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Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Nelson Mandela: An Ecological Study

by Jabulani Buthelezi

668 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0707; ISBN 1-55369-894-0; US$45.00, C$62.50, EUR40.70, £28.20

Non-Africans have written much about Baba Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Nelson Mandela in Non-African languages. This book was first written in Zulu and then translated into four South African languages including English.

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about the book about the author sample excerpts or Table of Contents catalogue info

About the Book

This book is a comprehensive biography of Nelson Mandela that is enriched by the context of the South African struggle that the author brings into the narrative. Nelson Mandela is immersed in the entire liberationist strife from 1652 to 2000 as it took place in South Africa within the globa waves that impcted the South African scenes with reactionary trends as well as emancipatory influences.

Unlike most books on Nelson Mandela, this book was written by a South African Black, first in Zulu and then translated to five South African languages, including English. As the author was a participant in the struggle, this book captures much of the stories as they were experienced, told and retold by the South Africans, especially those de-voiced South African Blacks who dared not write or speak openly about the struggle. This book is, therefore largely a Black person's view point, a view point that is informed by scholarship, distance from the South Africa and decades of living in South Africa under apartheid.

About the Author

Jabulani C. Buthelezi is a teacher who was born at Lennoxton in Newcastle. He received his primary and secondary education at St. Lewis Bertrand's School and matriculated at Amanzimtoti Training College. He obtained a BA degree at the University of Zululand and obtained a UED, a BEd and BA Hons. (History) at the University of South Africa. He was a student of Professor Darlene Clark Hine who fired him with the desire to write at Michigan State University where he got an MA (Ed Admn); MA (History) MA and a Ph.D. in Adult & Continuing Education. He is also doing an MA in Creative Writing at Columbus University, New Orleans, Los Angeles.

In 1993 he won the African Heritage Literary Award and in 1994 also won the M-NET Book Prize with his novel Kushaywa Edonsayo. In 1994 he won the African Heritage Literary Award and in 1995 also won the M-NET Book Prize with his novel Impi YabomDabu Isethunjini. He won the African Heritage Literary Award in 1997 with another novel,
Uze Ungalokothi
. Other publications of this author are at the end of this book.

This author is known as the principal who built Amakholwa High School at Edendale in Pietermaritzburg, and he was the principal who founded Buhle Buyeza High School in Greytown. He was also the principal of Zibukezulu High School and Mpande High School in Pietermaritzburg. In the USA, he was a field instructor in Multiple Perspectives Teacher Education Programme at Michigan State University where he also taught isiZulu. In 1996 he was a visiting professor at Albion College. He is now a full-time writer who is committed to make a significant contribution in nine African languages, which were neglected by the apartheid regime. Most of his work will be translated into eleven South African languages.

Jabulani C. Buthelezi is married to Dr. Sybil Mazoe MaDlamini who is not only his loving wife, companion and friend, but she is also the backbone, the chief editor and the one-person ethics committee of all his literary work.

Table of Contents and Excerpts

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Baba Mandela and British cultural imperialism
3. Madiba and Higher Education
4. Decentred, Deleted and Dispossessed
5. Mandela & Tambo Attorneys-at-Law
6. Coalitions, Co-options, Internal Legitimacy,
International profile and the Defiance Campaign
7. The Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter
8. The Treason Trial and Sharpeville Massacre
9. Baba Mandela calls for a National Assembly
10. Baba Mandela outside South Africa
11. Baba Mandela versus the State
12. The Rivonia Trial
13. Robben Island- The First Decade
14. Baba Mandela and the Youth
15. The Tortuous road to the Baba Mandela Release
16. The first year of freedom after 27 years in prison
17. Negotiations at last
18. Baba Mandela and the 1992 tightrope
19. The Demise of apartheid- 1993
20. Queue my beloved country
21. The Peoples’ President
22. A fallen idol, a Lady, A Soul of Africa- Mama Winnie Mandela?
23. The Truth Commission
24. Baba Mandela: The Beacon of Light
25. Awards and recognition for Baba Mandela
Bibliography
Index

Introduction

We, who are free to eat and sleep at will, to write, to speak, to travel as we please; we, who are free to make or break a revolution, let us use our comparative freedom, not to perpetuate the misery of those who suffer, nor to give indirect aid to the enemy they fight by withholding our own contributions. Baba Oliver Tambo. 1986.

In many countries we have chained the savage and starved him to death. . . We have hunted the savage and his little children and their mothers with dogs and guns. . . . In many countries we have taken the savage's land from him, and made him our slave, and lashed him everyday, and broken his pride and made death his only friend.

There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than other savages. Mark Twain . In Chinweizu 1987.

