His Eloquent Silence Speaks to the Future

By William E. Smith

By any measure, he is an unlikely leader in today's world. Imprisoned since 1962 on a variety of charges, including conspiracy and sabotage, he has taken no active part in fomenting the black rage that in 1985 spread like a brush fire in the veld, leading to the deaths of more than 850 South Africans, almost all of them nonwhite. His words cannot be legally published in the South African press. Only a few intimates even know what he looks like now; he has not been photographed since 1965. Yet from his cell in Pollsmoor Prison near Cape Town, Nelson Mandela, 67, head of the outlawed African National Congress, has become an almost messianic figure, incarnating the aspirations of South Africa's 23.9 million blacks.

From the teeming settlements of the Eastern Cape to the sprawling townships around Johannesburg and on to the outskirts of Cape Town, angry blacks have invoked Mandela's name in demanding an end to the government policies of racial separation. The U.S., Britain, France and scores of other governments have called for Mandela's release as a sign that the white minority government is serious about negotiating with the black majority. Yet in February, when State President P.W. Botha offered to free him if he would forswear political violence, Mandela refused, saying, "Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts."

If Botha could afford to ignore the demands for Mandela's unconditional release, it was because, for all the anger and unrest, he knew that racial revolution was not imminent: the armed forces and police retain overwhelming power. In July the Botha government imposed a state of emergency in many black districts, sending in waves of police to restore order, break up public meetings, block processions and frighten protesters into submission. Then it effectively banned journalists from covering the unrest in the townships, in the futile hope that the protests would die when the images faded from the world's television screens.

In Mandela's enforced absence, other leaders spoke out for the country's blacks. Most prominent among them was Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu of Johannesburg, the 1984 Nobel laureate, who took an important role in the drive to control the savagery of some of the violence. In July he saved the life of a black man suspected of being a police informant, after an angry mob had seized the man, set his car ablaze and tried to throw him into the flames. Tutu scolded a crowd of 30,000, threatening to "pack up and leave this beautiful country that I love so passionately and so deeply." Privately, he later said, "I am really scared. We are building up an incredible legacy of hatred . . . How long can we restrain the people?"

In the course of the year, the Botha government made a few concessions. It repealed the laws forbidding mixed marriage and sexual relations between whites and nonwhites. It promised that blacks living in urban areas would be entitled to some sort of South African citizenship (instead of being "citizens" merely of poor but ostensibly "independent" homelands). It also said it would consider scrapping the hated pass laws controlling the movement of blacks. These steps were notable departures from doctrinaire apartheid, but to millions of angry and unemployed young blacks in the townships, they were too little and too late.

Mandela's most direct link to his black countrymen is his strong-willed wife Winnie, 51, who has defied government orders banishing her to a remote region of the country. Like Nelson, she is forbidden by law to speak in public. But in December, Winnie Mandela dramatically addressed a crowd of 8,000 that had gathered for a funeral. "As we have had to bury our children today, so shall the blood of these heroes be avenged," she told the mourners. "We are here today as testimony to the fact that the future of the country lies in black hands." --By William E. Smith