Whatever the final judgment of history may be on apartheid and its aftermath, it is certainly true that Nelson #Mandela's
extraordinary lack of bitterness towards his jailers, and towards all
his erstwhile oppressors, made a decisive difference. South Africa is
not the only conflict zone where giant acts of pardon have affected
history http://econ.st/19EvePw
Sign
language experts say the interpreter used at the memorial for Nelson
Mandela was an impostor who made a “total mockery of the language.”
曼德拉 | 1918-2013
解放者曼德拉：從囚徒到總統
比爾·凱勒 2013年12月06日
納爾遜·曼德拉，把南非從白人少數統治下解放出來的領導者、南非第一位黑人總統、尊嚴與剋制的國際象徵，周四離世，享年95歲。
納爾遜·曼德拉(Nelson Mandela)，這位把南非從白人少數統治下解放出來的領導者、南非第一位黑人總統、尊嚴與剋制的國際象徵，周四離世。享年95歲。
南非總統雅各布·祖馬(Jacob Zuma)宣布了曼德拉的死訊。
長期以來，曼德拉一直明確表示他希望悄然離世，然而他在比
勒陀利亞(Pretoria)一家醫院的最後幾周卻充滿了喧囂，既有家庭成員的爭吵、新聞媒體的追逐、尋求公眾注意的政客的叫嚷，也有南非舉國上下的愛戴
與痛失感的流露。民眾的守夜活動甚至讓奧巴馬總統對該國的訪問黯然失色。奧巴馬向曼德拉獻上了敬意，但決定不去打擾這位行將辭世的人，這位奧巴馬眼裡的英
雄。
按照曼德拉的遺願，他將被安葬在養育他長大的庫努村(Qunu)。根據法庭裁決，他的三個已故子女的遺骸已於7月4日移葬在那裡，使一樁廣受媒體報道的家庭糾紛得以解決。
曼德拉對自由的追求，讓他從部落酋長的宮廷走出來，參加到
地下解放運動中，也在監獄採石場度過許多時光，最後走進了非洲最富有國家的總統府。與許多他被視為志趣相投的成功革命家不同，他婉拒了第二個總統任期，高
高興興地把權力交給了選舉出來的自己的繼任者。南非雖然仍面臨著犯罪率高、貧窮、腐敗與疾病等各種問題，但作為一個民主國家，它在世界上受到尊重，也處於
顯著的和平狀態。
人們最常問的有關曼德拉的一個問題是：在白人有組織地凌辱了他的人民、虐待和謀殺了他的許多朋友，並將他囚禁獄中長達27年後，他是如何能如此堅定地不懷怨恨？
當他終於贏得了執政的機會後，他組建的政府是不同種族和信
仰的不大可能的融合體，其中囊括了許多以往壓迫過他的人。就任總統時，他邀請了一名看守過自己的白人獄警出席他的就職典禮。曼德拉克服了對前任白人總統德
克勒克(F. W. de Klerk)的個人疑慮乃至厭惡，與他分享了權力與諾貝爾和平獎。
在1994年至1999年擔任總統期間，他花了大量精力去緩和黑人選民的怨恨，同時讓白人放心他們不會遭到報復。
曼德拉之所以毫無怨恨，至少部分原因在於，他在革命家和道義異見者中屬於極其罕見的那種：他是一個能力卓越的政治家，願意在政治上作出讓步，不喜歡教條主義。
2007年，《紐約時報》為撰寫這個訃告而採訪曼德拉時曾問他，在遭受了如此野蠻的折磨後，他如何能夠抑制仇恨？他幾乎不屑一顧地回答說，仇恨攪亂人的頭腦。它妨礙戰略的制定與實施。一個領導者承擔不起仇恨的代價。
除了年輕時曾短暫地主張過黑人民族主義外，他似乎真誠地超越了撕裂南非的種族激情。曾與他共過事的一些人說，這種顯而易見的寬宏大度對他來得非常自然，因為他一直把自己看作優於迫害他的人。
在擔任南非總統的五年中，曼德拉雖然在海外仍保持着聖人的形象，他的光環卻在國內變得有些黯淡。他勉強地將南非分裂的民眾集結在一起，並努力將派系林立的解放運動轉變為一個可以信賴的政府。
一些黑人，包括在怨氣最大的黑人群眾中擁有很多追隨者的前
妻溫妮·馬迪基澤拉·曼德拉(Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela)，抱怨他在縮小占人口多數的貧困黑人與占人口少數的富裕白人之間的巨大差距上行動太慢。一些白人則說，他沒能控制
犯罪、腐敗和任人唯親問題。一些黑人離開了政府去賺錢；一些白人則帶着資本和知識移民他國。
的確，曼德拉對執政的具體細節變得不那麼上心，將日常事務交給他的副手塔博·姆貝基(Thabo Mbeki)，後者在1999年接替他成為總統。
但是，他的國人中很少有人懷疑，如果沒有他家長式的權威和政治上的精明，南非在發展成為一個不完善的民主國家前，可能早就陷入內戰。
在離開總統職位後，曼德拉運用他的道義聲望在非洲大陸其它地方幫助締結和平，推動更多的外國投資。
一個」鬧事分子」的崛起
曼德拉在服無期徒刑期多年後受到世界注意，成為反種族隔離（apartheid，該詞在南非荷蘭語中的意思是「分開」）的象徵。它是一個以種族劃分選區的系統，由此剝奪黑人的公民地位，把他們限制在類似保留地那樣的「家園」和城鎮里。
大約1980年左右，反種族隔離運動中最重要的組織、非洲
國民大會(African National
Congress)的流亡領導人決定，這位能言善辯的年輕律師是其運動的完美英雄，他能讓非國大反種族隔離運動變得人性化，那種制度讓80%的南非人對自
己的事務沒有發言權。已經在南非國內作為解放運動聖歌的《釋放曼德拉》，成了上英國流行榜的歌曲。展示曼德拉麵孔的牌子雨後春筍般地出現在美國學生的集會
上，學生們集會要求對南非種族隔離政權實行貿易制裁。
曼德拉在1994年出版的自傳《漫漫自由路》(Long
Walk to
Freedom)中對此表達了些許驚異，他說這些人都不知道我到底是誰，就把我變成了世界上最出名的政治犯。也許是出於頑皮的幽默，他聲稱有人告訴他，
當"釋放曼德拉"(Free Mandela)的海報出現在倫敦時，許多年輕的支持者以為「釋放」(Free)是他的教名。
不過在南非，以及在國外那些更了解南非事務的人當中，納爾遜·曼德拉已是一個值得重視的名字。
他於1918年7月18日出生於一個只有牛、玉米和泥屋的
小村莊姆維索(Mvezo)，姆維索位於當時屬於英國保護地的特蘭斯凱(Transkei)的丘陵地區。他的本名叫羅利赫拉赫拉·曼德拉
(Rolihlahla
Mandela)，他喜歡指出，這個名翻譯成口語就是「鬧事分子」的意思。根據他的自傳，他七歲上學時，一位老師給他取了如今這個人們都知道的英文名。他
的父親葛德拉·漢瑞·孟伐肯伊斯瓦(Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa)是科薩族分支騰布人的一個部落酋長。
納爾遜還是嬰兒時，他的父親因為不順從被一位英國地方長官剝奪了酋長地位，作為兒子的他十分情願地聲稱，他繼承了父親驕傲而固執的脾氣。
九年後，納爾遜的父親去世，他被騰布人最高酋長接收到家中，不是作為權力的繼承人，而是得以觀察權力的運作。他後來成為一個老成持重且西化的人，但他的一些最密切的朋友總是將他君王般的自信以及他偶爾表現出來的專斷行為歸結於他在一個王族家庭長大的經歷。
曼德拉似乎從來沒有懷疑過他與任何人都平等的地位。這與許
多南非黑人不同，他們的信心被官方世代宣稱的白人優越論所摧毀。與曼德拉囚禁在同一監獄、屬於他身邊圈子的艾哈邁德·卡特拉達(Ahmed
Kathrada)說，「關於曼德拉，你要記住的第一點是，他來自一個王族家庭。這總是給了他一種力量。」
曼德拉在自傳中回憶偷聽部落理事會沒完沒了的討論、以尋求共識的情景。他注意到，酋長的工作「就像一個牧羊人」。
「他跟在羊群的後面，」曼德拉繼續寫道，「讓腿腳最靈便的走在最前面，於是乎其他人跟上來，他們都沒有意識到他們一直被牧羊人從後面引導着。」
這後來也成為曼德拉作為領導人和總統的風格。
曼德拉一生中都與騰布部落王族家庭保持了密切關係，這個部落構成重要的特蘭斯凱(Transkei)地區的一個人口眾多、具有影響力的選區。他在那裡的背景賦予了他對南非部落政治的有益洞察力。
最重要的是，這種背景幫助他處理人口眾多的祖魯族內部致命
的分裂 。這一分裂的根源在於非國大與因卡塔自由黨(Inkatha Freedom
Party)之間的權力鬥爭。雖然許多非國大領導人妖魔化了因卡塔領導人曼戈蘇圖·布特萊齊(Mangosuthu
Buthelezi)，曼德拉還是把他納入新的團結政府，並最終平息了暴力。
曼德拉在一次採訪中解釋說，維持祖魯民族和平的秘訣其實很簡單：布特萊齊是在祖魯王室中長大的，但他是個侄子，不在直接繼承人之列，這使得他對自己的地位有着深痛的不安全感。解決辦法就是去愛他，直到他接受你。
加入運動
在衛理教會傳教士學校和海爾堡大學(the
University College of Fort
Hare)，曼德拉的視野開始拓寬。海爾堡大學當時是南非唯一的黑人住宿學院。曼德拉在後來的一次採訪中說，他進大學時仍視自己首先為科薩人，畢業的時候
他則具備了更廣闊的非洲視野。
在海爾堡大學學習法律期間，他結識了另一位未來解放運動領導人奧利弗·坦博(Oliver Tambo)。他們兩人1940年因為一次學生抗議而被停學，之後被遣送回家，差點被開除。許多年後，曼德拉回憶起這件事來時說，出於一個次要原則而不願屈服，其實是「愚蠢」的。
回到村裡後，曼德拉發現他的家人給他選了一個新娘。他對那位女子不感興趣，對一生從事部落管理事務更加不感興趣，於是他逃離家鄉，去了黑人聚集的都市索維托(Soweto)。當時大批年輕黑人背井離鄉，到約翰內斯堡(Johannesburg)附近的金礦工作。
在索維托，他被人介紹給了房地產商、在非國大中十分活躍的沃爾特·西蘇魯(Walter Sisulu)。西蘇魯在一次訪談中回憶道，他看到這個高個子、帶着貴族氣質、眼中透着自信的年輕人，立馬感到他的祈願靈驗了。
很快，曼德拉以其能贏得懷疑者信任的能力，令其他活躍分子刮目相看。西蘇魯說，「他的起點總是，『不管怎樣，我都要說服這個人』。這是他的天賦。不管接觸什麼人，不管去哪裡，他都帶着這種自信。就連他沒有充分的理由時，他也能讓自己確信他有。」