Baba Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Nelson Mandela ka Mphakanyiswa Gadla kaMadiba, the beloved freedom-fighter of South Africa, is a hero who symbolizes freedom, peace, prosperity and racial tolerance for most South Africans who love freedom, peace and prosperity for all. They love and support his efforts at stopping the warring factions within South Africa, which is often called the festering sore of Africa. The expansive depth and breadth of Baba Mandela often encourages writers to colonize, skim or sanitize him so that their end-product is an attenuated Europeanized or Indianized Nelson Mandela, and not Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Nelson Mandela kaMphakanyiswa Gadla kaMadiba. In Indianizing Baba Mandela, Hari Sharan Chhabra states that
"Mandela was seen marching in the footsteps of Gandhi. . . . In a ringing tone, in the style of Gandhi, Mandela told the protestors that there would be no progress in South Africa unless the interim government is installed."

At no time did Baba Mandela walk on the footsteps of Gandhi to obtain the "Asiatic and Coloureds Only" doors, train compartments and other segregated facilities in South Africa. He fought for all South Africans. The Madiba style or magic is just a Baba Mandela style. Baba Mandela is caged, compromised and distorted in distortive reductionist scholarship such as that presented in a subtle Zulu-bashing fashion by Chhabra who states that, "In South Africa some individual chiefs, such as Lituli (meaning Baba Chief Luthuli) at one time President General of the ANC, may have played an important role in the liberation struggle, (He played such an important role that he received a Nobel Prize for Peace), but the ANC would like to do away with these archaic institutions." Baba Mandela does not regard chieftaincy as archaic. He stated that in Angola the Marxist government had abolished chieftaincy, only to be faced with a rebellion from tribal followers in the countryside. The MPLA lost support to parties, which respected tribal leaders. This book will reclaim Baba Mandela in his African entirety.

The absence of the African voice, the people's voice in the stories of South African liberation is a cause for great concern amongst Africans. The time has come for Africans to wrestle the pen from non-Africans and then tell their story as truthfully as they can so that the distortions, the misrepresentations and omissions in their stories may be rectified. Africans are appalled by such distortions: "In the early years of its formation, the ANC had great respect for chiefs, which is why Zulu King Catshwayo (instead of Cetshwayo) was one time Vice-President of the ANC." This is absurd. His Majesty King Cetshwayo kaMpande, kaSenzangakhona died in 1884. How could he be the Vice-President of the ANC, which was founded in 1912? By changing the king's name to Catshwayo, which means one who is always being chewed or being broken down, Chhabra, an Indian scholar, distorts African history. The Zulu king was called Cetshwayo, which means one who is always being reported to some authorities. Indeed, the king was being spied upon for British authorities. Non-African scholars ignore these African nuances which weave the African stories within their particularistic peculiarities. This creates dissonance between their written word and African historical reality.
For instance, Hosea Jaffe states that:

On November, Sisulu on Mandela's instruction given from his villete in the Vester Prison . . . and with the pre-knowledge of the Government welcomed talks with Zwelithini "King of the Zulus" who died in early 1990. This Homelands Police Chief . . . addressed 75, 000 so- classified "Zulus" in Durban in November while police shot down fifteen striking transport workers in the same city.

This degrading four-line Zulu-bashing diatribe teems with enormous misinformation. His Majesty, King Zwelithini still enjoys the best of health ten years after his alleged "death." Baba Mandela could not give instructions to Baba Sisulu because Baba Mandela was not the president, a general or commandant of the ANC. Moreover, Baba Sisulu was older than Baba Mandela and the latter respected Baba Sisulu and would NEVER give him instructions. That would have been gross violation of African protocol. The ANC was not an army. Baba Tambo was the ANC president, and he too did not give instructions to ANC members. A "Homelands Police Chief" could not exist as the homelands had different ethnic groups with different ethnic chiefs. The Zulus were not created by classification by the White Government, but existed before the White arrived in Natal. Baba Mandela did not work with the "pre knowledge of the government." Jaffe's distortive figment of imagination calls to my mind Babas Stephan Sobantu Biko, Na'im Akbar and Molefi Kete Asante who had this to say to Africans:

We are aware of the terrible role played by our education and religion in creating amongst us false understanding of ourselves. We must therefore work our scheme not only to correct this, but also further to be our own authorities than to be interpreted by others. (Baba Biko).

Ce-le-brations Time. Come on!

The musical group Kool and Gang popularized their song in the early 1980s. Even though they were singing about rather transitory experience, the lyric captures the imperative of more generic experience that is necessary to remove the chains of mental slavery. We must celebrate ourselves. Self-celebration does not necessitate the degradation of others. It does, unapologetically sing the greatness of our accomplishments and the special blessing to the world. It tells each new generation something about the fabric from which they are made. . . Certainly, one of the major strategies for enslaving the mind was the degradation of the Black/African self. Baba Akbar).
Quite correctly, there is no other truth more necessary for the intellectual, political, economic and cultural advancement of the world than African people immersing themselves in the waters of cultural rebirth . . . . The rejection of European as universal is the first stage of coming into intellectual struggle. Five hundred years of constant, cultural exploitation, information distortion and historical reality and physical annihilation have left the African world shocked out of its own historical reality and purpose of the world. (Baba Asante)

This book interprets Baba Mandela, us. It celebrates our accomplishments with him within our own historical reality as Africans who immerse themselves in the waters of cultural rebirth after the 400 years of dry White season of racial bigotry. The book is a story of millions of Africans who, with Baba Mandela took the long meandrous multifaceted and multi-twisted and turning road to freedom.

