Mandela meets the press: Monitor coverage after his prison years
When Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years in prison in 1990 as a wiry and gray 71-year-old, he became the darling of the international press, a one-man representation of both the hope and challenges bound up in South Africa’s transition.
Over the next several years, as he transitioned from freedom fighter to president to retired statesman, Mr. Mandela developed an unusually warm and forthcoming relationship with the news media, including a fondness for The Christian Science Monitor, which he sometimes had access to and read in prison. He also came to know Monitor correspondents.
“Time stood still during the hour in which we waited for Mandela,” Monitor reporter John Battersby wrote of the crackling excitement among the journalists awaiting his release from prison on Feb. 11, 1990. “But when the moment arrived and I saw the tall figure of Mandela striding toward the media throng, I lost all sense of time and ego and walked toward him with a broad smile. He noticed me, smiled back, and walked up to shake my hand.”
Five months later, on a trip to the United States, Mandela broke away from his planned schedule to visit to the Monitor’s headquarters in Boston.
"The Christian Science Monitor was well known to me during my 27 years in prison," he told Monitor reporters and editors gathered on the plaza outside the newsroom that day. "It continues to give me hope and confidence for the world's future."
Indeed, in the years to come, the paper was front and center at many of the most important events in the Mandela presidency, capturing snapshots of this dramatic period in South African history. Here is a sample of that coverage.
1.'An air of hope and expectation': Mandela emerges from prison
Nelson Mandela visits the Christian Science Church plaza in this 1990 file photo.
(Peter Main/The Christian Science Monitor/FILE)
Mandela's release from prison in February 1990 marked the beginning of a new and still uncertain era in South Africa. Although the white government had ended its ban on anti-apartheid political organizing and begun speaking with the movement's leaders, no one yet knew how far the reforms would reach. Meanwhile, political violence still gripped much of the country.
Mandela stepped into that fray as a mediator and moral authority, handed the unenviable task of working as a negotiator in a country that hoped to avoid more bloodshed or a civil war.
"Today, the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future," he told the massive crowd who came to greet him at the Cape Town City Hall the day he was released. "It has to be ended by our decisive mass action."
Two days later, he held his first public rally, a massive gathering at a soccer stadium in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. As the Monitor reported that day:
An air of hope and expectation permeates this sprawling township – the home of 2 million black South Africans.
About 140,000 people ... packed Soweto's Soccer City stadium on Tuesday to hear Mr. Mandela's first address to the people of Johannesburg.
For the supporters of the African National Congress (ANC), it was a triumphant moment. But beyond ANC ranks, hundreds of thousands of South Africans – including many whites – were also looking to Mandela for a way out of the quagmire of racial conflict and violence....
"It is discipline and loyalty that will liberate us," he told the biggest political rally in the country's history.... "It is only disciplined mass action that assures us the victory we seek."
Three days later, Monitor correspondent John Battersby sat face-to-face with Mandela in a tiny garden behind his Soweto home to discuss his plan for the country's future. In no uncertain terms, Mandela made clear that despite his release, the African National Congress and other liberation organizations would not end their armed struggled against apartheid until the government agreed to their terms.
"You must be careful of being more worried about the violence that comes from the oppressed and saying little – or nothing at all – about the violence that comes from the government," he said. "They [the government] have closed all channels of communication. They have intensified the pressures. What does the world expect us to do in that situation?"
2.'The greatest hero in black America since MLK': Mandela visits the United States
Nelson Mandela visits the Christian Science Church plaza in this 1990 file photo.
(Peter Main/The Christian Science Monitor/FILE)
After Mandela's release from prison, he began a relentless global public relations campaign for the South African freedom movement, circling the globe in an effort to convince world leaders that its guerillas and revolutionaries were ready for the far more buttoned-up task of ruling a nation. In June 1990, he traveled to the US for a flurry of fundraisers, TV appearances, and meetings with government officials. As Monitor reports explained:
In sweeping through Western nations only months after his release from prison, Mandela is likely seeking to consolidate the role of the African National Congress as the political counterweight to [the regime of white President F.W.] de Klerk. The ANC "now has to perform like a legitimate political party. Mandela needs support just like Gorbachev, and going abroad is a way to get it," says Thomas Mahoney, a South Africa expert at Vanderbilt University.
One of Mandela's most crucial diplomatic tasks was to convince US leaders that despite the white government's preliminary moves towards ending apartheid – Mandela's release among them – they should not yet lift economic sanctions against the country.