雖然從未完成法律學位，但是曼德拉與坦博開設了南非第一家黑人律師事務所。他還學習業餘拳擊，天不亮就起來去跑長訓練。又高又瘦的曼德拉還有點虛榮。他的着裝完美無暇，他對時裝的注意多年後將顯現在成為他個人標誌的優雅、鮮亮、寬鬆的非洲布衫上。
不耐煩非國大長者的看似無能，曼德拉、塔博、西蘇魯和其他不安分的激進者組織了非國大青年團。他們發表了一份宣言，其泛非洲民族主義之強烈，令他們的一些非黑人同情者感到不舒服。
非洲主義還是非種族主義：在當時的解放思考中，這是最大的分歧所在。黑人覺醒運動（其最著名的烈士是史蒂夫·比科[Steve Biko]）認為，在非洲人能夠在一個多種族社會佔一席地位之前，必須首先重建他們的信心與責任感。
有一段時間，曼德拉也被這種自我滿足說所吸引。
他在自傳中寫道，「我對白人、而不是對種族主義感到憤怒。我雖然不準備把白人都扔進大海里，但我會高興地看到他登上自己的汽輪，自願地離開非洲大陸。」
由於堅信黑人應該自己解放自己，他加入朋友的行列，衝擊了共產黨的會議，因為他把共產主義視為舶來品，不是非洲的意識形態，還有一段時間，他堅持非國大與印度人以及混種人的政治運動保持距離。
「這是那時候年輕人中通行的做法」，西蘇魯多年後說。但他說，曼德拉從來不是「一個極端民族主義者」，也不是任何一種教條的空想家。他是個行動者。
他也已經是一位大膽的自信者。
與曼德拉在非國大青年團一起工作過的喬·馬修斯（Joe Matthews，他後成為對手因卡塔運動中一個溫和的聲音）1952年曾在一次正式晚宴上聽過曼德拉講話，馬修斯預言，他將會成為自由南非的首任總統，這在當時的聽眾看來相當傲慢。
「他不是個理論家，而是個行動者，」馬修斯在接受電視記錄片節目「前線」的採訪時說。「他是個幹事的人，他是個隨時準備第一個志願去做任何危險或困難之事的人。」
成立青年團五年後，這些年輕一代的反叛者策劃從老一代人手中取得了非國大領導權。
在索維托擔任年輕律師的年代，曼德拉與年輕的護士伊芙琳·
恩托科·梅思(Evelyn Ntoko
Mase)結了婚，他們一共生了四個孩子，其中一個女兒只活了九個月。然而，他的政治活動，使得他與家人聚少離多。還有一個因素加劇了他們的緊張關係，那
是他的妻子加入了耶和華證人會(Jehovah』s Witnesses)。這個教派禁止會員以任何方式參與政治。他們的婚姻越來越冷淡，最後突然終結。
「他說，『伊芙琳，我感到我對你不再有愛了，』」他的第一任妻子多年後在一部記錄片訪談中回憶說。「我把孩子和房子都給你。」
之後不久，一位朋友介紹他認識了諾查莫·溫妮芙里德·馬迪
基澤拉(Nomzamo Winifred
Madikizela)，一個比他小16歲、風采出眾、意志倔強的醫療社會工作者。曼德拉對她一見鍾情，在他們首次約會時就宣布要娶她。1958年他娶了
她，當時他和其他幾位反種族隔離的活動分子正因叛國罪接受馬拉松式的審判。他的第二次婚姻是一場動蕩不寧的結合，他們生了兩個女兒，也在全國的矚目之下，
上演了一場被迫分居、獻身、悔恨、乃至敵對的戲劇。
轉向激進
1960年，警察在一個名叫夏普維爾(Sharpeville)的小鎮槍殺了69名和平抗議者，將非暴力解放運動的耐心推至極限。一年後，曼德拉領導非國大走上了武裝反叛的新道路。
對曼德拉來說，這是個突然的轉變，因為不久前他剛宣布，非暴力是非國大不可違背的一項原則。他後來解釋說，我們不是出於道義原則、而是出於戰略才發誓不以牙還牙；使用一個無效的武器沒有任何道義原則可言。」
以切·格瓦拉(Che Guevara)的《游擊戰》為課本，曼德拉成為解放軍的首位司令。這支軍隊的人馬雜七雜八，但卻有一個顯赫的名字：「民族之矛」(Umkhonto we Sizwe)。
儘管曼德拉一生都否認，但有令人信服的證據表明，大約是在
這時，他短暫地加入過南非共產黨，後者是非國大轉向武裝抵抗的夥伴。曼德拉加入共產黨，據信是為了利用共產黨與那些願意為暴力抵抗提供資助的共產黨國家的
關係。英國歷史學家史蒂芬·艾利斯(Stephen
Ellis)2011年發現的一份共產黨秘密會議記錄中，提到了曼德拉的黨員身份。他說，曼德拉「不是真正地改變了信仰；那只是一種投機行為」。
曼德拉的「武裝鬥爭」嘗試多少有點被神話了。在他作為從事
驚險活動的不法之徒的那幾個月里，媒體稱他為「黑花俠」(The Black
Pimpernel)。然而，儘管他接受了游擊戰訓練，並竭力為民族之矛尋找武器來源，他卻從來沒有參加過任何真正的戰鬥。非國大的武裝活動基本上僅限於
埋地雷，炸電站，還偶爾有過針對平民的恐怖主義活動。
在南非舉行了首次自由選舉後，民族之矛承認在自己的訓練營地發生過踐踏人權的事件，其聲望因此受到損害。不過並沒有證據顯示曼德拉個人被牽連到這些事情中。
審判期間，傳奇成形
南非統治者決意要讓曼德拉及其同志們失去戰鬥力。1956
年，當局以叛國罪指控逮捕了他和另外幾十名異見者。但是由於檢方的失誤，曼德拉被判無罪。之後他轉入地下。政府再次抓獲了他，指控他煽動罷工以及沒有護照
而試圖出國。庭審的第一天，他穿着科薩人傳統的豹皮斗篷進入法庭，意在顯示他是一個踏入白人轄區的非洲人。曼德拉的傳奇從此得以一步成形。
那次審判的結果是，他獲刑三年，但這只是主要事件的前奏。
接下來，曼德拉和另外八名非國大領導人被指控破壞並策劃推翻國家，兩項指控均為死罪。這次審判被稱為瑞佛尼亞審判(Rivonia
Trial)，瑞佛尼亞是被告人策划行動的農莊名字，當局在那裡找到了大量罪證文件，其中許多為曼德拉手書，概述暴力推翻種族隔離政權的理由與行動方案。
被告人明確知道他們將被定罪，在曼德拉的建議下，他們把庭審變成了一場道義戲劇，在世界輿論法庭上為自己辯白。他們承認組織了一支解放軍，從事了破壞活動，他們試圖為這些行動提供政治依據。在他們之間他們達成一致，即使被判絞刑，出於原則，他們將拒絕上訴。
曼德拉在法庭上發表了四個小時的開庭辯護演說。這是他畢生最慷慨陳詞的演說之一，他的授權傳記作者安東尼·桑普森(Anthony Sampson)認為，這個演說不僅確立了他作為非國大領袖的地位，而且奠定了他作為國際反種族隔離運動領導人的地位。
曼德拉描述了他從被黑人民族主義所誘惑、到熱心多種族政治
的個人演化過程。他承認自己是民族之矛的指揮官，但他堅稱，只是在非暴力抵抗無效的情況下才轉向暴力的。他承認與共產黨人結盟——在那個談虎色變的冷戰時
代，這是起訴方最有力的一個指控——但他將其比作丘吉爾與斯大林建立的反對希特拉的合作。
在結束語中，他陳述了自己的信念，他的這段話作為一段最精彩的雄辯留在南非的歷史上。
他在法庭上說，「我為反對白人統治而鬥爭，也為反對黑人統治而鬥爭。我懷有一個建立民主和自由社會的美好理想，在這個社會裡，人人和睦相處，機會均等。我希望為這一理想而生存，並去實現它。但是我的上天，如果需要，我也準備為這個理想獻出生命。」
國內外自由人士（聯合國大會幾乎全體一致投票）強烈要求免被告人死刑，在這種巨大壓力下，法官宣布一人無罪，判處其他人無期徒刑。
監獄裡的教育
曼德拉鐐銬加身，被押上一艘通往羅賓島(Robben Island)監獄的渡輪時，他44歲，他獲得釋放時，將已是71歲的老人。
羅賓島位於開普敦外海七英里，周圍水域有很多鯊魚，在數百年的歷史中，那裡曾是海軍基地、精神病醫院以及麻風病隔離區，但最出名的是監獄。對曼德拉和其他犯人來說，監獄之旅開始於令人作嘔的渡輪上，看守們對着通風口往甲板下關犯人的船倉撒尿，以此尋開心。
羅賓島上的日常生活包括關禁閉、厭倦無聊，以及對犯人的卑劣侮辱，也包括常常發生的抵抗。白天，犯人們被帶到一個石灰石採石場勞動，採石塵粉堵塞了他們的淚腺。
但是在那個動蕩的時代，監獄生活在某些方面反而不如外面的生活那樣艱難。對曼德拉以及許多黑人解放運動的領導人來說，羅賓島是一座大學。他們在採石場的砸石聲中悄聲對話，在牢房之間傳遞密密麻麻地寫在紙條上的辯論，這些犯人們討論的話題無所不及，從馬克思主義到割包皮。
曼德拉學會了白人統治者使用的南非荷蘭語(Afrikaans)，還督促其他獄友也來學。
他磨練了自己作為領導者、談判者和勸導者的技能。不僅在犯人不同的派系當中，而且在一些白人獄官眼裡，他的魅力和他鐵一般的意志都不可抗拒。他說監獄經歷教會了他當總統所需要的戰術和戰略。
幾乎從剛到監獄的那一刻起，他就成了某種帶頭人。他的律師
喬治·比佐斯(George
Bizos)第一次去探監時，曼德拉跟他打完招呼後，出乎看守們的意料，他接着向比佐斯介紹了八名看守的名字，稱他們是他的「儀仗隊」。沒過多久，監獄當
局就開始把他當作監獄元老來對待。
他在羅賓島坐牢期間，新一代的政治犯也被關到了那裡，他們曾是全國學生起義中不屈服的抗爭者。他們一開始時不服前輩政治犯的權威，但逐漸接受了前輩們的指導。曼德拉許多年後回憶起那些衝動的年輕人時還帶着幾分惱火：
「你問他們，『你們要幹什麼？』他們說，『我們要攻擊和摧毀他們！』我說，『好吧，你考慮了與他們、你的敵人的力量對比嗎？』他們說，『沒有！我們攻擊就是了！』」
也許因為曼德拉深受崇敬的原因，當局無緣無故地專門折磨他。獄守把新聞剪報塞進他的牢房，讓他知道她妻子如何是一樁離婚案中所提及的第三者，以及他的妻子和孩子被內部流放到離約翰內斯堡250英里一個荒涼的黑人小城後，如何遭受苦難。
當局不許他出席他母親和他長子的葬禮。後者在曼德拉坐牢期間死於車禍。
朋友們說，他的經歷錘鍊了他的自我控制，讓他越發把感情埋得更深，說話時總是使用解放運動習慣的代詞「我們」。
儘管如此，曼德拉說，他認為在自己的非種族視野的形成過程
中，監獄經歷是一個主要因素。他說，監獄讓他接觸到有同情心的白人看守，他們為他偷偷帶來報紙和額外的給養；也讓他接觸到南非國民政府內的溫和人士，他們
主動來找曼德拉希望展開對話；這些都弱化了他任何報仇的願望。最重要的是，監獄把他培養成了一位談判大師。
談判開始
與白人政府開始談判的決定是曼德拉一生中最重大的事件之一，他沒有與他的同志們商量就一人作了主，因為他知道會遭到他們的反對。
他回憶說，「我的同志們沒有象我那樣與到這裡來的政府要人、法官、司法部長、監獄總監接觸過，我也是經過了一個過程才克服了對他們的偏見。所以我決定生米做成熟飯後再告訴我的同志們。」
曼德拉先是向司法部長科比·庫切(Kobie
Coetsee)示好，又拜會了波塔(P.W.