Baba Mandela's story is an embodiment of African aspirations, cultures, cosmologies, histories, and intellectualisms and knowledge whose genesis did not start in 1948 when the Afrikaners gained power in South Africa. These cosmologies, cultures and histories extend beyond 1652. The year 1652 marks the date of the beginning of White-Black bitter confrontation, White cultural imperialism and intellectual cannibalism with which Baba Mandela had to wrestle. Baba Mandela’s saga is but one link in the gruesome chain of liberationist strife waged by Africans in repelling White predators. When Baba Autshumao, renamed Harry by the Whites, the leader of the Khoikon, took up arms against the Afrikaners of the Dutch East India Company in 1658 , he began a struggle, which could have almost ended in 1994 when he became the first president of a democratically elected South Africa. The Khoikon attacked the Whites as they discovered that the Whites they had welcomed as guests, had come to steal and kill, and were determined to stay in South Africa as conquerors, colonists, intellectual cannibals, cultural corruptives, oppressors and thieves. Imprisoned in Robben Island in 1659, Baba Autshumoa escaped and was back on the mainland. Four Khoikon Babas were arrested for an alleged assault and robbery of sheep in 1677. Three of them were flogged, branded and banished to Robben Island in chains for fifteen years; the fourth was flogged and banished to Robben Island for seven years. On the 4th of January 1678 the prisoners escaped to the mainland. The treatment of prisoners had always been severe from the earliest White settlements. Wilmot says this of Robben Island:

The first prisoner had to be bound to the post at the post of execution, with a halter round her neck, and a cowhide above her head, had to be severely flogged, branded and confined to Robben Island for twelve years. Three slaves, for desertion, and inciting others thereto were sentenced to be severely flogged, their ears cut off, to be branded in the back and on the cheeks, and work in chains. Two slaves, for stealing vegetables, were placed on a pillory, with cabbages overhead, flogged and afterwards branded, their ears cut off, and then placed in chains for life.

Baba Mandela's imprisonment in Robben Island in 1963 was but one of hundreds of imprisonments of African leaders who dared raise their voices against White greed and its subsequent White supremacy. The first African prisoner in Robben Island was Baba Autshumao, the chief of the Khoikon. He was imprisoned in 1658. The first White prisoners in Robben Island were criminals sentenced at Old Bailey, in London and then banished to Robben Island in 1614. Captain Peyton brought those men to Robben Island. Cross, their leader was killed; four were drowned while trying to reach an English ship. Three escaped to London where they were subsequently hanged for theft.

Another African banished to Robben Island was the first Christian African, Mama Krotoa, a mother, who was renamed Eve by the Afrikaners. Mama Krotoa died in Robben Island where she was banished. Robben Island thereafter became the prison for African kings, chiefs, fathers, mothers and leaders who dared challenge the might of White demigods whose omnipotence and omniscience were enshrined in all spheres of South African lives. For instance, during the time of the British settlers’ White domination, Baba Stuurman, a Khoikon chief, was imprisoned in Robben Island but escaped and returned to the mainland. The British settlers recaptured him and banished him to Australia. Inkosi Langalibalele, a Hlubi chief was imprisoned in Robben Island in 1873, inkosi Maqoma a Xhosa chief followed in Robben Island in 1879 . King Cetshwayo, a king of the Zulus was imprisoned in the Island of St Helena . When Baba Mandela was sent to Robben Island he found scores of PAC leaders and SWAPO leaders who were also imprisoned. The skimming of Baba Mandela from these histories of African liberationists’ struggles and histories of Robben Island trivializes the Madiba saga and masks White domination in South Africa. It also diverts attention away from White aristocracy of colour, the callous savagery of discrimination based on gender, ethnicity and White greed.

We cannot bring about ameliorative transformation in South Africa with multiple layering of cosmetic lies. W.E.B. Dubois remarked that the major world problems emanated from the Whites’ fear of the truth and their belief in the efficacy of lies. As there is a time for everything under the sun, the time for the truth has come. Let us not get to the 21st century deluding ourselves with lies, equivocation and subterfuges choreographed by vituperate British settler racism which glosses over its pre-1948 ignoble, murky pseudo-Christianity, hegemony and racism. Though some people believe that lies repeated ad nauseam become the truth, in the end, the truth overtakes lies. The truth is that the story about Baba Mandela resonates in Africanity with its indigenous knowledges, the muted and mutilated voices, the silenced silences and the nuances of African languages and naming practices. These nuances and practices often defy being translated into English. One can better understand Baba Mandela by immersing him within an ecological contested terrain with its micro-, meso-, macro- and exo- constellations, which impinge on the lives of all Africans and the South African Whites. The model on the next page captures the constellation of social forces impacting on Baba Mandela. Our discussion will time and again refer to elements in that model. Baba Mandela did not mushroom from nowhere in 1948 to fight apartheid, but was part of lengthy historical struggle legacy. Below is the ecological environment which impinged on Baba Mandela.

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