21 Years in Captivity, Shoes Too Small to Fit His Feet

USSR Post stamp, 1988

I've been in jail longer than Nelson Mandela so maybe you want me to run for president.
-John Mason, The Rock

Quite a while back I made a short reference to the electoral troubles in Zimbabwe and the stature of Nelson Mandela. When Mandela was in hospital in December and there was concern the end might be near, I wondered how it was that he had gone from terrorist to globally respected elder while one-time hero of Africa, Robert Mugabe, had revealed himself to be an autocrat. Both were leaders of post-Apartheid states, but only one has overstayed his welcome. Indeed, I think the real reason Mandela is held so reverentially is not because he single-handedly rescued South Africa from racism, poverty, or any of the other ills it suffers from; but because he honoured the democratic system. His term expired and he stood aside. That he didn't go from liberator to dictator was an extraordinary break with the prevailing historical trend. Quoth Harvey Dent: "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain". Mandela avoided such a fate, but Mugabe has gone down the Ceauşescu route of being cashiered of his international awards and honours. What I suspect is that there is something fundamental in the histories of these two statesmen and their states that has led to such divergent outcomes.

The neighbouring states of Rhodesia and South Africa were quite alike. Both had segregationist policies, white minority governments, and were coming under increasing external pressure to change this. In 1961 South Africa left the Commonwealth and became a republic and four years later Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from Britain to stem majority rule. By this time black and coloured figures had already attempted to challenge the systems of oppression through political discourse and passive resistance. In both countries the political associations of liberation were composed of two mains factions ideologically split across Sino-Soviet lines. In South Africa these were the famous African National Congress and the lesser-known Pan African Congress, which split from the former over commitment to a programme for a racially-neutral future. In Rhodesia the two forces were the black nationalist Zimbabwe African National Union and the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union. Here we gain some insight as the ANC's orthodox Soviet approach was to seize control of the state (from race rather than class rule), whereas the Chinese-aligned ZANU adopted the Maoist attitude of tearing down the existing structures of the state and casting them anew - the extreme example of this being the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

After the civil efforts were suppressed, and in particular in South Africa after the Sharpeville Massacre, the political groups formed armed wings to overthrow the regimes. It's pertinent to remember one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Nelson Mandela was not a latter day Gandhi when he co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) to engage in guerilla warfare, nor would he be expected to be. Had Gandhi been in Cambodia in 1975 (it's a cliché to invoke Nazi Germany) he wouldn't have gotten very far - non-violent resistance relies on the assurance that the state will seek to avoid lethal force. Pol Pot's cadres had no such compunction in achieving their goals. Violent resistance was a necessary evil as the state does not stand alone - it is an abstract supported by the citizens. In one sense, the people killed by the MK campaign who did not actively support apartheid were more valid targets than the minority that did perpetuate it. This is exactly the reason three thousand people died in New York in 2001. I'll refrain from spelling it out because I am likely falling foul of at least one piece of anti-terrorism legislation. In Rhodesia the struggle against apartheid devolved into a traditional civil war with the added bonus of ZANU and ZAPU fighting each other for dominance.

It was my initial belief that Mandela's twenty seven year imprisonment beginning in 1962 was the elephant in the room, however Mugabe was also imprisoned from 1964 although only till 1974. The political development of their respective parties explains part of the difference, but it is Mugabe's personal influences which reveal his path to autocracy. In the years prior to his incarceration he had lived in Ghana and attended, along with ZANU members, the 'Kwame Nkrumah Institute of Economics and Political Science'. Kwame Nkrumah was the first president and prime minister of independent Ghana who reliably followed the liberator to dictator path - going from rallying trade unions toward decolonisation to banning strikes within a decade wherever people stood in the way of his personal rule of Ghana. Mandela, on the other hand, was seemingly imbued with a deep sense of humility whilst spending the years reading literature and philosophy. Being isolated on Robben Island also helped shield him from responsibility for MK's operations.

When Mugabe ascended to power in 1980 it was thus the beginning of the consolidation of his control that led to the virtual establishment of a one party state and years later a brutal campaign against the remaining diminished white minority. It's a quirk of history that Mandela was denounced as a terrorist in the 1980s while Mugabe was the statesman. Rhodesia was politically isolated after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 and thus was unable to match the material support given to ZANU and ZAPU by the Soviets and Chinese, amongst others. But, for its crimes South Africa avoided binding international criticism until the late 1970s when economic sanctions and embargoes took hold and it was able to maintain social control whilst also involving the armed forces in regional conflicts until the mid 1980s. Rhodesia, by then known as Zimbabwe, concluded its civil war before the decline of Soviet influence which later began to rob South Africa of its justification of apartheid as an anti-communist bulwark.

After the death of PW Botha in 1989, FW de Klerk surely realised the futility of continuing bloody-mindedly toward global ostracisation as had befallen Rhodesia. In doing so he preserved the (limited) democratic structure of the country where the latter had drifted into authoritarianism. Having come to be the prime force against apartheid, its dismantling saw the ANC become the party that delivered liberation and become, in a way, an institutional party of revolution. Despite their near domination of South African politics, the country is a long way from being a one-party state. Controversies over the years, however, have made the ANC appear to behave as if it was, especially under the contemporary leadership of Jacob Zuma. Indeed, after last August's incident you might well question whether South Africa is the fading beacon of the continent and whether the party is really on the side of the people or pursuing its own plutocratic agenda. As always, the party that fought for the revolution cannot rest on that laurel forever.

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