Botha)總統，之後，他於1986年開始了持續多年的關於南非未來的談判。令人稱奇的是，他們在接觸中極少有怨恨，而是相互表示尊重。後來，當曼德拉
成為總統後，他總是很高興地向來訪者顯示波塔總統親自給他倒茶的地方。
曼德拉要求政府釋放沃爾特·西蘇魯以及其他瑞佛尼亞審判的被告人，作為政府良好意願的展示。波塔的繼任德克勒克總統照辦了。
在他被囚的最後幾個月，隨着談判越來越有起色，他被轉到了
開普敦外的維克托韋斯特監獄(Victor Verster
Prison)，在那裡，政府可以更方便地與他見面，並監視他的健康狀況。（他在獄中做過前列腺手術，得過肺病，政府非常害怕如果他在囚禁期間逝世會帶來
的巨大反響。）他住在獄長的小樓里，那裡有游泳池、花園、廚師和一台錄像機。政府還專門為他定做了一套西服，好與政要們見面。
（獲釋後，他照着獄長房子的樣子，在他的祖籍村莊附近修了一座度假磚屋。他解釋說，這完全是出於實用的考慮：他習慣了那座房子的房間布局，晚上可以摸黑找到洗手間而不被絆倒。）
曼德拉在非國大的盟友一得知這些談判，他們馬上的反應就是覺得可疑，他們的擔心並未因政府允許他們在獄長的房子里與曼德拉見面而得到緩解。
曾經同被關在羅賓島監獄的學生反叛者托基奧·塞克斯韋爾(Tokyo Sexwale)後來在「前線」節目的訪談中回憶了與曼德拉在那座舒適的房子里見面的情形。曼德拉帶他們參觀了房子，指給他們看電視機和微波爐。塞克斯韋爾說，「當時我想，『我覺得你出賣了自己。』」
曼德拉請他的來客們在桌子邊坐下，耐心地解釋了他的看法。他認為，敵人已經在道義上和政治上被擊敗了，他們除了軍隊一無所有，無法治理南非。他說，他的戰略是給白人統治者提供一切可能的機會，讓他們有序地退出。他在準備與剛剛接替波塔的德克勒克總統見面。
獲釋重回劇變的世界
1990年2月，曼德拉在妻子的陪同下走出監獄，回到了已
變得陌生的世界，而這個世界對他則了解得更少。非國大內部產生了分裂，出現了幾個派系：前政治犯，那些為勞工工會的合法工作度過多年抗爭的人，以及那些在
外國首都生活多年的流亡者。白人政府也分裂了，一些人致力於談判產生一個真實的新秩序，另一些人則挑撥派系暴力，希望藉此癱瘓黑人政治領導層。
接下來的四年里，曼德拉從事了艱苦的談判，不僅與白人政府談判，而且還要與自己的那些相互不和的盟友們談判。
不過他首先在世界各地巡迴訪問了一圈，包括對美國八個城市的訪問，訪問從紐約開始，他乘坐的車隊駛過時，受到狂熱人群的歡迎。
反種族隔離運動與美國政府有着複雜的關係。美國透過與共產
黨冷戰的視角看待南非，同時將該國視為一個重要的鈾來源地。直到1980年代末，美國中央情報局在其分析中仍將非國大視為共產黨支配下的組織。有未經證
實、但也未經排除的指控說，中央情報局特工為逮捕曼德拉的警察提供了線索。
國會1986年順應民意，通過了限制在南非投資的經濟制裁
法，並推翻羅納德·里根(Ronald
Reagan)總統對該法的否決。即使在美國民眾熱烈歡迎曼德拉的同時，有些官員仍對他懷有疑慮，一來因為他對經濟制裁的堅持，再來因為他對各色解放人物
如穆阿邁爾·卡扎菲(Muammar el-Qaddafi)上校以及亞西爾·阿拉法特(Yasser Arafat)的推崇。
曼德拉在監獄受折磨期間，南非興起了旨在使國家無法治理的公民不服從運動，它最積極的參與者不是別人，正是溫妮·曼德拉。
磕磕絆絆的婚姻
丈夫被關進監獄時，曼德拉夫婦已經有了兩個女兒，但很少有時間享受家庭生活。在他們婚姻的大部分時間，他們都是通過監獄探視間厚厚的玻璃隔牆見面。在他被關押的21年期間，他們從未觸摸過對方。
然而，她是曼德拉對世界說話的一個喇叭，是他了解朋友和同志的信息的來源。她通過走訪她的記者詮釋他的觀點。她受到了警察的折磨和關押，她和兩個孩子被流放到一個荒涼偏僻的黑人小鎮布蘭特福德(Brantford)。在那裡，她不放過任何一個挑戰施害者的機會。
1984年她被釋放到風起雲湧的索維托時，已經成為一個煽
情的鼓動者。此時的她身穿咔嘰布軍裝和高靴，言辭激烈，她因支持對敵人使用「火項鏈」(necklacing)酷刑而聲名狼藉，「火項鏈」指的是把汽油浸
泡的輪胎套在人身上，然後將其點燃。她身邊圍繞着一群年輕歹徒，他們恐嚇、綁架和殺害那些她認為對事業持敵對態度的黑人。
朋友們說，把事業置於家庭之上的選擇，常常令曼德拉充滿自責，正因為如此，在人們早就廣泛知道溫妮·曼德拉進行恐怖統治，並涉嫌參與綁架和殺害小鎮年輕活動人士後，而且在他們的婚姻早就名存實亡後，曼德拉仍然拒絕對她作任何批評。
作為總統，他順從溫妮·曼德拉在大眾中享有的知名度，任命她擔任科技文化部副部長。她在那個職位上陷入多起財政醜聞，並且越來越多地挑戰政府，經常指責其姑息白人。1995年，曼德拉終於到法院申請離婚，在經歷了一場揪心的公開聽證後，於次年獲准離婚。
之後，曼德拉與莫桑比克(Mozambique)前總統的
遺孀、人道主義活動人士格拉薩·馬謝爾(Graça
Machel)在公眾矚目下戀愛。他們在曼德拉80歲生日時結婚。他身後的家人除格拉薩外，還有溫妮·曼德拉的兩個女兒岑娜妮(Zenani)和珍德茲斯
瓦(Zindziswa)，第一個妻子生的女兒瑪卡茲維(Makaziwe)，17個孫子輩後代和14個曾孫輩後代。
多數人執政的政治交易
曼德拉獲釋兩年後，黑人領導者與白人領導者在約翰內斯堡郊
外的一個會議中心舉行談判。這些談判導致了白人統治的結束，雖然過程並非完全順利。談判場外，南非的黑人極端分子和白人極端分子都使用了暴力，試圖讓談判
結果對自己一方更有利。曼德拉和白人總統德克勒克通過爭論和策略，完成了一場和平的權力過渡。
德克勒克是一個高傲、不隨和、煙不離手的實用主義者，曼德
拉從來沒能喜歡他，也不完全信任他，但在與德克勒克的關係中，他明白雙方的共同需要。談判進行了兩年後，兩人分享了諾貝爾和平獎，1993年他們在奧斯陸
共同出席領獎儀式，也未免被憤怒和揭短行為所玷污。曼德拉成為總統、德克勒克成為副總統一年後，曼德拉在一次談話中說，他仍然懷疑德克勒克與謀殺了無數黑
人的警察和軍隊，也就是所謂的「第三勢力」有串通，該流氓勢力反對黑人統治。
最終，曼德拉和由前勞工領導人、深諳政治的西里爾·拉馬弗薩(Cyril Ramaphosa)領導的談判組與政府達成了一項重大的政治交易，保證了自由選舉，同時交換條件，承諾了讓反對黨派分享一部分權力、並保證不會對白人進行報復。
接下來的總統競選活動有時似乎有滑向全國大亂的危險。祖魯人的派系之爭導致數百人死亡，白人極端分子在競選集會上引爆炸彈，並暗殺了受歡迎程度僅次於曼德拉的黑人領袖克里斯·哈尼(Chris Hani)。
但是，黑人城鎮到處洋溢着的激動足以抵消恐懼。戴着助聽器、穿着矯形襪的曼德拉競選期間每天奔走12個小時，鼓舞着那些擠滿了塵土飛揚的足球場的人群，令那些聚在樓頂上高唱解放歌曲的支持者歡呼雀。
1994年4月選舉期間，在有些地方，選民為投票排隊長達數英里。非國大贏得了62%的選票，贏得了議會全國大會400個席位中的252席，確保了作為黨領導人的曼德拉在議會召開時被命名為總統。
曼德拉當年5月10日宣誓成為總統，他在就職演說中講到共同的愛國主義，呼喚南非人在自己的土地上同喜共慶，並為南非成為一個不再受國際社會譴責的國家而一起感到欣慰。
他宣布，「這片美麗的土地永遠、永遠、永遠再不會經歷人對人的壓迫，以及遭全球唾棄的屈辱。」
之後，南非空軍九架幻影戰鬥機拖着五彩噴氣從空中飛過，在比勒陀利亞政府樓前的草坪上出席就職儀式的五萬人群歡聲雷動。「南非空軍萬歲！萬歲！」（這些飛機原是買來防止象曼德拉這樣的人取得政權的。）
作為總統的限制
作為總統，曼德拉立下了不拘一格、多種族和睦的風格。他大部分時候住在約翰內斯堡一座簡樸的房子里，他每天自己整理床鋪。來訪的外國政要在他家做客時，他喜歡請他們與服侍茶水的女侍握手。
然而，他與富有的資本家、礦業大亨、零售商、發展商的關係
也很隨便，甚至粗心大意，他覺得這些人的繼續投資對南非經濟來說至關重要。選舉前，他去找了20位企業家，請求他們每個人至少捐一百萬南非蘭特（按當時的
匯率相當於$275,000美元），用於發展他的黨，並作為競選活動經費。任職期間，他一點都不避諱接他們的電話，後來當一些工會罷工反對他的一些大捐助
者時，他很不高興。他喜歡與極為有錢的人交往，喜歡與那些現在圍在他身邊向他致意的演藝界名人打交道。
與此同時，他堅持認為，黑人多數派不應該指望馬上得到物質上的滿足。他曾在某個場合告訴工會領導人要「勒緊褲帶」，接受低薪，以便吸引投資。第二天接受採訪時，他對自己無耐心盟友們表示驚訝，他說，「我們必須從抵抗運動狀態過渡到建設狀態。」
曼德拉展示了他大姿態和解的天才。不過，他的有些嘗試，比如組織非國大知名女士與種族隔離時期白人官員的妻子們舉行茶敘，則相當尷尬。
其它的嘗試則非常成功。在南非，不管是那個種族，很少有人
不記得1995年6月南非英式橄欖球隊在世界盃決賽中擊敗新西蘭奪冠的情景。2009年拍的電影《永不言敗》(Invictus)以戲劇形式記錄了那個時
刻。英式橄欖球長期以來一直是白人至上的一個象徵，比賽結束後，曼德拉穿着球隊的綠色球衣走進球場，八萬名球迷，絕大多數為南非白人，爆發出「納爾-遜！
納爾-遜！」的呼聲。
曼德拉為了團結而進行妥協的直覺再清楚不過地顯現在1995年建立真相與和解委員會上。這個委員會的目的是在清算南非歷史的過程中平衡正義與寬恕。委員會給任何對在種族隔離期間的罪行全盤作證的人提供個人赦免。
到頭來，這個過程既沒能獲得完全的真相（白人官員和非國大領導人都閃爍其詞），也沒能達成徹底和解（許多黑人了解到更多情況後，越發憤怒了）。但總的來說還算成功，它給了那些親人被埋於秘密墳墓的南非人一個明訴哀痛的機會，同時避免了無窮無盡審判的上演。
然而，不管曼德拉如何靠鼓動、象徵主義，以及君王般的魅力來激發自己的選民們高尚善良的一面，他也難以彌合白人特權與黑人貧困之間的鴻溝。
曼德拉打造了讓南非人獲得自由這一奇蹟，也許再期望他創造出廣泛繁榮的奇蹟，恐怕過求了。他任期期間制定的住房、教育與就業等目標本來就不高，但他只取得了不大的進展。
他嘗試將警察從白人至上的統治工具轉變為一支有效的打擊犯
罪的隊伍，但只取得了有限的成功。（多數統治前就已存在的）腐敗與任人唯親更加猖獗。儘管曼德拉受到全世界的景仰，外國投資卻對南非保持了距離，尤其是
20世紀90年代末的全球經濟過熱讓新興市場看起來比以前想像的更為危險之後。
