Prisoner

Serving a life sentence, Mandela suffered through hard labor and petty cruelties. But he transformed isolation into a pulpit for change

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    In 1976, when South Africa's security forces fired on students in Soweto who were protesting having to study in Afrikaans, the township erupted. After that, townships across the country became no-go areas for the police and army, and in retrospect, the Soweto uprising was the beginning of the end for apartheid, though the end would take a decade and a half. In 1982, Mandela and some of the ANC's top leaders were abruptly transferred to the mainland Cape Town prison of Pollsmoor, where they were given a bed, sheets, their own balcony, a living room and newspapers. In 1984, Mandela was allowed to hug Winnie for the first time in 21 years. In 1985, President P.W. Botha publicly offered Mandela his freedom if he renounced violence. Mandela's response was read by his daughter Zindzi to a crowd of supporters in Soweto. "I am not a violent man. It was only then, when all other forms of resistance were no longer open to us, that we turned to armed struggle ... Let [Botha] renounce violence. Let him say he will dismantle apartheid ... I cherish my freedom dearly, [but] what freedom am I being offered while the organization of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. I cannot, and will not give any undertaking at a time when I and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated. I will return."

    That same year, the prison wardens separated Mandela from his comrades. Mandela was angered, but he also realized "my solitude gave me a certain liberty, and I resolved to use it to do something I had been pondering for a long while: begin discussions with the government." This was, wrote Mandela, "extremely sensitive. Both sides regarded discussions as a sign of weakness and betrayal. The government asserted over and over that we were a terrorist organization of communists, and that they would never talk to terrorists or communists. The ANC asserted over and over that the government was fascistic and racist and that there was nothing to talk about until they unbanned the ANC, unconditionally released all political prisoners and removed the troops from the townships. I chose to tell no one what I was about to do. There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock."

    Contact with the government began tentatively. Mandela met South Africa's Justice Minister, Kobie Coetsee, in 1985. In 1988 he had a series of meetings with a four-man group from the government, including Coetsee. They demanded that he give up the armed struggle and break the ANC's alliance with the Communist Party. Mandela refused both requests. A third point of contention was majority rule: Mandela insisted on it; the government worried that it would sideline South Africa's whites forever.

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