Apartheid's Long Slow Death - Part 1
Part 1 – Exile and Imprisonment
Apartheid, an Afrikaner word literally meaning ‘apart-hood’, and generally translated as ‘separateness’, was introduced into law in 1948. This racist policy essentially separated South Africa into two countries, one for whites and one for blacks, and was brought into law in 1948, to deal with an influx of black African workers in the wake of WWII. The idea or institution of apartheid, however, was much older, with more or less informal systems of segregation being in place since the mid 1600s.
Over the centuries leading into modern times, there had been various movements of protest and resistance, many originating from churches and Enlightenment liberals, but it could be said that it wasn’t until the 20th century when serious and coordinated resistance, bolstered by broad international support, emerged.
Internally, the disenfranchisement of black voters, forced removals and slum clearances, endemic political and racial violence, including massacres of peaceful protestors, helped to create the ecosystem of protest movements and, eventually, armed resistance, joined by one Nelson Mandela. Mandela, initially committed to peaceful protest, Mandela quickly became dissatisfied with the lack of progress and embarked on a program of sabotage. He was eventually arrested in 1962 and convicted of terrorism offences in 1964. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The armed faction that Mandela had founded was a diverse group, and the white members of his cadre were mostly able to escape, often by taking advantage of endemic corruption to bribe their way out of South Africa. Mandela, however, was not so lucky, and he was imprisoned on Robben Island, 11 kms off the mainland, surrounded by shark infested waters – a sort of South African Alcatraz. The Afrikaner dominated government hoped that Mandela, locked away on this remote island, would be forgotten while they continued their ghastly and unsustainable policy of institutionalised racism and brutality.
In the meantime his wife, Winnie Mandela, continued with her anti-apartheid activism, eventually becOrange Free State called Brandfort in 1977. It’s difficult to imagine how an African nationalist activist would have fit in with the almost entirely white Afrikaans community of Brandfort. Winnie, contemptuous of the restrictions placed on her, would dress flamboyantly and pointedly make use of ‘whites only’ facilities such as public phones, as well as ignoring the separate black and coloured entrances of public buildings.
Given her position and activities, she needed a lawyer. Brandfort really only boasted one lawyer, a man named Piet De Waal. De Waal was firmly entrenched in the white establishment, being a prominent citizen and personal friend of the MP Hendrik Coetsee. Obliged by the Law Society to accept Winne Mandela as a client, despite his serious misgivings, he initially made it very clear that he was taking her on purely through obligation. He was especially careful to explain this to Coetsee, with whom he’d been at university, as he felt that association with the Mandelas and their movement might compromise his social position.
Initially, Winnie and her lawyer would meet at the one room shack in which she was forced to live, but Piet quickly ruled this out of hand as unacceptable, especially as the law placed a whole host of ridiculous restrictions on her, including a ban on her meeting with any more than one other person. They took to meeting at the De Waal family home, where Winnie met and became firm friends with his wife, Adele. Eventually, the force of her personality won over De Waal himself, and they too became friends.
Over the course of their friendship, De Waal became a key advocate and helper for Winnie, ensuring that she met key contacts from both South Africa and abroad, including, crucially, Katharine Graham, whose family owned a little paper called The Washington Post. By the ‘80s, apartheid had become an international scandal, with countries all over the world calling on South Africa to end its racist policies, and with De Waal himself becoming more and more personally uncomfortable with it.
De Waal’s friend Coetsee became the Minister of Justice, Police, and Prisons in October of 1980. He entered an administration that was increasingly beleaguered on the international stage because of apartheid, as well as racked by internal resistance and the violence this caused. So when De Waal cautiously broached the subject of his doubts about apartheid, he found Coetsee in a receptive state of mind. De Waal explained that the banishment of Winnie Mandela and the incarceration of her husband Nelson, far from containing the troubles that had begun brewing all those years ago, was in fact achieving nothing positive for South Africa. And it was De Waal who pointed out, repeatedly, that since his friend was Minister for prisons, he had a great opportunity to have a chat with Nelson Mandela.
Next time, we’ll look at how that ‘chat’ actually went.