種族隔閡被和平過渡的欣喜與曼德拉的道義權威一時控制住了，但後來隨着縮小收入差距的最終問題未能得到解決，在一定程度上重新表現出來。
南非記者馬克·葛維瑟(Mark
Gevisser)在2007年發表的曼德拉繼任者塔博·姆貝基總統的傳記中寫道，「曼德拉1994年至1999年總統任期內留給後人的最重要的政治遺
產，是建立了一個由神聖不可侵犯的權利法案保護的法治國家，而且人們早先預言的、南非的種族與民族暴力衝突沒有發生。僅這些成就本身就保證了曼德拉的神聖
地位。然而，他更多地是一個解放者和國家締造者，而不是一個管理者。」
此外，曼德拉還給他的國家留下一個基本上是一黨執政的體系，執政者對官員腐敗的指控抱着官官相護的態度，不喜歡媒體的批評，把反對黨派差不多當叛國者對待。不管是自由派的還是保守派的對手，都沒有能夠成功地組織起能有效抗衡非國大的反對派。
曼德拉本人總是遵從黨的意願，比如在繼任總統人選上。在黨的得意人選姆貝基繼任總統後，曼德拉透露說他其實更喜歡比較年輕的拉馬弗薩，即前礦工工會領導人、新憲法的談判者。姆貝基知道自己不是意中人，因此心懷怨恨，在擔任總統期間，經常對曼德拉有微詞。
曼德拉大部分時候避免直接批評他的繼任，但是當姆貝基表現
出對批評不寬容以及他的陰謀論世界觀時，曼德拉的失望溢於言表。當姆貝基質疑艾滋病病因的主流醫學解釋、壓制有助於遏制傳染病快速蔓延的公共討論時，曼德
拉公開發表言論，指出安全性行為與便宜藥物的必要。當他的大兒子馬克賈托(Makgatho)2005年去世時，曼德拉把家庭成員召集到一起，公開透露他
的死因是艾滋病。
在2007年的一次訪談中，曼德拉公開嘲諷姆貝基的領導能力，不過當時他要求這些話在他死前不發表。他說，非國大之所以是一個成功的運動和成功的政黨，歸因於它從許多不同的群體中汲取集體智慧。
「如今在姆貝基的領導下，非國大變得相當集權化，他自行決策很多事情」，曼德拉宣稱，「我們從來都不喜歡那樣。」
姆貝基則覺得，在曼德拉的陰影下治理國家是極大的痛苦。他感到他的前任留給了他一手幾乎無法打的牌，首先曼德拉鼓勵人們相信南非的解放是一位偉大黑人的魔術，其次他強調與白人當權者的和解，因此沒做多少事去解救貧困的黑人多數人口。
在葛維瑟傳記里的一次訪談中，姆貝基嘲笑曼德拉靠魅力和聲望統治，說他很少留意治國的技術細節。
「馬迪巴(Madiba)對政府事務一點都不關心，」姆貝基說道，「我們其他人則必須去關心，因為總得有人去關心。」（馬迪巴是曼德拉的家族昵稱。）
作為一位前總統，曼德拉利用自己的魅力，支持非洲大陸的一系列事業，在幾場戰爭中參與和談，協助他的妻子格拉薩為兒童救助組織募捐。
2010年，體育世界的另一樁和平盛事世界盃足球賽在南非
舉行，曼德拉為南非贏得主辦權立下了巨大功勞。但對曼德拉本人來說，這個令人自豪的盛事帶給了他心碎的哀傷，他13歲的孫女岑娜妮(Zenani)開幕日
當天從慶祝音樂會回家的路上死於車禍。世界盃賽首次來到非洲，曼德拉功不可沒，但他卻取消了出席開幕式的計劃。
那時他的聽力與記憶力已十分糟糕，他已經基本上退出公眾辯論，回絕幾乎所有的訪談請求，在諸如伊拉克戰爭等問題上只發表預先準備好的公開聲明。（他強烈反對伊拉克戰爭。）
2007年他接受一位記者的採訪時，他的助手們已經就他的後事展開了激烈的爭奪戰，包括他將被安葬在哪裡，以及應該如何舉辦紀念活動等。曼德拉堅持把他的安葬事宜交給他的遺孀，而且盡量從簡。但他的追隨者卻另有打算。
比爾·凱勒(Bill Keller)是《紐約時報》前執行主編。翻譯：Yaxue Cao
Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s Liberator as Prisoner and President, Dies at 95
December 06, 2013
served as his country’s first black president, becoming an international emblem of dignity and forbearance, died Thursday. He was 95.
The South African president, Jacob Zuma, announced Mr. Mandela’s death.
Mr. Mandela had long
declared he wanted a quiet exit, but the time he spent in a Pretoria
hospital in recent months was a clamor of quarreling family, hungry news
media, spotlight-seeking politicians and a national outpouring of
affection and loss. The vigil even eclipsed a recent visit by President
Obama, who paid homage to Mr. Mandela but decided not to intrude on the
privacy of a dying man he considered his hero.
Mr. Mandela will be buried,
according to his wishes, in the village of Qunu, where he grew up. The
exhumed remains of three of his children were reinterred there in early
July under a court order, resolving a family squabble that had played
out in the news media.
Mr. Mandela’s quest for
freedom took him from the court of tribal royalty to the liberation
underground to a prison rock quarry to the presidential suite of
Africa’s richest country. And then, when his first term of office was
up, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as
kindred spirits, he declined a second term and cheerfully handed over
power to an elected successor, the country still gnawed by crime,
poverty, corruption and disease but a democracy, respected in the world
and remarkably at peace.
The question most often
asked about Mr. Mandela was how, after whites had systematically
humiliated his people, tortured and murdered many of his friends, and
cast him into prison for 27 years, he could be so evidently free of
spite.
The government he formed
when he finally won the chance was an improbable fusion of races and
beliefs, including many of his former oppressors. When he became
president, he invited one of his white wardens to the inauguration. Mr.
Mandela overcame a personal mistrust bordering on loathing to share both
power and a Nobel Peace Prize with the white president who preceded
him, F. W. de Klerk.
And as president, from 1994
to 1999, he devoted much energy to moderating the bitterness of his
black electorate and to reassuring whites against their fears of
vengeance.
The explanation for his
absence of rancor, at least in part, is that Mr. Mandela was that rarity
among revolutionaries and moral dissidents: a capable statesman,
comfortable with compromise and impatient with the doctrinaire.
When the question was put
to Mr. Mandela in an interview for this obituary in 2007 — after such
barbarous torment, how do you keep hatred in check? — his answer was
almost dismissive: Hating clouds the mind. It gets in the way of
strategy. Leaders cannot afford to hate.
Except for a youthful
flirtation with black nationalism, he seemed to have genuinely