A confrontation over sanctions could lie in the future however, with the Bush administration urging relaxation against a Congress that has yet to be impressed by Mr. de Klerk's moves.
Mandela's visit is likely to only solidify feeling in Congress against the de Klerk government. The fight against apartheid has penetrated into American domestic politics perhaps more than any other foreign-policy issue, and Mandela himself has become the greatest hero in black America since Martin Luther King Jr.
Not everyone in the US, however, was ready to hail Mandela as a hero.
Critics agree Mandela is an historic figure, but caution that among other things he has yet to repudiate the use of violence against civilians, has hailed South Africa's Communist Party, and is part of an organization involved in black-on-black tribal violence.
"Americans should praise Mandela for his lifelong role in opposing apartheid, but they should not think that he alone holds the keys to a democratic South Africa," writes Michael Johns, a Heritage Foundation policy analyst.
3.Avoiding 'vengeful witch hunts': Mandela and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Nelson Mandela visits the Christian Science Church plaza in this 1990 file photo.
(Peter Main/The Christian Science Monitor/FILE)
When Mandela became the president of South Africa in 1994, one of the most daunting tasks before him was how to deal with those who had carried out apartheid's most heinous crimes. Rather than advocate harsh justice, or retribution and punishment however, he worked towards national reconciliation, establishing a commission to take testimony and grant amnesty to those who confessed to politically-motivated violence. As Monitor reporter Judith Matloff wrote, Mandela sought to "avoid any vengeful witch hunts for the three decades of human rights abuses during apartheid."
A new body, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is entrusted with excavating the thousands of stories of torture and murder so South Africans can put the past to rest. Those who confess and prove their actions were politically motivated will be given amnesty.
It is a novel approach for a country where political hatreds have been traditionally settled with the gun or machete.
"I personally have forgiven those who ... tried to take my life," [Justice Minister Dullah] Omar says. "The healing process means that we South Africans should come clean ... but be generous."
The Commission would eventually strike close to home for Mandela when his ex-wife, former anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, appeared before the panel to answer questions about her involvement in a string of murders of supposed turncoats within the anti-apartheid movement during the 1980s. In November 1997, the Monitor reported,
This week in Johannesburg, the woman whose fans still call her "the mother of the nation" will have to play to a much tougher hometown crowd. Hundreds of witnesses, victims, and members of the public, together with innumerable hordes of lawyers and reporters, will pack into the long, airless hall of the Johannesburg Institute for Social Services.
There, for the next five days, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission ... will grill Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela over a string of allegations including kidnapping, battery, and involvement in at least 13 murders. About 30 witnesses, including senior members of her own African National Congress (ANC), are expected to implicate the divorced wife of President Nelson Mandela in a wave of killings and assaults carried out by members of the Mandela United Football Club. The club, which served as de facto bodyguards, was a group of youths who lived at her Soweto mansion in the late 1980s.
The commission eventually heard more than 7,000 testimonies before completing its work in July 1998.
4.'We have to normalize': Mandela retires
Nelson Mandela visits the Christian Science Church plaza in this 1990 file photo.
(Peter Main/The Christian Science Monitor/FILE)
In 1999, Mandela made history again, this time by stepping down after only one term as president. The decision set the stage for a second peaceful transition in South Africa, from one democratically elected government to another. As Monitor writer John Battersby wrote of his presidency,
Mandela's unique style in reaching out to whites while stressing the need for black empowerment has been key to a relatively peaceful transition from apartheid to black majority rule.
In balancing these potentially explosive forces, Mandela has laid the foundation for the next stage of the transition - a real transfer of economic power to blacks and a more rapid Africanization of the civil service and other institutions.
But the end of his presidency also marked a moment of crisis for Mandela the man, Battersby wrote.
The question that has always fascinated me is: Who is Nelson Mandela? I once was alone with him on his private jet to Durban. After gazing out the window for a time, he began to speak about himself with a sense of detachment. It was as though he, too, wanted to know who this Nelson Mandela was, and what would happen to him when he relinquished his post as president of the country and the ANC.
For South Africa too, it was a fraught moment. "Nelson Mandela is a saint. But in a weird sense, it will be a relief when Mandela leaves," a political analyst told the Monitor in 1999. "For too long we have been treated as this abnormal nation with this great, moral leader, this icon. But we have to normalize."
