Nelson Mandela: A Very Short Introduction by Elleke Boehmer

Author:Elleke Boehmer
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2008-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

11. Kapitan’s restaurant, Kort Street, downtown Johannesburg. A symbol of his growing cross-cultural affinities, Kapitan’s was one of Mandela’s favourite 1950s lunchtime eateries, where he particularly enjoyed the prawn curry. Kapitan’s is one of the few fixtures of the young Mandela’s urban life that has remained open for business to this day

In 1949 the ANCYL launched a Programme of Action that involved the deployment of unmistakably Gandhist ‘weapons’ – boycott, civil disobedience, peaceful marches, non-co-operation (strategies Gandhi had himself co-operatively ‘borrowed’ from Irish nationalists and British suffragettes). These weapons, it was believed, would not immediately become the targets of violent state repression as would more conventional methods, yet could not be ignored in the way that ANC petitioning had been dismissed in the past. In 1950 the ANC directly co-operated with the SAIC and SACP in organizing a May Day strike (which Mandela did not back), and then a National Day of Protest against the Suppression of Communism Act (which he did). Always concerned that the ANC spearhead any initiative, the June Day of Protest was the first occasion on which he worked alongside Indian comrades and future friends like Ahmed Kathrada, so laying the ground for a new coalition politics. He perceived that the ‘Gandhian model’ did not necessarily demand a full moral commitment but was for an unarmed people principally a tactic ‘to be used as the situation demanded’, most dynamically so in mid-1952.

The massively successful, four-month ANC-SAIC Defiance Campaign was first formally motivated by Sisulu at the 35th annual ANC conference in December 1951, where M.K. Gandhi’s son Manilal was present, in order ‘to force the government to repeal six unjust laws’. Symbolically timed to coincide with the tercentennial celebrations of white settlement, the first protest procession marched on 26 June 1952, led by veteran Gandhist Nana Sita, its objective peacefully to violate the state’s area restrictions and petty apartheid laws. Protesters walked singing into racially segregated residential areas without the requisite permits, and so into gaol. In Drum’s description: ‘Everywhere they marched quietly and did what they were told by the police, singing hymns with their thumbs up. They always informed the police beforehand to make sure they would be arrested.’

As the Campaign’s national volunteer-in-chief, Mandela, with Maulvi Cachalia as his deputy, travelled the country, mainly on trains, recruiting both new and more established constituencies of supporters. For the first time he learned about his own capacity for mass outreach, for persuading protesters to remain consistent in their non-violence (which was fundamental to the Campaign’s success). He came to realize, as had Gandhi on his many railway journeys across India, that the reach of inspirational leadership can be measured through the number and power of the symbolic goals it sets.

The collaborative Defiance Campaign remains a major success in the ANC’s historical annals. Over 8,500 defiers of all races came forward, with a total of 2,354 arrests. Congress was turned into a mass movement based in passive resistance with a burgeoning membership. Cross-nationalist and inter-movement co-operation, and

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