transcended the racial passions that tore at his country. Some who
worked with him said this apparent magnanimity came easily to him
because he always regarded himself as superior to his persecutors.
In his five years as
president, Mr. Mandela, though still a sainted figure abroad, lost some
luster at home as he strained to hold together a divided populace and to
turn a fractious liberation movement into a credible government.
Some blacks — including
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Mr. Mandela’s former wife, who cultivated a
following among the most disaffected blacks — complained that he had
moved too slowly to narrow the vast gulf between the impoverished black
majority and the more prosperous white minority. Some whites said he had
failed to control crime, corruption and cronyism. Some blacks deserted
government to make money; some whites emigrated, taking capital and
knowledge with them.
Undoubtedly Mr. Mandela had
become less attentive to the details of governing, turning over the
daily responsibilities to the deputy who would succeed him in 1999,
Thabo Mbeki.
But few among his
countrymen doubted that without his patriarchal authority and political
shrewdness South Africa might well have descended into civil war long
before it reached its imperfect state of democracy.
After leaving the
presidency, Mr. Mandela brought that moral stature to bear elsewhere
around the continent, as a peace broker and champion of greater outside
investment.
Rise of a ‘Troublemaker’
Mr. Mandela was deep into a
life prison term when he caught the notice of the world as a symbol of
the opposition to apartheid, literally “apartness” in the Afrikaans
language — a system of racial gerrymandering that stripped blacks of
their citizenship and relegated them to reservation-style “homelands”
and townships.
Around 1980, exiled leaders
of the foremost anti-apartheid movement, the African National Congress,
decided that this eloquent lawyer was the perfect hero to humanize
their campaign against the system that denied 80 percent of South
Africans any voice in their own affairs. “Free Nelson Mandela,” which
was already a liberation chant within South Africa, became a pop-chart
anthem in Britain, and Mr. Mandela’s face bloomed on placards at student
rallies in America aimed at mustering trade sanctions against the
apartheid regime.
Mr. Mandela noted with some
amusement in his 1994 autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” that this
congregation made him the world’s best-known political prisoner without
knowing precisely who he was. Probably it was just his impish humor, but
he claimed to have been told that when posters went up in London, many
young supporters thought Free was his Christian name.
In South Africa, though,
and among those who followed the country’s affairs more closely, Nelson
Mandela was already a name to reckon with.
He was born Rolihlahla
Mandela on July 18, 1918, in Mvezo, a tiny village of cows, corn and mud
huts in the rolling hills of the Transkei, a former British
protectorate in the south. His given name, he enjoyed pointing out,
translates colloquially as “troublemaker.” He received his more familiar
English name from a teacher when he began school at age 7. His father,
Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, was a chief of the Thembu people, a
subdivision of the Xhosa nation.
When Nelson was an infant,
his father was stripped of his chieftainship by a British magistrate for
insubordination — showing a proud stubborn streak his son willingly
claimed as an inheritance.
Nine years later, on the
death of his father, young Nelson was taken into the home of the
paramount chief of the Thembu — not as an heir to power, but in a
position to study it. He would become worldly and westernized, but some
of his closest friends would always attribute his regal self-confidence
(and his occasional autocratic behavior) to his upbringing in a royal
household.
Unlike many black South
Africans, whose confidence had been crushed by generations of officially
proclaimed white superiority, Mr. Mandela never seemed to doubt that he
was the equal of any man. “The first thing to remember about Mandela is
that he came from a royal family,” said Ahmed Kathrada, an activist who
shared a prison cellblock with Mr. Mandela and was part of his inner
circle. “That always gave him a strength.”
In his autobiography, Mr.
Mandela recalled eavesdropping on the endless consensus-seeking
deliberations of the tribal council, and noticing that the chief worked
“like a shepherd.”
“He stays behind the
flock,” he continued, “letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon
the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed
from behind.”
That would often be his own style as leader and president.
Mr. Mandela maintained his
close ties to the royal family of the Thembu tribe, a large and
influential constituency in the important Transkei region. And his
background there gave him useful insights into the sometimes tribal
politics of South Africa.
Most important, it helped
him manage the lethal divisions within the large Zulu nation, which was
rived by a power struggle between the African National Congress and the
Inkatha Freedom Party. While many A.N.C. leaders demonized the Inkatha
leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Mr. Mandela embraced him into his new
unity government and finally quelled the violence.
Mr. Mandela once explained
in an interview that the key to peace in the Zulu nation was simple: Mr.
Buthelezi had been raised as a member of the royal Zulu family, but as a
nephew, not in the direct line of succession, leaving him tortured by a
sense of insecurity about his position. The solution was to love him
into acquiescence.
Joining a Movement
The enlarging of Mr.
Mandela’s outlook began at Methodist missionary schools and the
University College of Fort Hare, then the only residential college for
blacks in South Africa. Mr. Mandela said later that he had entered the
university still thinking of himself as a Xhosa first and foremost, but
left with a broader African perspective.
Studying law at Fort Hare,
he fell in with Oliver Tambo, another leader-to-be of the liberation
movement. The two were suspended for a student protest in 1940 and sent
home on the verge of expulsion. Much later, Mr. Mandela called the
episode — his refusal to yield on a minor point of principle —
“foolhardy.”
On returning to his home
village, he learned that his family had chosen a bride for him. Finding
the woman unappealing and the prospect of a career in tribal government
even more so, he ran away to the black metropolis of Soweto, following
other young blacks who had left mostly to work in the gold mines around
Johannesburg.
There he was directed to
Walter Sisulu, who ran a real estate business and was a spark plug in
the African National Congress. Mr. Sisulu looked upon the tall young man
with his aristocratic bearing and confident gaze and, he recalled in an
interview, decided that his prayers had been answered.
Mr. Mandela soon impressed
the activists with his ability to win over doubters. “His starting point
is that ‘I am going to persuade this person no matter what,’ ” Mr.
Sisulu said. “That is his gift. He will go to anybody, anywhere, with
that confidence. Even when he does not have a strong case, he convinces
himself that he has.”
Mr. Mandela, though he
never completed his law degree, opened the first black law partnership
in South Africa with Mr. Tambo. He took up amateur boxing, rising before
dawn to run roadwork. Tall and slim, he was also somewhat vain. He wore
impeccable suits, displaying an attention to fashion that would much
later be evident in the elegantly bright loose shirts of African cloth
that became his trademark.
Impatient with the seeming
impotence of their elders in the African National Congress, Mr. Mandela,
Mr. Tambo, Mr. Sisulu and other militants organized the A.N.C. Youth
League, issuing a manifesto so charged with Pan-African nationalism that
some of their nonblack sympathizers were offended.
Africanism versus
nonracialism: that was the great divide in liberation thinking. The
black consciousness movement, whose most famous martyr was Steve Biko,
argued that before Africans could take their place in a multiracial
state their confidence and sense of responsibility must be rebuilt.
Mr. Mandela, too, was attracted to this doctrine of self-sufficiency.
“I was angry at the white
man, not at racism,” he wrote in his autobiography. “While I was not
prepared to hurl the white man into the sea, I would have been perfectly
happy if he climbed aboard his steamships and left the continent of his
own volition.”
In his conviction that
blacks should liberate themselves, he joined friends in breaking up
Communist Party meetings because he regarded Communism as an alien,
non-African ideology, and for a time he insisted that the A.N.C. keep a
distance from Indian and mixed-race political movements.
“This was the trend of the
youth at that time,” Mr. Sisulu said. But Mr. Mandela, he said, was
never “an extreme nationalist,” or much of an ideologue of any stripe.
He was a man of action.
He was also, already, a man of audacious self-confidence.
Joe Matthews, who worked
for Mr. Mandela in the Youth League (and later became a moderate voice
in the rival Inkatha movement), heard Mr. Mandela speak at a black-tie
dinner in 1952 and predict, in what the audience took as impudence, that
he would be the first president of free South Africa.
“He was not a theoretician,
but he was a doer,” Mr. Matthews said in an interview for the
television documentary program “Frontline.” “He was a man who did
things, and he was always ready to volunteer to be the first to do any
dangerous or difficult thing.”
Five years after forming the Youth League, the young rebels engineered a generational takeover of the African National Congress.
During his years as a young
lawyer in Soweto, Mr. Mandela married a nurse, Evelyn Ntoko Mase, and
they had four children, including a daughter who died at 9 months. But
the demands of his politics kept him from his family. Compounding the
strain was his wife’s joining the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a sect that
abjures any participation in politics. The marriage grew cold and ended
with abruptness.
“He said, ‘Evelyn, I feel
that I have no love for you anymore,’ ” his first wife said in an
interview for a documentary film. “ ‘I’ll give you the children and the
house.’ ”
Not long afterward, a
friend introduced him to Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela, a stunning and
strong-willed medical social worker 16 years his junior. Mr. Mandela was
smitten, declaring on their first date that he would marry her. He did
so in 1958, while he and other activists were in the midst of a marathon
trial on treason charges. His second marriage would be tumultuous,
producing two daughters and a national drama of forced separation,
devotion, remorse and acrimony.
A Shift to Militancy
In 1961, with the patience
of the liberation movement stretched to the snapping point by the police
killing of 69 peaceful demonstrators in Sharpeville township the
previous year, Mr. Mandela led the African National Congress onto a new
road of armed insurrection.
It was an abrupt shift for a
man who, not many weeks earlier, had proclaimed nonviolence an
inviolable principle of the A.N.C. He later explained that forswearing
violence “was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral
goodness in using an ineffective weapon.”
Taking as his text Che
Guevara’s “Guerrilla Warfare,” Mr. Mandela became the first commander of
a motley liberation army, grandly named Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of
the Nation.
Although he denied it
throughout his life, there is persuasive evidence that about this time
Mr. Mandela briefly joined the South African Communist Party, the
A.N.C.’s partner in opening the armed resistance. Mr. Mandela presumably
joined for the party’s connections to Communist countries that would
finance the campaign of violence. Stephen Ellis, a British historian who
in 2011 found reference to Mr. Mandela’s membership in secret party
minutes, said Mr. Mandela “wasn’t a real convert; it was just an
opportunist thing.”
Mr. Mandela’s exploits in
the “armed struggle” have been somewhat mythologized. During his months
as a cloak-and-dagger outlaw, the press christened him “the Black
Pimpernel.” But while he trained for guerrilla fighting and sought
weapons for Spear of the Nation, he saw no combat. The A.N.C.’s armed
activities were mostly confined to planting land mines, blowing up
electrical stations and committing occasional acts of terrorism against
civilians.
After the first free
elections in South Africa, Spear of the Nation’s reputation was stained
by admissions of human rights abuses in its training camps, though no
evidence emerged that Mr. Mandela was complicit in them.
During Trial, a Legend Grows
South Africa’s rulers were
determined to put Mr. Mandela and his comrades out of action. In 1956,
he and scores of other dissidents were arrested on charges of treason.
The state botched the prosecution, and after the acquittal Mr. Mandela
went underground. Upon his capture he was charged with inciting a strike
and leaving the country without a passport. His legend grew when, on
the first day of that trial, he entered the courtroom wearing a
traditional Xhosa leopard-skin cape to underscore that he was an African
entering a white man’s jurisdiction.
That trial resulted in a
three-year sentence, but it was just a warm-up for the main event. Next
Mr. Mandela and eight other A.N.C. leaders were charged with sabotage
and conspiracy to overthrow the state — capital crimes. It was called
the Rivonia trial, for the name of the farm where the defendants had
conspired and where a trove of incriminating documents was found — many
in Mr. Mandela’s handwriting — outlining and justifying a violent
campaign to bring down the regime.
At Mr. Mandela’s
suggestion, the defendants, certain of conviction, set out to turn the
trial into a moral drama that would vindicate them in the court of world
opinion. They admitted that they had organized a liberation army and
had engaged in sabotage and tried to lay out a political justification
for these acts. Among themselves, they agreed that even if sentenced to
hang, they would refuse on principle to appeal.
The four-hour speech
with which Mr. Mandela opened the defense case was one of the most
eloquent of his life, and — in the view of his authorized biographer,
Anthony Sampson — it established him as the leader not only of the
A.N.C. but also of the international movement against apartheid.
Mr. Mandela described his
personal evolution from the temptations of black nationalism to the
politics of multiracialism. He acknowledged that he was the commander of
Spear of the Nation, but asserted that he had turned to violence only
after nonviolent resistance had been foreclosed. He conceded that he had
made alliances with Communists — a powerful current in the prosecution
case in those cold war days — but likened this to Churchill’s
cooperation with Stalin against Hitler.
He finished with a coda of his convictions that would endure as an oratorical highlight of South African history.
“I have fought against
white domination, and I have fought against black domination,” he told
the court. “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society
in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal
opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see
realized. But my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am
prepared to die.”
Under considerable pressure
from liberals at home and abroad (including a nearly unanimous vote of
the United Nations General Assembly) to spare the defendants, the judge
acquitted one and sentenced Mr. Mandela and the others to life in
prison.
An Education in Prison
Mr. Mandela was 44 when he was manacled and put on a ferry to the Robben Island prison. He would be 71 when he was released.
Robben Island, in
shark-infested waters about seven miles off Cape Town, had over the
centuries been a naval garrison, a mental hospital and a leper colony,
but it was most famously a prison. For Mr. Mandela and his
co-defendants, it began with a nauseating ferry ride, during which
guards amused themselves by urinating down the air vents on the
prisoners below.
The routine on Robben
Island was one of isolation, boredom and petty humiliations, met with
frequent shows of resistance. By day the men were marched to a limestone
quarry, where the fine dust stirred up by their labors glued their tear
ducts shut.
But in some ways prison was
less arduous than life outside in those unsettled times. For Mr.
Mandela and others, Robben Island was a university. In whispered
conversations as they hacked at the limestone, and in tightly written
polemics handed from cellblock to cellblock, the prisoners debated
everything from Marxism to circumcision.
Mr. Mandela learned Afrikaans, the language of the dominant whites, and urged other prisoners to do the same.
He honed his skills as a
leader, negotiator and proselytizer, and not only the factions among the
prisoners but also some of the white administrators found his charm and
iron will irresistible. He credited his prison experience with teaching
him the tactics and strategy that would make him president.
Almost from his arrival he
assumed a kind of command. The first time his lawyer, George Bizos,
visited him, Mr. Mandela greeted him and then introduced his eight
guards by name — to their amazement — as “my guard of honor.” The prison
authorities began treating him as a prison elder statesman.
During his time on the
island, a new generation of political inmates arose, defiant veterans of
a national student uprising who at first resisted the authority of the
elders but gradually came under their tutelage. Years later Mr. Mandela
recalled the young hotheads with a measure of exasperation:
“When you say, ‘What are
you going to do?’ they say, ‘We will attack and destroy them!’ I say:
‘All right, have you analyzed how strong they are, the enemy? Have you
compared their strength to your strength?’ They say, ‘No, we will just
attack!’ ”
Perhaps because Mr. Mandela
was so revered, he was singled out for gratuitous cruelties by the
authorities. On Robben Island the wardens left newspaper clippings in
his cell telling how his wife had been cited as the other woman in a
divorce case, and about the persecution she and her children endured
after being exiled to a bleak town 250 miles from Johannesburg.
He was denied permission to
attend the funerals of his mother and of his oldest son, who died in a
car accident while Mr. Mandela was on Robben Island.
Friends say his experiences
steeled his self-control and made him, more than ever, a man who buried
his emotions deep, who spoke in the collective “we” of liberation
rhetoric.
Still, Mr. Mandela said he
regarded his prison experience as a major factor in his nonracial
outlook. He said prison tempered any desire for vengeance by exposing
him to sympathetic white guards who smuggled in newspapers and extra
rations, and to moderates within the National Party government who
approached him in hopes of opening a dialogue. Above all, prison taught
him to be a master negotiator.
The Negotiations Begin
Mr. Mandela’s decision to
begin negotiations with the white government was one of the most
momentous of his life, and he made it like an autocrat, without
consulting his comrades, knowing full well that they would resist.
“My comrades did not have
the advantages that I had of brushing shoulders with the V.I.P.’s who
came here, the judges, the minister of justice, the commissioner of
prisons, and I had come to overcome my own prejudice towards them,” he
recalled. “So I decided to present my colleagues with a fait accompli.”
With an overture to Kobie
Coetsee, the justice minister, and a visit to President P. W. Botha, Mr.
Mandela, in 1986, began what would be years of negotiations on the
future of South Africa. The encounters, remarkably, were characterized
by little rancor and mutual shows of respect. When he occupied the
president’s office, Mr. Mandela would delightedly show visitors where
President Botha had poured him tea.
Mr. Mandela demanded as a
show of good will that Walter Sisulu and other defendants in the Rivonia
trial be released. President F. W. de Klerk, Mr. Botha’s successor,
complied.
In the last months of his
imprisonment, as the negotiations gathered force, he was relocated to
Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, where the government could meet
with him conveniently and monitor his health. (In prison he had had
prostate surgery and lung problems, and the government was terrified of
the uproar if he died in captivity.) He lived in a warden’s bungalow. He
had access to a swimming pool, a garden, a chef and a VCR. A suit was
tailored for his meetings with government luminaries.
(After his release he built
a vacation home near his ancestral village, a brick replica of the
warden’s house. This was pure pragmatism, he explained: he was
accustomed to the floor plan and could find the bathroom at night
without stumbling in the dark.)
From the moment they
learned of the talks, Mr. Mandela’s allies in the A.N.C. were
suspicious, and their worries were not allayed when the government
allowed them to confer with Mr. Mandela at his quarters in the warden’s
house.
Tokyo Sexwale, who had come
to Robben Island as a student rebel, recalled in a “Frontline”
interview encountering Mr. Mandela in this comfortable house. Mr.
Mandela walked them through the house, showing off the television and
the microwave. “And,” Mr. Sexwale said, “I thought, ‘I think you are
sold out.’ ”
Mr. Mandela seated his
visitors at a table and patiently explained his view that the enemy was
morally and politically defeated, with nothing left but the army, the
country ungovernable. His strategy, he said, was to give the white
rulers every chance to retreat in an orderly way. He was preparing to
meet Mr. de Klerk, who had just taken over from Mr. Botha.
Free in a Changed World
In February 1990, Mr.
Mandela walked out of prison alongside his wife into a world that he
knew little, and that knew him less. The African National Congress was
now torn by factions — the prison veterans, those who had spent the
years of struggle working legally in labor unions, and the exiles who
had spent them in foreign capitals. The white government was also split,
with some committed to negotiating an honest new order while others
fomented factional violence in hopes of disabling the black political
leadership.
Over the next four years
Mr. Mandela would be embroiled in a laborious negotiation, not only with
the white government, but also with his own fractious alliance.
But first he took time for a
victory lap around the world, including an eight-city tour of the
United States that began with a motorcade through delirious crowds in
New York City.
The anti-apartheid movement
had had a rocky relationship with United States governments, which saw
South Africa through the lens of the cold war rivalry with Communists
and also regarded the country as an important source of uranium. Until
the late 1980s the Central Intelligence Agency portrayed the A.N.C. as
Communist-dominated. There have been allegations, neither substantiated
nor dispelled, that a C.I.A. agent had tipped the police officers who
arrested Mr. Mandela.
Congress, following popular
sentiment, enacted economic sanctions against investment in South
Africa in 1986, overriding the veto of President Ronald Reagan. Even at
the time of his euphoric public welcome in the United States, Mr.
Mandela was regarded with some official misgivings, because of both his
devotion to economic sanctions and his loyalties to various self-styled
liberation figures like Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and Yasir Arafat.
While Mr. Mandela had
languished in prison, a campaign of civil disobedience was under way. No
one participated more enthusiastically than Winnie Mandela.
A Troubled Marriage
By the time of her
husband’s imprisonment, the Mandelas had produced two daughters but had
little time to enjoy a domestic life. For most of their marriage they
saw each other through the thick glass partition of the prison visiting
room: for 21 years of his captivity, they never touched.
She was, however, a
megaphone to the outside world, a source of information on friends and
comrades and an interpreter of his views through the journalists who
came to visit her. She was tormented by the police, jailed and banished
with her children to a remote Afrikaner town, Brandfort, where she
challenged her captors at every turn.
By the time she was
released into the tumult of Soweto in 1984, she had became a firebrand.
She now dressed in military khakis and boots and spoke in a violent
rhetoric, notoriously endorsing the practice of “necklacing” foes,
incinerating them in a straitjacket of gasoline-soaked tires. She
surrounded herself with young thugs who terrorized, kidnapped and killed
blacks she deemed hostile to the cause.
Friends said Mr. Mandela’s
choice of his cause over his family often filled him with remorse — so
much so that long after Winnie Mandela was widely known to have
conducted a reign of terror, long after she was implicated in the
kidnapping and murder of young township activists, long after the
marriage was effectively dead, Mr. Mandela refused to utter a word of
criticism.
As president, he bowed to
her popularity by appointing her deputy minister of arts, a position in
which she became entangled in financial scandals and increasingly
challenged the government for appeasing whites. In 1995 Mr. Mandela
finally filed for divorce, which was granted the next year after an
emotionally wrenching public hearing.
Mr. Mandela later fell
publicly in love with Graça Machel, the widow of the former president of
Mozambique and an activist in her own right for humanitarian causes.
They married on Mr. Mandela’s 80th birthday. She survives him, as do his
two daughters by Winnie Mandela, Zenani and Zindziswa; a daughter,
Makaziwe, by his first wife; 17 grandchildren; and 14
great-grandchildren.
A Deal for Majority Rule
Two years after Mr.
Mandela’s release from prison, black and white leaders met in a
convention center on the outskirts of Johannesburg for negotiations that
would lead, fitfully, to an end of white rule. While outside in the
country extremists black and white used violence to tilt the outcome
their way, Mr. Mandela and the white president, Mr. de Klerk, argued and
maneuvered toward a peaceful transfer of power.
Mr. Mandela understood the
mutual need in his relationship with Mr. de Klerk, a proud, dour,
chain-smoking pragmatist, but he never much liked or fully trusted him.
Two years into the negotiations, the men were jointly awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize, and their appearance together in Oslo in 1993 was marked by
bouts of pique and recriminations.
In a conversation a year after becoming president, with Mr. de Klerk as
deputy president, Mr. Mandela said he still suspected Mr. de Klerk of
complicity in the murders of countless blacks by police and army units, a
rogue “third force” opposed to black rule.
Eventually, though, Mr.
Mandela and his negotiating team, led by the former labor leader Cyril
Ramaphosa, found their way to the grand bargain that assured free
elections in exchange for promising opposition parties a share of power
and a guarantee that whites would not be subjected to reprisals.
At times, the ensuing
election campaign seemed in danger of collapsing into chaos. Strife
between rival Zulu factions cost hundreds of lives, and white extremists
set off bombs at campaign rallies and assassinated the second most
popular black figure, Chris Hani.
But the fear was more than
offset by the excitement in black townships. Mr. Mandela, wearing a
hearing aid and orthopedic socks, soldiered on through 12-hour campaign
days, igniting euphoric crowds packed into dusty soccer stadiums and
perched on building tops to sing liberation songs and cheer.
During elections in April
1994, voters lined up in some places for miles. The African National
Congress won 62 percent of the vote, earning 252 of the 400 seats in
Parliament’s National Assembly and ensuring that Mr. Mandela, as party
leader, would be named president when Parliament convened.
Mr. Mandela was sworn in as president on May 10, and he accepted office with a speech of shared patriotism,
summoning South Africans’ communal exhilaration in their land and their
common relief at being freed from the world’s disapproval.
“Never, never and never
again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the
oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk
of the world,” he declared.
Then nine Mirage fighter
jets of the South African Air Force, originally purchased to help keep
someone like Mr. Mandela from taking power, roared overhead, and 50,000
roared back from the lawn spread below the government buildings in
Pretoria, “Viva the South African Air Force, viva!”
Limitations as a President
As president, Mr. Mandela
set a style that was informal and multiracial. He lived much of the time
in a modest house in Johannesburg, where he made his own bed. He
enjoyed inviting visiting foreign dignitaries to shake hands with the
woman who served them tea.
But he was also casual,
even careless, in his relationships with rich capitalists, the mining
tycoons, retailers and developers whose continued investment he saw as
vital to South Africa’s economy. Before the election, he went to 20
industrialists and asked each for at least one million rand ($275,000 at
the exchange rate of that time) to build up his party and finance the
campaign. In office, he was unabashed about taking their phone calls —
and bristled when unions organized a strike against some of his big
donors. He enjoyed socializing with the very rich and the show-business
celebrities who flocked to pay homage.
At the same time, he was
insistent that the black majority should not expect instant material
gratification. He told union leaders at one point to “tighten your
belts” and accept low wages so that investment would flow. “We must move
from the position of a resistance movement to one of builders,” he said
in an interview the next day, musing on the impatience of his allies.
Mr. Mandela exhibited a
genius for the grand gesture of reconciliation. Some attempts, like a
tea he organized of prominent A.N.C. women and the wives of
apartheid-era white officials, were awkward.
Others were triumphant. Few
in South Africa, whatever their race, were unmoved in June 1995 when
the South African rugby team, long a symbol of white arrogance, defeated
New Zealand in a World Cup final, a moment dramatized in the 2009 film
“Invictus.” Mr. Mandela strode onto the field wearing the team’s green
jersey, and 80,000 fans, mostly Afrikaners, erupted in a chant of
“Nel-son! Nel-son!”
Mr. Mandela’s instinct for compromise in the interest of unity was evident in the 1995 creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
devised to balance justice and forgiveness in a reckoning of the
country’s history. The panel offered individual amnesties for anyone who
testified fully on the crimes committed during the apartheid period.
In the end, the process
fell short of both truth (both white officials and A.N.C. leaders were
evasive) and reconciliation (many blacks found that information only fed
their anger). But it was generally counted a success, giving South
Africans who had lost loved ones to secret graves a chance to reclaim
their grief, while avoiding the spectacle of endless trials.
There was a limit, though,
to how much Mr. Mandela — by exhortation, by symbolism, by regal appeals
to the better natures of his constituents — could paper over the gulf
between white privilege and black privation.
After Mr. Mandela delivered
one miracle in the shape of South Africa’s freedom, it was perhaps too
much to expect that he could deliver another in the form of broad
prosperity. In his term, he made only modest progress in fulfilling the
modest goals he had set for housing, education and jobs.
He tried with limited
success to transform the police from an instrument of white supremacy to
an effective crime-fighting force. Corruption and cronyism (which
predated majority rule) blossomed. Foreign investment, despite the
universal high esteem for Mr. Mandela, kept its distance.
Racial divisions, kept in
check by the euphoria of the peaceful transition and by Mr. Mandela’s
moral authority, re-emerged somewhat as the ultimate problem of closing
the income gap remained unresolved.
The South African
journalist Mark Gevisser, in his 2007 biography of Mr. Mandela’s
successor as president, Thabo Mbeki, wrote: “The overriding legacy of
the Mandela presidency — of the years 1994 to 1999 — is a country where
the rule of law was entrenched in an unassailable Bill of Rights, and
where the predictions of racial and ethnic conflict did not come true.
These feats, alone, guarantee Mandela his sanctity. But he was a far
better liberator and nation-builder than he was a governor.”
In addition, Mr. Mandela
bequeathed his country a virtual one-party system with a
circle-the-wagons attitude toward allegations of corruption, a distaste
for criticism in the news media and a tendency to treat rival parties as
verging on treasonous. Neither liberal nor conservative opposition
parties managed to organize themselves into a credible alternative to
the A.N.C.
Mr. Mandela himself
deferred to his party, notably in the choice of a successor. After the
party favorite, Mr. Mbeki, had succeeded to the presidency, Mr. Mandela
let it be known that he had actually preferred the younger Mr.
Ramaphosa, the former mine workers’ union leader who had negotiated the
new Constitution. Mr. Mbeki knew and resented that he was not the
favorite, and for much of his presidency he snubbed Mr. Mandela.
Mr. Mandela mostly
refrained from directly criticizing his successor, but his
disappointment was unmistakable when Mr. Mbeki showed his intolerance of
criticism and his conspiratorial view of the world. When Mr. Mbeki
questioned mainstream medical explanations of the cause of AIDS,
stifling open discussion that might have helped cope with a galloping
epidemic, Mr. Mandela spoke up on the need for protected sex and cheaper
medicines. When his eldest son, Makgatho, died in 2005, Mr. Mandela
gathered family members to publicly disclose that the cause was AIDS.
In the 2007 interview,
speaking on the condition that he not be quoted until after his death,
Mr. Mandela was openly scornful of Mr. Mbeki’s leadership. The A.N.C.,
he said, had always succeeded as a movement and a party because it had
drawn on the collective wisdom of its many constituencies.
“There is a great deal of
centralization now under President Mbeki, where he takes decisions
himself,” Mr. Mandela declared. “We never liked that.”
Mr. Mbeki often found it
excruciating to govern in Mr. Mandela’s shadow. He felt his predecessor
had dealt him a nearly impossible hand — first by encouraging the notion
that South Africa’s liberation was the magic of one great black man,
and second by emphasizing accommodation with white power and thus doing
relatively little to relieve the impoverished black majority.
In interviews published in
Mr. Gevisser’s biography, Mr. Mbeki chafed at President Mandela’s
ability to rule by charm and stature, with little attention to the
mechanics of governing.
“Madiba didn’t pay any attention to what the government was doing,” Mr. Mbeki said, using the clan name for his predecessor. “We had to, because somebody had to.”
As a former president, Mr.
Mandela lent his charisma to a variety of causes on the African
continent, joining peace talks in several wars and assisting his wife,
Graça, in raising money for children’s aid organizations.
In 2010, the World Cup
soccer games took place in South Africa, another sporting-world
benediction of the peace Mr. Mandela did so much to deliver to his
country. But for Mr. Mandela, the proud occasion turned to heartbreak
when his 13-year-old granddaughter Zenani was killed
in an auto accident while returning from an opening-day concert. Mr.
Mandela, who had been instrumental in luring the tournament to its first
African setting, canceled his plans to attend the opening day.
By then, his hearing and
memory shaky, he had already largely withdrawn from public debate,
declining almost all interview requests and confining himself to
scripted public statements on issues like the war in Iraq. (He was
vehemently against it.)
When he received a reporter
for the 2007 interview, his aides were already contending with a
custody battle over Mr. Mandela’s legacy — including where he would be
buried and how he would be memorialized. Mr. Mandela insisted that his
burial be left to his widow, and be done with minimal fanfare. His
acolytes had other plans.
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