 3:30 each morning and begins the day with a vigorous
two-hour workout.

To much of the outside world, Mandela's wife Winnie, 52, has
become his surrogate and a symbol of the fight against South
Africa's racial repression.  Only 27 when her husband was sent
to prison, Winnie has been banned, held in solitary confinement
for months at a time, restricted and sent into domestic exile.
 During that time she has developed into a combative leader in
her own right.  Her public appearances regularly set off huge
dancing demonstrations, and at the funerals of blacks killed in
racial unrest, she is often carried on the shoulders of singing
youths.  Winnie claims she only "deputizes" for her husband, and
says "The Afrikaner has made me what I am.  The Afrikaner has
made each and every black politician in this land."

In September, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu was celebrating an
outdoor eucharistic ceremony as part of his enthronement as head
of the Anglican Church in southern Africa, Winnie's car pulled
up outside the stadium in a Cape Town suburb.  Hundreds of
young supporters immediately rushed out of the stands to the
parking lot, surrounded the car and began chanting, "Man-de-la,
Man-de-la." Concluding that she would hopelessly disrupt the
ceremony if she entered the stadium, she drove away.

Until last year no one, not even Nelson Mandela's family knew
in detail his current stands on political issues, because he
was forbidden to discuss them with his rare visitors.  Then the
south African government began seriously to consider releasing
him as a "humanitarian" gesture, fearing he might die in prison
and thereby touch off an uprising in the black townships.  Some
official might have remembered the warning of the Danish
philosopher Soren Kierkegaard:  "The tyrant dies and his rule
ends; the martyr dies and his rule begins."

After the government eased up on the number of visitors and the
rules covering prison discussions, those who saw Mandela came
away impressed, almost awed.  Amazingly, he showed no sign of
bitterness and was fully informed on both domestic and foreign
affairs.  He was a socialist, he said, not a Communist, and his
goal was a nonracial, democratic South Africa.  If the
government would legalize the African National Congress that he
once helped lead and open negotiations, the organization would
call a "truce" in the armed struggle.

During the first half of 1986, Mandela had three visits from
the seven-member Eminent Persons Group, which the Commonwealth
countries sent to South Africa to try to advance a negotiated
settlement. Mandela told the group that he was confident he
could unify the rival black organizations and bring them into
talks with the government. He stressed his commitment to a
nonracial state that would provide security to whites and all
minorities.  Finally, he promised that once he was released, he
and his ANC colleagues would tour the country's black townships,
urging an end to violence and supporting negotiations.

Hope for a settlement, which had almost died, surged on news of
the E.P.G.'s progress.  But those efforts were quickly scuttled
by the South African government,which demanded that the ANC
renounce violence forever and attacked its bases in three
neighboring countries.  The E.P.G. soon concluded that "at
present there is no genuine intention on the part of the SOuth
African government to dismantle apartheid."  A glimmering hope
for racial peace faded away.

Despite that failure, many SOuth africans and foreign observers
regard Mandela as the only person who can prevent a race war in
his country.  "This man is the last hope for a negotiated
solution between blacks and whites," says Helen Suzman, the
strongest antiapartheid voice in white South Africa.

Winnie Mandela also believes her husband offers the government
its last chance to negotiate with moderate black leaders and the
radical young activists who frequently terrorize the townships.
 His is the "last generation of peaceful resistance," she says.
 "Among the younger generation, there is no room whatsoever for
negotiations."

From the small red brick house in the black township of Soweto
that has become the headquarters for her struggle, Winnie
Mandela remains defiant and determined.  "The black man does not
have the word reform in his vocabulary," she says.  "Blacks in
this country are talking about the transition of power to the
majority.  The government will not release Mandela because he
will negotiate only on a transfer of power.  The Afrikaner is
very far from accepting that."

--By Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg