tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/robben-island-18526/articles
Robben Island – The Conversation
2023-06-13T16:18:40Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205251
2023-06-13T16:18:40Z
2023-06-13T16:18:40Z
South African activist Frank Anthony wrote a novel that has been forgotten: why it shouldn’t have been
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526767/original/file-20230517-11985-ieafwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of a photo of Frank Anthony (front left) on Robben Island with Walter Sisulu (front right).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Unknown/Courtesy Nelson Mandela Foundation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How does it come about that a man who dedicated the greater part of his life to a vision of a just South Africa, and sacrificed his family and personal relationships to do so, disappears from the annals of the country’s history?</p>
<p>How does a writer with consummate command of two of South Africa’s national languages – English and Afrikaans – and whose work in poetry and prose reflects deep insights into world politics, literature and culture come to be virtually totally forgotten?</p>
<p>This is what happened to Frank Anthony, a South African author and activist who lived a life committed to ending racial, economic and gender injustice in apartheid South Africa. Anthony was born in 1940 and died in 1993.</p>
<p>He is the author of an Afrikaans poetry collection <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Robbeneiland.html?id=rgniAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Robbeneiland: My Kruis, My Huis</a> (Robben Island: My Cross, My Home) and the novel <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_Journey.html?id=nUIgAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Journey: The Revolutionary Anguish of Comrade B</a>. Both works draw on his six-year incarceration on <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/robben-island">Robben Island</a>, and the impact of being restricted within the Kraaifontein district of Cape Town for five years after his release.</p>
<p>I have studied his works, and his life, over the past three years, and have distilled my findings in a recently published <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/eia.v50i1.4">article</a> on his novel The Journey.</p>
<p>The novel is set in the 1980s. Yet it seems to speak to the betrayal and crisis of leadership experienced in South Africa at the present time. I am also interested in the ways the novel seems to exclude personal relationships, especially romantic love, in its political vision. </p>
<p>Investigating Anthony’s life and work, I discovered that his political and literary contributions had not been recognised. Almost <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/frank-anthony-1">no information</a> is available about him online. Both his publications are out of print, so not easily available to the general reading public, and his work has completely fallen out of view in South African literary studies.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kampen</span></span>
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<p>In my view this is because of his implicit criticism of the leadership of the political organisation to which he belonged, the <a href="https://www.apdusa.org.za/about-us/">African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa</a>, which has expunged his presence and his political contribution from their website. Another factor was the racialised way in which his poetry and fiction were viewed. Reviews of his poetry collection at the time of its publication, for example, focus on the racial identity of the poet rather than on the literary sophistication of his collection. </p>
<p>For me, Anthony’s experience amounts to censorship and “banning”. This was something many South African writers experienced at the hands of a number of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> laws and censorship boards. </p>
<p>It also echoes the experience of dissident writers in Africa such as <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/nuruddin-farah.html">Nuruddin Farah</a>, as well as international writers like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/18/vaclav-havel">Václav Havel</a> who challenged authoritarian regimes through their life work and writing.</p>
<h2>The times</h2>
<p>Anthony was born in Stellenbosch in 1940. Stellenbosch is a town in the Cape winelands, steeped in colonial history. It is still home to the descendants of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-slavery-and-early-colonisation-south-africa">enslaved people</a> brought by the Dutch to the Cape from the mid-17th century.</p>
<p>Apartheid segregation and discrimination were layered onto this history by the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party</a>, which came into power in 1948. This was the society into which Anthony was born, and the context that influenced his political allegiances.</p>
<p>He joined the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/non-european-unity-movement-neum">Non-European Unity Movement</a>, and later its affiliate, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/african-peoples-democratic-union-southern-africa-apdusa">African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa</a>. </p>
<p>In 1972, Anthony was arrested and convicted on four counts under the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1967-terrorism-act-no-83-1967">Terrorism Act</a>. The act gave the apartheid government the legal power to clamp down on resistance movements.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photograph of two prison guards standing supervising three men with gardening implements - a man on the left looking directly to camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526771/original/file-20230517-15-mjxdxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Frank Anthony (left).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Unknown/ Courtesy Nelson Mandela Foundation</span></span>
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<p>Anthony was imprisoned for six years on Robben Island. Leaders like <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/walter-ulyate-sisulu">Walter Sisulu</a> of the African National Congress were serving their sentences there at the time.</p>
<p>On his release in 1978 Anthony was put under a banning order. This meant that he was physically restricted to the Kraaifontein area, a semi-rural district of Cape Town. He worked at a supermarket in the area even though he was a qualified economics lecturer.</p>
<p>After his banning order was lifted, Anthony again become involved in clandestine anti-apartheid operations. </p>
<h2>Contributions to literature</h2>
<p>Anthony was one of a number of significant writers of his time who acknowledged that literature and culture reflected – and were affected by – politics. Other celebrated South African writers, including <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mongane-wally-serote-1944">Mongane Wally Serote</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/epitaph-for-a-baobab-remembering-south-african-poet-and-activist-don-mattera-187654">Don Mattera</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nadine-gordimer">Nadine Gordimer</a>, also believed that literature had the power to transform hearts, minds and the world. </p>
<p>Anthony’s Afrikaans poetry collection, Robbeneiland: My Kruis, My Huis, was published in 1983. It was titled after the extended poem where he reflects on his prison experience. This poem was also published in the well-known resistance literary magazine, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/staffrider-vol5-no2-1982">Staffrider</a>. </p>
<p>The collection was the first example of Afrikaans prison literature, and an exemplar of how Afrikaans could be an African language of resistance rather than “the oppressor’s tongue” as it had been seen, following the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto youth uprising</a>, when Afrikaans was imposed in black schools.</p>
<p>But the poetry collection has not been studied for its literary qualities and its creative exposition of debates and philosophies. Rather it has simply become a footnote in Afrikaans literary scholarship. </p>
<p>Anthony’s 1991 novel, written in English, has been almost completely elided from history, despite receiving good reviews in the South African press when it was published.</p>
<p>The highly satirical novel allegorically tells the story of the journey of Comrade B through South Africa to a neighbouring country where his political leaders are exiled. The organisation is never named in the novel. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/epitaph-for-a-baobab-remembering-south-african-poet-and-activist-don-mattera-187654">Epitaph for a baobab: remembering South African poet and activist Don Mattera</a>
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<p>The novel uses well-known literary allusions to foreground the idea of betrayal, especially by leaders who seem to have lost touch with realities on the ground.</p>
<p>The organisation Anthony was still close to read the novel narrowly and defensively. The leadership saw it as an autobiography rather than as a novel, presenting a non-fictional critique of organisational and leadership failings.</p>
<p>In its response to the novel in newsletters and other correspondence, references were made to the “mental instability” of its author. </p>
<h2>Importance</h2>
<p>In my view the novel is important for a number of reasons. </p>
<p>Firstly, it highlights the idea of betrayal of ethical and political principles. Current disillusionment with political parties is not new.</p>
<p>Secondly, the narrative seems, by omission, to be highlighting how personal lives and relationships, especially <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/10566/8992">romantic love</a>, might be a politically radical concept. The novel, following dominant Marxist theory, regards love as a bourgeois preoccupation. Contemporary leftist and radical black debates, by contrast, have re-evaluated the importance of love in political struggle.</p>
<p>Today the novel is available only at the Library of Parliament, the National Library of South Africa, and a handful of university libraries. Its disappearance impoverishes our understanding of activists and resistance movements, and their missteps and misapprehensions, in the South African context, as well as worldwide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205251/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>F. Fiona Moolla does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The activist and writer has been erased from South Africa’s history - but new academic work seeks to restore his voice.
F. Fiona Moolla, Senior Lecturer in English, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184393
2022-06-08T13:57:35Z
2022-06-08T13:57:35Z
Robert Sobukwe: equal status in the pantheon of South African activists is long overdue
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466930/original/file-20220603-23-zlf9xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Robert Sobukwe in his cell at the prison on Robben Island.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The mortal fight against apartheid is usually cast in terms of good versus evil, a simple schism in which there are heroes and villains, or racially, in a white against black equation that blots out pretty much all else in between. But of course, this is hardly ever the case. </p>
<p>Apartheid – and the racial segregation it was based on – thoroughly tested ethical principles and stances, made unlikely heroes of some and improbable scoundrels of others. It besmirched moral lenses more often than not. And because the sight it proffered isn’t usually pretty – and to protect the collective sanity of South Africans – there had to be neat ethical resolutions for untidy political and moral dilemmas. </p>
<p>The result was that many individuals fell through the cracks in the unfolding story of apartheid’s collateral damage.</p>
<p>One such figure is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Robert-Sobukwe-ebook/dp/B08N6YXKL8/ref=sr_1_7?qid=1654258886&refinements=p_27%3ADerek+Hook&s=books&sr=1-7">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a>, the formidable founder of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pan-africanist-congress-pac">Pan Africanist Congress of Azania</a> (PAC). He is the subject of a May 2022 Robben Island Museum hosted exhibition <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7eIiRcnP8Q">titled</a>, “Remember Africa, Remember Sobukwe”</p>
<p>Sobukwe, in very trying times, remains an unsung hero in the epic moral fight against the evil that was apartheid. He was a political leader, a social activist and genuine humanist who stood undaunted and undefeated by the deadly curveballs apartheid threw at him.</p>
<h2>History written by the victors</h2>
<p>Sobukwe casually subverts apartheid’s assumed ethical linearity by adding what is now unjustly viewed as a minority voice. Dubbed “Biko before Biko”, he was once perceived to possess more revolutionary potential than Nelson Mandela. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a> was the charismatic leader of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) during apartheid. He rallied South African youth in collective rebellion while at the time lavishing them with much-needed hope.</p>
<p>In attempting to dismantle apartheid’s vice-grip, Sobukwe discountenanced suggestions and methods of integrationism, a stance that saw him part ways with the African National Congress (ANC). This led <a href="https://roape.net/2022/06/01/remember-africa-remember-sobukwe/">to the formation</a> of his own still surviving movement, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania in 1959.</p>
<p>There’s an African proverb that speaks directly to what many perceive to be Sobukwe’s undervalued status in South African political history. The proverb, popularised by author and poet <a href="https://www.biography.com/writer/chinua-achebe">Chinua Achebe</a>, goes like this: that lions need to become historians in order to truthfully narrate their own history otherwise the tale of the hunt would always end up glorifying the hunter.</p>
<p>The ANC – and not the PAC – emerged victorious at a winner-takes-all contest that marked the end of apartheid. Due to this outcome, Sobukwe’s historical significance naturally receded.</p>
<p>Even under apartheid, Sobukwe could have had a much easier life if he chose. In 1954, he was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Bantu Languages at the historically white University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The importance of education was instilled in him as a boy together with his siblings by his struggling parents. Even in imprisonment, Sobukwe would acquire a degree in economics and another in law after he was released. Understandably, he was called “Prof.” by his associates and well-wishers.</p>
<p>However, Sobukwe was not content to live within the comforts provided by academia. He had joined the radical wing of the Youth League of the African National Congress. He subsequently became the editor of the uncompromising periodical, The Africanist. </p>
<p>Within the ANC, an ideological crisis occurred between those who were deemed moderates and the radicals. The moderates favoured an integrationist and gradualist approach to the sociopolitical impasse created by apartheid. Radicals such as Sobukwe supported an African revolution driven by Africans and for Africans without any accommodationist overtones. </p>
<p>The unresolved crisis meant he had to abandon the ANC and form the PAC instead.</p>
<h2>Incarceration and banishment</h2>
<p>In 1960, Sobukwe launched the Positive Decisive Campaign to peacefully protest the apartheid pass laws. He had informed the apartheid authorities of his non-violent protest. Nonetheless, the authorities responded <a href="https://theconversation.com/survey-shows-ignorance-about-big-moments-in-south-africas-history-like-the-sharpeville-massacre-157513">by massacring 69 individuals at Sharpville</a>. Applying the Criminal Law Amendment Act with criminal intent, Sobukwe was sentenced to three years of incarceration with hard labour served at Pretoria Central and Witbank Prisons.</p>
<p>When the time for his release came, parliament promulgated the Sobukwe Clause which saw him serve another six years at the notorious Robben Island. But he refused to be broken. He studied, taught, exercised and kept up steady correspondence with family and friends. </p>
<p>After he was eventually released, he was banished to Kimberley where he had no family and friends which must have felt like another spell of solitary confinement. Indeed his life was never the same after his indictment and incarceration. From that time until his eventual death from lung cancer in 1978, he was severed from family, friends, medical care and economic opportunities. </p>
<p>The intention of the apartheid regime had been to annihilate him psychologically and physically. They humiliated and starved him and also denied him permission to take up opportunities offered to him in the US. Indeed the systematic torture and horror meted out to him by the apartheid authorities were simply mind-blowing. They created a concatenation of arid dungeons for which there was no escape specifically for him.</p>
<p>When he died, his burial was arranged by the <a href="https://azapo.org.za/">Azanian People’s Organisation</a> (Azapo) at Graaff-Reinet and was attended by 5,000 people. Evidently, Sobukwe, even under the most intolerable conditions, had been effective in inspiring an ever loyal corps of freedom fighters who continued his invaluable work. </p>
<p>Sobukwe was principled, uncompromising, dedicated and courageous. When hope faltered and died, he resurrected it, where the enervated cried out for help and succour, he provided them. And as many of his faithful followers at the Robben Island Museum exhibition testified, he was undoubtedly a man for all seasons.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Robert Sobukwe was once perceived to possess more revolutionary potential than Nelson Mandela.
Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/160628
2021-05-11T14:39:35Z
2021-05-11T14:39:35Z
Book shows the folly of painting Mandela as either saint or sellout
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399734/original/file-20210510-5469-yc6x96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nelson Mandela at the commemoration of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in 1994.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Georges MERILLON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are two widely available views of <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a>, the first post-apartheid president of South Africa. The first is a reverential and uncritical celebration of his life and achievements. It resonated in the obituaries and eulogies when Mandela died <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-11-06-hundreds-remember-nelson-mandela-dying-in-the-1980s-inside-the-mandela-effect/">in December 2013</a>. </p>
<p>Madiba (his clan name) was <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=9VZmDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=tony+o%27reilly,+Mandela+sent+by+God&source=bl&ots=GEkAd8llEn&sig=ACfU3U3AIuYiJ0svquYP9wCDYyZ3lleUtw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiUtK6So8HwAhWVQhUIHZF8Aw4Q6AEwEnoECBIQAw#v=onepage&q=tony%20o'reilly%2C%20Mandela%20sent%20by%20God&f=false">“sent by God”</a>, said Irish newspaper magnate Tony O’Reilly, who’s said to have been a friend of Mandela’s. His purchase of South Africa’s then largest newspaper company, Argus Newspapers, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064229508535962">was made possible by Mandela’s support</a>. Former American president Barack Obama <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/12/05/president-obama-delivers-statement-passing-nelson-mandela">declared that</a> Mandela</p>
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<p>changed the arc of history, transforming his country, the continent and the world.</p>
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<p>A second prevailing view is hostile and dismissive. By 2015, a reputation that had appeared invincible was being shredded in some media outlets, on the streets and especially on university campuses across South Africa. The critique centred on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-1994-miracle-whats-left-159495">1994 negotiated settlement</a> that ended apartheid. It accused Mandela of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africa-should-undo-mandelas-economic-deals-52767">betraying</a> the black majority to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africa-should-undo-mandelas-economic-deals-52767">appease the economically powerful white minority</a>.</p>
<p>Both narratives – Mandela as secular saint or Mandela as sellout – are poor history. The suggestion that Mandela single-handedly achieved democracy is as intellectually threadbare as its mirror image: that he was responsible for the failure to transform social and economic relations after 1994.</p>
<p>Our edited collection, <em><a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/reassessing-mandela/">Reassessing Mandela</a></em>, provides a scholarly counterweight to the two polarised positions. It attempts to begin the task of revisiting the canonical biographies, rethinking aspects of Mandela’s life and his politics, and evaluating how he is and should be remembered.</p>
<h2>Reassessing Mandela</h2>
<p>The first aspect of Mandela’s life reassessed in the book is his family and its background, his childhood and youth, and his Thembu lineage. Two chapters – by the late <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/sources/alumni-news/2017/distinguished-historian-passes-away.html">Phil Bonner</a> and by <a href="https://sociology.columbian.gwu.edu/xolela-mangcu">Xolela Mangcu</a> – complement one another in intriguing ways. Both historians remind us that Mandela’s 1994 autobiography, <em><a href="https://www.exclusivebooks.co.za/product/9780349106533">Long Walk to Freedom</a></em>, is an unreliable text. Some of its flaws are replicated in the work of others. </p>
<p>Bonner’s archivally based chapter corrects some of the shaky chronology in <em>Long Walk</em>. It identifies Mandela’s father Gadla Mandela as “a significant if little recognised historical figure” but shows that Mandela’s own account of his father defying the white magistrate cannot be read as history. </p>
<p>Mangcu’s chapter challenges Mandela’s own account of his descent. He locates him within a history of the Thembu royal house’s “pragmatic co-operation” with colonial rule. Mandela did not mention this. </p>
<p>Mangcu emphasises the history of “African political modernity” in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/transkei">Transkei</a>, a territory comprising a number of African kingdoms and chiefdoms annexed in the 19th century. He also considers Gadla’s role in the local administrative body (Bungha), where he is portrayed as resisting both missionary influence and colonial regulations.</p>
<p>Bonner and Mangcu underline the complexity of “indirect rule” in the Transkei. They correct the tendency to discuss Mandela’s early years through a lens of rural nostalgia.</p>
<h2>Mandela’s political activism</h2>
<p>A second broad area of reassessment emerges from three chapters which consider Mandela’s relationship with the South African Communist Party <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-communist-party-sacp">(SACP)</a>, his activism and especially his leadership in underground politics. <a href="https://www.ul.ie/research/prof-tom-lodge">Tom Lodge</a> produces a fine-grained account of Mandela’s “association with South Africa’s communist left”. His is a study of friendships and social networks, of left-wing readings and writings, and of political alliances and tactics.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/department-of-historical-studies/Pages/staff/Paul-Landau.aspx">Paul Landau</a>’s chapter focuses on the period between the 1960 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> of black protesters by apartheid police, and Mandela’s arrest <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324461604578191683590816070">in August 1962</a>. It traces the efforts to implement the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2020.1700663">M-Plan</a> – a template for an underground structure of the liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC). </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399958/original/file-20210511-21-1bycvdt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Mandela and a small group of like-minded colleagues sought to use the plan to transform the ANC into a militant vanguard movement willing to employ violence against the state.</p>
<p>Thula Simpson’s chapter reconsiders Mandela’s role as commander-in-chief of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">umKhonto we Sizwe</a>, (an armed wing set up by the ANC and SACP). He suggests that its campaign of urban sabotage was more effective than generally acknowledged. </p>
<p>Three other chapters cast new light on different aspects of Mandela’s life: his marriage to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela; his years in jail on Robben Island, and his role in the human rights discourse that shaped South Africa’s new <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/shireen-hassim">Shireen Hassim</a> provides a compelling rereading of</p>
<blockquote>
<p>one of the most iconic political marriages in history. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>First, she establishes Mandela’s wife Winnie’s own political career and significance. She says it offered “a form of intimate political leadership” to young activists. Secondly, she explores the complex relationship between Winnie’s political trajectory and Nelson’s, and how a widening political divide accompanied the breakdown of the marriage.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cfms.uct.ac.za/fam/staff/evans">Martha Evans</a> examines four visits by journalists to Robben Island between 1964 and 1977, their interactions with Mandela and their published accounts. She discusses Mandela’s capacity to capitalise on brief contacts from an apparent position of weakness, and shows how incarceration enhanced his iconic status.</p>
<h2>Recalibrating Mandela</h2>
<p>These chapters are book-ended by Colin Bundy’s introduction and <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/find-an-expert/professor-elleke-boehmer">Elleke Boehmer</a>’s postscript. Boehmer explores how memories of Mandela are constructed and contested, and what fresh interpretations can teach us. </p>
<p>This collection treats Mandela not as an individual miracle-maker or traitor to the cause of transformation. It shows him as one political actor, alongside a multitude of others, within complex political and social forces. </p>
<p>It suggests that scholarship on Mandela will continue to explore and explain his politics and his ability to assert leadership. It will also continue to explore the contradictions and continuities of his personal makeup, and his determination over decades to bring people together. All this, while negotiating the corrugated terrain of race and identity in South Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160628/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The suggestion that Mandela single-handedly achieved democracy is as intellectually threadbare as the charge that he was centrally responsible for the failure to transform South Africa.
Colin Bundy, Honorary Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford
William Beinart, Professor, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/145852
2020-09-10T15:55:09Z
2020-09-10T15:55:09Z
Book reveals new, surprising nuggets about Nelson Mandela’s last years in jail
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357170/original/file-20200909-14-1csn6d3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Apartheid-era Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee, Thabo and Zanele Mbeki, Nelson Mandela and his daughter Zenani, FW and Marike de Klerk.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Twenty years ago the South African academic <a href="https://www.ufs.ac.za/humanities/departments-and-divisions/history-home/general/staff?pid=SxD3F6MdCzQ%3D">Jan-Ad Stemmet</a> met the apartheid era justice minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hendrik-jacobus-kobie-coetsee">Kobie Coetsee</a>, who announced he had transcripts of 13,000 pages of recordings of Nelson Mandela’s time in prison. </p>
<p>These transcripts of the anti-apartheid struggle icon contained, he said, “bombs, atom bombs” that would</p>
<blockquote>
<p>blow everything up.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The pair began to discuss a book deal but only two days in the 69-year-old Coetsee <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/aug/05/guardianobituaries.nelsonmandela">died</a> of a heart attack and the moment passed. Then, 14 years on, this trove of documents reemerged in an archive at the University of the <a href="https://www.ufs.ac.za/">Free State</a>, where Stemmet taught history.</p>
<p>Stemmet worked with the veteran South African journalist Riaan de Villiers to piece together the transcripts of recordings made in the final five years preceding Mandela’s release <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/06/11/190671704/the-day-nelson-mandela-walked-out-of-prison">on 11 February 1990</a> – a period of intense revolt against the apartheid regime, in which the black townships were rendered “ungovernable” and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-political-killings-have-taken-hold-again-in-south-africas-kwazulu-natal-143908">low level civil war erupted</a>. </p>
<p>Mandela and his seven comrades had been sentenced to life for sabotage at the end of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia trial</a> (1963-1964). In line with apartheid policies all, except <a href="https://theconversation.com/denis-goldberg-rivonia-triallist-liberation-struggle-stalwart-outspoken-critic-137670">Denis Goldberg</a>, who was white, were sent to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Robben-Island">Robben Island</a>, where black political prisoners were kept.</p>
<p>From the account of the secret prison recordings documented, Coetsee emerges as a key player in this period of South African history. The small, enigmatic and inscrutable lawyer by training was a far-sighted plotter who sometimes spoke in riddles and held his cards close to his chest. </p>
<p>Coetsee bugged Mandela’s prison conversations, which were also separately bugged by the National Intelligence Service. He seems to have used the knowledge and power this provided to help steer his own government in the direction of negotiations with the ANC.</p>
<p>As early as 1984, as justice minister, he suggested Mandela’s unconditional release, and helped persuade the bellicose Prime Minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/pieter-willem-botha">PW Botha</a> of the value of dialogue with “Prisoner 913”. Years later he helped frame <a href="https://theconversation.com/fw-de-klerk-made-a-speech-30-years-ago-that-ended-apartheid-why-he-did-it-130803">FW de Klerk’s historic speech</a> to parliament that announced the unbanning of the ANC and other political organisations.</p>
<p>De Villiers and Stemmet’s book, <a href="https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780624076322">Prisoner 913: Revelations from the Kobie Coetsee Archive</a>, offers a detailed look at Mandela’s talks with representatives of the apartheid government while he was in prison. It does indeed contain revelations that might be surprising, but no “atom bombs”.</p>
<p>What it does offer is valuable insight into Mandela’s extraordinary role in guiding the future of his country while still in prison, with the gnome-like Coetsee playing a key supporting role.</p>
<h2>Prelude to talks to end apartheid</h2>
<p>Shortly after being separated from his fellow prisoners at Pollsmoor – Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni – in 1985, Mandela began talking to government representatives. This he only revealed to the others after his initial meeting with Coetsee that year. The book notes that Mhlaba and Mlangeni were enthusiastic; Sisulu and Kathrada less so.</p>
<p>Mandela saw his role as a facilitator between the government and the ANC. He even proposed to Coetsee that the two of them go together to Lusaka to speak to the exiled ANC, an idea that fizzled out. Later Mandela considered an invitation from De Klerk to serve as a member of a “group of wise men” who’d advise him, but this too was dropped.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>When Sisulu and seven others were released <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/five-anc-leaders-are-released-prison">in 1989</a> Coetsee and Mandela agreed the ANC should not “fuel further conflict”. He was particularly keen that the ANC tone down its “armed struggle” rhetoric. He spoke on a prison phone to <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki-mr-0?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIzf6T4azc6wIVWeN3Ch1Lew6hEAAYASAAEgLsxvD_BwE">Thabo Mbeki</a>, who was then the movement’s publicity director. Mbeki read to him an ANC statement but conveniently left out the bit where they called for armed struggled to be intensified. Mandela later discovered this and was peeved, saying Mbeki had “made a mistake”.</p>
<p>In a January 1990 memo for the cabinet, Coetsee summarised Mandela’s dilemma. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>His separate detention in relatively comfortable conditions created a situation in which his colleagues became irritable and even distrustful towards him, especially when it became known that he was holding discussions with ministers and senior officials.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Coetsee suggested this was his side’s aim, saying it was “subtly exploited” but conceded it failed because </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mandela sought throughout to prevent a wedge being driven between him and his organisation, or even that such perceptions should develop and take root.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One example is negotiation strategy.</p>
<p>Mandela proposed a two-stage model: first the government and ANC would work out preconditions; then the actual negotiations would begin. However, when the ANC adopted a different approach, calling on the government first to create a “climate for negotiations”, Mandela went along with this.</p>
<p>Gradually, the initiative shifted away from Coetsee and towards Prisoner 913, who made the key decisions with the government responding, right down to the timing and modalities of his own release.</p>
<h2>A view on Winnie Mandela</h2>
<p>Some of the most intriguing passages relate to Winnie Mandela. A document covering a conversation with his elder daughter Zenani and her husband, Swazi Prince Muzi Dlamini, is particularly revealing. Nelson wanted their younger daughter, Zindzi, to join her sister at Boston University because he was worried about Winnie’s “corrupting influence”, with the prison note taker recording him saying she had </p>
<blockquote>
<p>no respect for the community, the family or himself and also not for herself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The note taker summarised Mandela’s remarks on the early years of their marriage when Winnie “went around with married men” and “had relationships with other men”. Once, when in hiding, he told her he was going to Durban and was arrested and it was clear the police knew he was there and that Winnie was the source of this information.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She had told this to someone with whom she was having an intimate relationship who betrayed him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The writers suggest that justice minister Coetsee, not wanting to unsettle their talks, ensured Winnie faced lesser charges in the case of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/stompie-seipeis-murderer-goes-jail">Stompie Seipei </a>(the 14-year-old murdered in her care). She was charged with kidnapping and assault rather than murder.</p>
<h2>Importance of the book</h2>
<p>Along the way the documents bring out historical nuggets that the authors don’t elaborate on. For example, it is clear that “unrest” and sanctions are the backdrop for the concessions made by the apartheid government, with Coetsee confiding in Mandela that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the government is under intense economic and financial pressure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is also clear that the claim by some analysts that it was the fall of communism that prompted moves towards negotiations to end apartheid and secure majority rule is off the mark. The talks momentum started in 1984. By the late 1980s the decision to release Mandela unconditionally had been taken, with the release of Govan Mbeki in 1987 and then Sisulu and seven others seen as trial runs. All of this happened before the fall of the Berlin wall <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-30-years-ago-resonated-across-africa-126521">in November 1989</a>.</p>
<p>The book adds to the picture painted in Mandela’s memoir <a href="https://www.takealot.com/long-walk-to-freedom/PLID72235?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIo7Wb_NTb6wIVBbTtCh3cMwH_EAAYASAAEgLdGfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">Long Walk to Freedom</a>, sometimes contradicting it in minor details. Now and then Mandela miscalculated but it is clear that without his vision, poise and self-confidence, history might have taken a less promising turn.</p>
<p>Prisoner 913 is a book more for scholars and those with a passion for the South African “struggle” than for general readers. The “913” in the title comes from Mandela’s general prison number, which was used in all the transcripts. His number on Robben Island was famously <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/trials-and-prison-chronology">46664</a>. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780624076322">Prisoner 913: Revelations from the Kobie Coetsee archive</a> by Riaan de Villiers and Jan Ad-Stemmet, Tafelberg, 296 pages, is published by NB Publishers</em>.</p>
<p><em>The article was updated to change ‘the University of Boston’ to Boston University.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The book shows that the claim made by some analysts that it was the fall of communism that prompted moves towards negotiations to end apartheid is off the mark.
Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/145331
2020-09-03T15:50:45Z
2020-09-03T15:50:45Z
Book shines light on Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most underrated poets
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355798/original/file-20200901-18-1s7reif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A younger Dennis Brutus, president of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee in Montreal, Canada in 1976.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Neil Leifer /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fortunately for the rest of us South Africans, the apartheid police state often shot itself in the foot. On the one hand, after a horrifying <a href="https://www.thejournalist.org.za/pioneers/henry-nxumalo/">exposé</a> of jail conditions in <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668"><em>Drum</em></a> magazine at the end of the 1950s, it passed a total censorship statute on anything that went on inside prisons.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it incarcerated three of South Africa’s best poets – <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dennis-brutus">Dennis Brutus</a> on Robben Island, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/breyten-breytenbach">Breyten Breytenbach </a> and <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/jeremy-cronin-mr">Jeremy Cronin</a> in Pretoria Central – convicted for anti-apartheid activities. Surprise: after their eventual release, all the jails’ brutality and cruelties came out in graphic print for the world to read.</p>
<p>Tyrone August’s welcome, and overdue, biography – <a href="http://www.bestred.co.za/dennis-brutus-detail.html"><em>Dennis Brutus, The South African Years</em></a> – is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation at the University of the Western Cape.</p>
<p>This book both gives us readers the most thorough biography to date on Brutus, though there is nothing about where and how his seven children completed school and made their lives. The book focuses on how Brutus’ poems were influenced by the poets he read at school and university. Hopefully it will aid his poems becoming more prominent in future anthologies of South African poems, and in school books.</p>
<p>Brutus is one of the most underrated poets of South Africa. Among this reviewer’s treasured books are two collections, inscribed and autographed in his incredibly neat calligraphy.</p>
<p>All told, Brutus published 12 collections, starting in 1963 with <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-knuckles-boots-Dennis-Brutus/dp/B0006CRN5W"><em>Sirens, Knuckles, Boots</em></a> and culminating in 2005 with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16155787-leafdrift"><em>Leafdrift</em></a>. In addition, Worcester State University (US) brought out a selected poetry collection <a href="https://libguides.worcester.edu/archives/Dennis-Brutus">in 2004</a> to honour his 80th birthday.</p>
<p>That none of his collections were published in South Africa testifies to apartheid police state censorship: leftists passed from hand to hand copies of his poems. This <em>samizdat</em> circulated in handwritten, typewritten, and later photocopied sheets of paper.</p>
<p>Brutus was born in 1924 in the country today named Zimbabwe; his parents returned to South Africa two years later. He started teaching in 1950 and married in the same year. The government banned him from teaching in 1961 because of his anti-apartheid activities, depriving him of earning a living.</p>
<h2>Jail and exile</h2>
<p>Brutus fled to eSwatini (Swaziland), then a British colony, in 1963. The British colonial authorities refused to grant him a residence permit. He crossed the border to Mozambique. The PIDE secret police in Portuguese colonial Mozambique handed him over to the South African police’s Special Branch that targeted political activists. </p>
<p>He was shot trying to escape, and sentenced to 18 months on <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/robben-island">Robben Island</a>. Repeated beatings, and harrowing assaults, culminated in months of solitary confinement, causing hallucinations and nervous breakdown. He finally left South Africa on a no-return exit permit in 1966 after his release.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dennis-brutus-south-african-literary-giant-who-was-reluctant-to-tell-his-life-story-141730">Dennis Brutus: South African literary giant who was reluctant to tell his life story</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>His first job in exile in the UK was as campaign director of the <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/gandhi-luthuli-documentation-centre/role-international-defence-and-aid-fund">International Defence and Aid Fund</a>, which raised money to hire lawyers to defend political prisoners and to send subsistence allowances to their next of kin. </p>
<p>In 1971 he emigrated to the US, becoming a professor in the English Department at Northwestern University. In 1975 he co-founded the African Literature Association. From 1986 he became professor of African literature at the University of Pittsburgh. He returned to South Africa in 2005 as an honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Involved in wider causes than just in South Africa, such as the <a href="https://www.pambazuka.org/activism/southern-africa-southern-african-social-forum">Southern African Social Forum</a>, he died of cancer in 2009.</p>
<p>Dennis Brutus’ achievements were two-fold: as a political activist and as poet.</p>
<h2>Political activism</h2>
<p>He joined the Teachers’ League of South Africa in 1950, which was the major affiliate of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/non-european-unity-movement-neum">Non-European Unity Movement</a>. Mostly comprising <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Coloured">Coloured </a> teachers, it focused on anti-racism and anti-imperialism issues. But he was non-dogmatic, also participating in protests of the Coloured People’s Congress, affiliated to the African National Congress. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He hid both <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a> and <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a> (top ANC leaders who had to go underground to avoid detention) in his home when they visited Port Elizabeth. He was also friends and worked with Eddie Daniels and Patrick Duncan of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/liberal-party-south-africa-lpsa">Liberal Party</a>, a small non-racial political party.</p>
<p>As a sports administrator, he founded the South African Sports Association and later the South African Non-Racial Olympics Committee (<a href="https://africanactivist.msu.edu/organization.php?name=South+African+Non-Racial+Olympic+Committee#:%7E:text=The%20South%20African%20Non%2DRacial,went%20into%20exile%20in%201966.">Sanroc</a>) to lead the campaigns to get whites-only sports codes boycotted by foreign touring teams. Their first victory came in 1956, when the International Table Tennis Federation admitted as member the non-racial <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/SPORT/SPORTRAM.htm">South African Table Tennis Board</a> instead of the whites-only SA Table Tennis Union. </p>
<p>Global football followed with the same ban in 1961. <a href="https://www.joc.or.jp/english/historyjapan/tokyo1964.html#:%7E:text=The%20Games%20of%20the%2018th,introduced%20for%20the%20first%20time.">The 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo</a> became the first to exclude whites-only or internally segregated South African sports organisations. Activists from both the Unity Movement and those aligned to the ANC built up this no-racism-in-sport movement.</p>
<p>Throughout the remaining apartheid decades, overseas protesters led demonstrations against whites-only Springbok (South African national) teams.</p>
<h2>Dennis Brutus the poet</h2>
<p>Brutus’ development as a poet was influenced by the English Romantics, including Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats. He also read Yeats, Eliot and Auden. One major challenge for scholars of his oeuvre is that censorship compelled him to publish his prose and poems under a bewildering array of noms-de-plume: Anon., J.B Booth, B.K, le Dab, D.A.B., Julius Friend, John Player, and L.N Terry.</p>
<p>What demonstrated his originality and courage was that virtually no English language poets in South Africa had published poems on politics since <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roy-Campbell">Roy Campbell</a> in the 1920s. <a href="http://www.mwsfoundation.org.za/index.php/featured/304-welcome-to-unique-avcom">Mongane Wally Serote</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mandla-langa-1950">Mandla Langa</a> and <a href="http://www.apc.uct.ac.za/apc/researchers/professor-njabulo-ndebele">Njabulo Ndebele</a> were among the first literary critics to praise Brutus’ poems.</p>
<p>Probably his most widely circulated poem, <em>For a Dead African</em>, delineated the 1950s in its first stanza:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have no heroes and no wars</p>
<p>Only victims of a sickly state</p>
<p>Succumbing to the variegated sores</p>
<p>That flower under lashing rains of hate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His second stanza chillingly prophesied the 1960s detentions of anti-apartheid activists:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have no battles and no fights</p>
<p>for history to record with trite remark</p>
<p>only captives killed on eyeless nights</p>
<p>And accidental dyings in the dark.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A topic repeated in his poem <em>In Memoriam</em> to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24764301?seq=1">Imam Abdullah Haroun</a>, a clergyman beaten and kicked to death in detention by the Special Branch:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>because he chose not to speak / he died</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brutus showed his political colours in print in <em>At a Funeral</em> about <a href="https://escholarship.org/content/qt6tc554rb/qt6tc554rb.pdf?t=mniomb">Valencia Majombozi</a>, who died in August 1960, shortly after graduation as a doctor, after much hardship:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Black, green and gold at sunset; pageantry and stubbled graves</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ANC colours were then illegal. To fly them was punished by up to six months in jail.</p>
<p>Other widely printed lines come from <em>Nightsong City</em>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sleep well my love, sleep well;</p>
<p>The harbour lights glaze over the restless docks,</p>
<p>Police cars cockroach through the tunnel streets;</p>
<p>From the shanties creaking iron-sheet</p>
<p>Violence like a bug-infested rag is tossed</p>
<p>And fear in immanent as sound in the wind-swung bell</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These relevant Brutus poems should be put up on the walls for tourists to view during the Robben Island Museum tours, which are led by former political prisoners as guides. This book should be in every library, and on your bookshelf.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.bestred.co.za/dennis-brutus-detail.html">Dennis Brutus: The South African Years</a> is published by Best Red, an imprint of the HSRC Press.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145331/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member, but writes this review in his personal capacities as a historian and a poet.</span></em></p>
That none of his collections were published in apartheid South Africa testifies to the police state’s censorship.
Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/137670
2020-04-30T16:13:06Z
2020-04-30T16:13:06Z
Denis Goldberg: Rivonia triallist, liberation struggle stalwart, outspoken critic
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331825/original/file-20200430-42962-tluz74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rivonia trialist Denis Goldberg speaking at a gala event in 2011 to honour the surviving members of the Rivonia Trial.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/denis-theodore-goldberg-1933-2020">Denis Theodore Goldberg</a>, one of the stalwarts in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, has passed on at the age of 87. He was one of the two last remaining activists who were tried for sabotage in 1963-1964 along with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada. </p>
<p>Goldberg was born into a family of communists in Woodstock, Cape Town, in 1933. His London-born parents were descended from Lithuanian Jews. His childhood home was one where people of all colours were welcome and were among his friends, very unusual in white South African homes of that generation.</p>
<p>He spent more than two decades of his life behind bars at Pretoria Central Prison at the end of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia trial</a>. Because of apartheid laws he, as a white person, could not be sent to Robben Island, where all black political prisoners and his fellow triallists were sent. </p>
<h2>The revolutionary road</h2>
<p>Goldberg enrolled for a civil engineering degree at the University of Cape Town in 1950, the year the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">Communist Party of South Africa</a> was banned. He participated in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/chapter-2-denis-goldberg-and-modern-youth-society-z-pallo-jordan">Modern Youth Society</a> along with other leftists, and joined the underground <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03462.htm">South African Communist Party</a> in 1957 when it re-formed.</p>
<p>In 1953 Goldberg was organising meetings at Loyolo settlement in Simonstown, to encourage support for the planned Congress of the People in 1955. The meeting brought together the Congress Alliance, comprising the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People’s Congress, the South African Congress of Trade Unions, and the Congress of Democrats, on 25-26 June 1955. </p>
<p>The Special Branch, the political wing of the apartheid police, reported this, and the state-owned railways fired Goldberg from his job.</p>
<p>The meeting culminated in the adoption of the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>, which became the congress movement’s blueprint for a free, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-south-africas-freedom-charter-60-years-later-43647">non-racial South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>Goldberg was also active in this decade in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-congress-democrats-cod">Congress of Democrats</a>, a leftist organisation affiliated with the ANC, whose membership was in those years restricted to Africans.</p>
<p>In 1960 he participated in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anti-pass-campaigns-1960">anti-pass protests</a>. Then, all black people were required to carry identity documents that controlled their movements. The document was derisively known as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994"><em>dompas</em></a> (dumb pass). </p>
<p>He was detained without trial for four months under the state of emergency, as was his mother. This resulted in his being fired from his job working on constructing the Athlone power station.</p>
<p>When the apartheid regime banned the ANC and the rival Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1960, Goldberg was one of the founders of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC, planning an armed rebellion. Goldberg helped organise the first MK training camp inside South Africa, and was MK’s technical officer.</p>
<p>On 11 July 1963 the Special Branch raided Liliesleaf farm outside Johannesburg and detained him, along with Walter Sisulu and other top ANC leaders. After months of detention, the state charged him and others with sabotage. Mandela, already serving a jail sentence for leaving the country without a passport, was added to the accused. This started the famous Rivonia trial.</p>
<p>It remains a matter of speculation why the accused were charged with sabotage and not high treason. The probable reason is that under the then new Sabotage Act, steered through parliament by Balthazar Johannes Vorster, minister of police, any accused were guilty until proven innocent. This made it easier for prosecutors to jail those who came before the courts.</p>
<p>Eight accused were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. At 31 years of age Goldberg was the youngest. Apartheid segregated prisoners. Goldberg was sent to jail in Pretoria, while his fellow accused were all flown to Cape Town for transport to Robben Island prison.</p>
<h2>Prison, and after</h2>
<p>Political prisoners were treated vindictively. Goldberg was denied any visitors for four years. He was allowed to send and receive only one letter, not exceeding 500 words, per six months. But many of the letters from his wife, Esme Bodenstein, were not handed to him. </p>
<p>It was only in 1980 that political prisoners were allowed to read newspapers.</p>
<p>In 1974 Goldberg took on the task of caring for Bram Fischer, the communist party leader and their former defence lawyer, when he was dying of cancer in the row of cells.</p>
<p>In 1985 Goldberg was released. He flew to visit his daughter in Israel; and then lived with his wife in London. After his wife passed away in 2000, he returned to South Africa in 2002 with his second wife, Edelgard. Ronnie Kasrils, then minister of water affairs and forestry, hired him as special advisor for two years.</p>
<p>Goldberg used his prestige to <a href="https://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/258300/we-made-a-mistake-anc-stalwart">speak out</a> against the corruption that peaked during Jacob Zuma’s decade as president. As one of the idealists who worked for the ANC before it came into office in 1994, corruption and state capture was repugnant to his generation.</p>
<p>In retirement, Goldberg launched fund-raising for the Denis Goldberg House of Hope in Hout Bay, a suburb of Cape Town. His House of Hope would offer opportunities in art and music to local disadvantaged children.</p>
<p>Retirement added to all the honours he received. In 2019 the ANC awarded him its highest decoration, the Isithwalandwe. He was awarded four honorary doctorates, from Medunsa (now Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University), Heriot-Watt University (Scotland), the University of Cape Town, and Cape Peninsula University of Technology.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/andrew-mokete-mlangeni">Andrew Mlangeni</a> is now the sole survivor of the Rivonia trial.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member, but writes this obituary in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>
Goldberg was the youngest Rivonia triallist. Segregated prisons meant he was sent to Pretoria, while his fellow accused were incarcerated on Robben Island.
Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/135690
2020-04-06T13:17:24Z
2020-04-06T13:17:24Z
How Mandela stayed fit: from his ‘matchbox’ Soweto home to a prison cell
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325705/original/file-20200406-74261-ru1dh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African President Nelson Mandela with former American world boxing champion Marvin Hagler. The undated photo was taken after Mandela's release.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Gubb/GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The spread of the coronavirus has forced millions all over the world to retreat to base and abandon outdoor exercise and gym sessions. If they own a big house and garden, it’s manageable, but many live in shacks, cramped houses or tiny high-rise flats. How can they avoid going to seed during lockdown? Gavin Evans takes a look at how former boxer and South African liberation struggle icon <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a> adapted while incarcerated in a tiny cell on Robben Island.</em></p>
<p>February 15, 1990: Nelson Mandela wakes as always at 5am and begins his hour-long exercise routine. The difference this time is that instead of a prison cell, his gym is the front room of his <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2008-07-17-matchbox-house-revolution-is-needed-for-soweto/">“matchbox” house</a> – so-called for its small size – at 8115 Vilakazi Street, Soweto. And soon he’ll be besieged by journalists, well-wishers, diplomats and family members.</p>
<p>I get to interview him a few hours later to ask about his plans. His answers are clear and concise and I’m too nervous to probe deeper. But towards the end I toss in a question about boxing, and his stern demeanour changes. He beams with delight and begins to chat about his favourite fighters and how he followed the sport in prison.</p>
<p>Mandela started boxing as a student at <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/university-fort-hare">Fort Hare University</a>, and then trained more seriously when studying, working and struggling in Johannesburg during the 1940s and 50s, although he didn’t fight competitively and was modest about his prowess. “I was never an outstanding boxer,” he said in his autobiography, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/318431.Long_Walk_to_Freedom">Long Walk to Freedom</a>. “I was in the heavyweight division, and I had neither enough power to compensate for my lack of speed nor enough speed to make up for my lack of power.”</p>
<p>What he relished about it was the rigour of training, a routine periodically broken by arrest and the demands of the “struggle”, but not often. He wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I unleashed my anger and frustration on a punchbag rather than taking it out on a comrade or even a policeman.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Refuge in exercise</h2>
<p>Mandela believed this routine was the key to both physical health and peace of mind.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Exercise dissipates tension, and tension is the enemy of serenity. I found that I worked better and thought more clearly when I was in good physical condition, and so training became one of the <a href="http://www.mindfulnext.org/mandela-on-peace-of-mind/">inflexible disciplines of my life</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nelson Mandela was a boxing enthusiast. The photo depicts him circa 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Four mornings a week he’d set off for a run and three evenings a week he’d work out in a Soweto boxing gym – his way of losing himself “in something that was not the struggle”. He said he’d wake up the next morning feeling refreshed – “mentally and physically lighter” and “ready to take up the fight again”.</p>
<p>From 1960 Mandela led the underground campaign of the African National Congress’s military wing, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">umKhonto weSizwe</a>, moving around the country disguised as a chauffeur, with trips abroad to rally support, so his boxing training became sporadic. The “Black Pimpernel”, as he was dubbed, was arrested in 1962 – the result of a tip-off to the apartheid police from the CIA, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/15/cia-operative-nelson-mandela-1962-arrest">it has since emerged</a> – and spent the next 27-and-a-half years in jail, 18 of them on Robben Island.</p>
<h2>Life behind bars</h2>
<p>When Mandela arrived, a prison warder sneered: “This is the Island. This is where you will die.” </p>
<p>Part of the challenge was getting used to monotony. As he put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Prison life is about routine: each day like the one before; each week like the one before it, so that the months and years blend into each other.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The daily routine of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-23618727">Prisoner 46664</a> consisted of gruelling manual labour – working in a quarry to dig out limestone and using heavy hammers to smash rocks into gravel. This was draining but he decided not to use it as an excuse to abandon his exercise regime. From then on it started at 5am and was carried out in a damp 2.1m squared cell rather than a sweat-soaked Soweto boxing gym. “I attempted to follow my old boxing routine of doing roadwork and muscle-building,” he said. </p>
<p>He’d begin with running on the spot for 45 minutes, followed by 100 fingertip push-ups, 200 sit-ups, 50 deep knee-bends and calisthenic exercises learnt from his gym training (in those days, and even today, this would include star jumps and ‘burpees’ – where you start upright, move down into a squat position, kick your feet back, return to squat and stand up).</p>
<p>Mandela would do this Mondays to Thursdays, and then rest for three days. This continued even during his several spells in solitary confinement.</p>
<h2>Beating TB</h2>
<p>In 1988, aged 70, he contracted tuberculosis, exacerbated by the damp cell, and was admitted to hospital, coughing blood. He was moved to a prison warder’s house in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/mandela-moved-victor-verster-prison">Victor Verster Prison</a> near Paarl and soon resumed a truncated version of his exercise programme, which now included laps of the prison swimming pool.</p>
<p>He was released from prison, along with other political prisoners, on 11 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1azBzDpmEU">February 1990</a>, nine days after the African National Congress and other liberation movements <a href="https://theconversation.com/fw-de-klerk-made-a-speech-30-years-ago-that-ended-apartheid-why-he-did-it-130803">were unbanned</a> by the apartheid government. He went on to become the first president of a democratic South Africa, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/nelson-mandela-presidency-1994-1999">from 1994 to 1999</a>. </p>
<p>Inevitably as he reached his 80s, his exercise routine was moderated but never abandoned. He <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2013-12-05-nelson-mandela-dies/">died on 5 December 2013</a>, aged 95, of a respiratory infection.</p>
<p>Mandela believed a lifetime’s habit of exercise helped him to survive prison, ready for the challenges that lay ahead. “In prison, having an outlet for my frustrations was absolutely essential,” he said – words that might be taken to heart by those facing months of coronavirus-prompted lockdowns in cramped conditions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135690/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Prison life is about routine: each day like the one before; each week like the one before it, so that the months and years blend into each other.
Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118794
2019-06-25T14:43:54Z
2019-06-25T14:43:54Z
Robben Island joins list of 20 new protected marine sites in South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280913/original/file-20190624-97799-93rluz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marine protected areas are geographically distinct regions of the ocean that are given special protection under law.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>South Africa’s Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries recently declared 20 marine sites as <a href="https://www.iucn.org/theme/protected-areas/about">protected areas</a>. One of them is Robben Island, the site of the prison where anti-apartheid activists including Nelson Mandela were jailed for decades. The Conversation’s Nontobeko Mtshali asked Alison Kock to explain the significance and what the decision means for the area and surrounding environment.</em></p>
<p><strong>What is a marine protected area and are these unique to South Africa?</strong> </p>
<p>Marine protected areas are geographically distinct regions of the ocean that are given special protection under law. They are used worldwide to address over-exploitation of marine resources and safeguard them for future generations. </p>
<p>In the context of South Africa, marine protected areas are used to protect marine species, habitats and cultural heritage. They’re also designed to restore over-exploited marine stocks, promote research and eco-tourism and protect coastal and offshore habitats. South Africa has <a href="http://opus.sanbi.org/bitstream/20.500.12143/790/1/Sink_et_al_2011a.pdf">136</a> coastal and marine habitat types, from the coastal nesting grounds of leatherback and loggerhead turtles of <a href="https://isimangaliso.com/">iSimangaliso</a>, to the unique coral and gravel habitats of the <a href="https://www.marineprotectedareas.org.za/amathole-offshore-mpa">Amathole Offshore</a> marine protected area. The addition of the new protected area network means that <a href="https://www.environment.gov.za/mediarelease/20marineprotectedareas_declared">90%</a> of these habitat types are now protected. </p>
<p>South African marine experts combined the best available scientific information, <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/sajs/v112n9-10/04.pdf">strategic thinking</a> and a strong participatory process to create a network of marine protected areas that conserves ecosystems, rather than individual species. </p>
<p><strong>What’s the significance of a site being declared as a marine protected area?</strong></p>
<p>South Africa already had <a href="http://opus.sanbi.org/bitstream/20.500.12143/790/1/Sink_et_al_2011a.pdf">23</a> marine protected areas. It’s nearly doubled this by adding a new network of <a href="https://www.environment.gov.za/mediarelease/20marineprotectedareas_declared">20</a> under an initiative to unlock the country’s blue economy known as <a href="https://www.operationphakisa.gov.za/Pages/Home.aspx">Operation Phakisa</a>. This means that 5.4% of South Africa’s territorial waters are now conserved, compared to 0.4% before the new network was proclaimed. </p>
<p>It falls short of the 10% goal by 2020 that is promoted by the United Nations’ <a href="http://www.za.undp.org/content/south_africa/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-14-life-below-water.html">Sustainable Development Goals</a>. The goal is a global call to action to sustainably manage and protect marine and coastal ecosystems. Despite the country’s short fall, it’s better than the global average of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X17307686">3.6%</a>. </p>
<p>Furthermore, a global <a href="https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84963977006&origin=inward&txGid=dfc24848121a963c59ca1e8ebeceea8d">review</a> of 144 scientific studies found that for marine wildlife to be adequately conserved and for people to continue to benefit from the ocean, 30% of the ocean needs to be protected by 2030. </p>
<p><strong>What are the environmental, social and economic affects of doing this?</strong></p>
<p>Marine protected areas should have ecological, social and economic goals. The way these protected areas are identified and managed has improved over the years. In the past, marine protected areas were often declared using only environmental criteria. There was little or no contribution from local communities and other stakeholders. This led to conflict between people who depended on the regions to make a living and those trying to enforce the protected area status. Ultimately, this had a negative impact on the effectiveness of trying to protect areas. </p>
<p>But that’s changing. Now the process of declaring a new marine protected area network involves extensive consultations between various industries. These include fisheries, mining, aquaculture, tourism industries and local communities. </p>
<p>The impact on communities – economically and socially – differs as each marine protected area has its own set of <a href="https://www.marineprotectedareas.org.za/">priority objectives</a>. Take Robben Island, located in Table Bay adjacent to the City of Cape Town, which is on the latest list. It has three priority objectives: to protect the breeding and feeding area of endangered seabirds like African penguins, to help rebuild important abalone and west coast rock lobster stocks, and to promote the area for tourism and protect the area’s cultural heritage.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-african-penguins-change-their-hunting-habits-when-theres-less-food-117846">How African penguins change their hunting habits when there's less food</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>What’s supposed to be done now? Are there monitoring and evaluation measures in place? Does South Africa have the capacity to do this properly?</strong></p>
<p>There’s a real danger that the protections won’t be enforced – or become <a href="https://mpanews.openchannels.org/news/mpa-news/paper-parks-why-they-happen-and-what-can-be-done-change-them">paper parks</a>. This is when marine protected areas only exist on maps and in legislation, but offer little real protection. </p>
<p>To avoid this happening marine protected areas have to be adequately funded, staffed and have community support. In addition, monitoring programmes must be put in place. These must measure whether marine protected areas meet their ecological, economic and social objectives. This needs to be coupled with an effective compliance and enforcement strategy. </p>
<p>Generally speaking, marine conservation and protection are underfunded in South Africa and sustainable funding models <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2989/025776197784160910">haven’t yet been developed</a>. But with the support of other government departments, South African Police Services, industries and NGOs, the country’s managed to implement compliance and long-term monitoring programmes. </p>
<p>An example of an effective, long-term monitoring programme is the multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional <a href="http://www.saeon.ac.za/projects-and-publications/saeon-flagship-projects">project</a> in Algoa Bay that monitors ecosystem change. The project is important because it generates essential knowledge for site management and sustainable development. </p>
<p>But more needs to be done. New innovative technologies such as vessel monitoring systems, remote cameras and drones should be used for better surveillance and effective compliance. In addition, marine protected area management has to take a more <a href="https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/27790/MPA.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">human-centred approach</a> and the benefits of protected areas have to be shared more <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323724664_Social_impacts_of_marine_protected_areas_in_South_Africa_on_coastal_fishing_communities">equitably</a>. </p>
<p>The Betty’s Bay marine protected area recently <a href="https://www.wwf.org.za/our_news/blog/exploring_an_underwater_world.cfm">employed local community members</a> to help scientists and managers monitor fish populations. This has led to a greater understanding of the goals of the protected area and improved the relationship between the community and management authority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118794/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Kock works for the Cape Research Centre, South African National Parks. She receives funding from the Table Mountain Fund. She is affiliated with the National Marine Biodiversity Scientific Working Group, Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa and the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity. </span></em></p>
A new network of 20 sites have been declared as marine protected areas in South Africa.
Alison Kock, Marine Biologist, South African National Parks (SANParks); Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa, University of Cape Town, South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/117846
2019-05-30T13:27:16Z
2019-05-30T13:27:16Z
How African penguins change their hunting habits when there’s less food
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276974/original/file-20190529-192339-5s93yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How African penguins hunt and feed their chicks gives insight into the health of the marine ecosystem. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://datazone.birdlife.org/sowb/spotseabirds">Seabirds</a> are the world’s most threatened bird group. The latest <a href="https://www.birdlife.org/sites/default/files/attachments/BL_ReportENG_V11_spreads.pdf">State of the World’s Birds</a> shows that there’s a high proportion of threatened species particularly penguins, albatrosses and petrels. One penguin species at risk of extinction is the African Penguin, which is classified as “Endangered” under the <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22697810/132604504">International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List</a>. </p>
<p>Understanding how these seabirds respond to changes in the availability of food is important for preserving them and managing marine ecosystems. It’s vital information for conserving this iconic species. </p>
<p>African penguins are found along the Namibian coast and South Africa’s western seaboard, which means that they forage in the <a href="https://oceancurrents.rsmas.miami.edu/atlantic/benguela.html">Benguela</a> current. This current runs on the eastern boundary of the South Atlantic, starting as a northward flow off the Cape of Good Hope and skirting the western African coast towards the equator. </p>
<p>On land African penguins often face invasive predators like feral cats. At sea they face threats from incidental oil spills, to plastic debris, and potential competition with fisheries. </p>
<p>The Robben Island penguin colony in South Africa is about 10km north-west of Cape Town’s harbour. It’s currently one of the country’s largest African Penguin colonies. </p>
<p>From 2011 to 2013, an experimental fisheries closure zone with a 20km radius was maintained on the island. Commercial fishing could not take place within that area at that time. This provided a rare opportunity to study penguin fishing behaviour and the condition of their young in relation to local fish abundance, without potential interference from commercial fisheries.</p>
<p><a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.13409">Our study</a> tracked the penguins’ movements, their diet and measured the physical condition of their chicks. By attaching GPS-temperature-depth devices to their back feathers with waterproof tape (much like a backpack), we gained insights into the foraging behaviour of breeding adults.</p>
<p>When some of the penguins have to work harder to find food this could be used as an early warning signal to allow conservation efforts to be initiated quickly. This is important because if the penguins struggle to find fish near the colony for extended periods it can have knock-on effects for the health and survival of their chicks. </p>
<h2>The findings</h2>
<p>When comparing years of low and high fish abundance there were differences in penguin foraging behaviour. We found that when food supply was low the penguins made a greater effort and spent more time hunting.</p>
<p>In 2011 there was lower prey availability. By tracking the penguins we were able to observe that they swam further, dived more for longer, and made more wiggles (prey pursuits) than in 2012. In 2011 some individuals worked much harder to find fish to feed their chicks.</p>
<p>During 2012, due to the abundance of fish around the island, the penguins spent 60% less time diving. We also found that chicks got bigger when there was more prey around.</p>
<p>Penguin diet sampling has taken place at Robben Island since 1989 with anchovy as the main prey item at <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2989/1814232X.2011.572377">80%</a>. Surprisingly, in 2011 there was an unusually low percentage of anchovy (40%) in breeding adults’ diets. </p>
<p>In 2011, the penguins changed their diet to eat a large percentage of Cape horse mackerel, which has a lower energy content than anchovy. </p>
<p>The foraging behaviour of the African penguins also indicated that they had to put more effort into finding food for their chicks. The fact that fish supplies influence penguin behaviour and the fitness of their offspring is something that’s often assumed in studies, but difficult to test. </p>
<h2>Going forward</h2>
<p>Finding the balance between minimising costs to fisheries and maintaining sufficient fish resources for marine species will be challenging due to disruptions caused by climate change.</p>
<p>Recently, the Department of Environmental Affairs declared the island has a <a href="https://cer.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Robben-Island.pdf">marine protected area</a>. It’s one of several recently established to support marine biodiversity of the ecosystems in the region. This will contribute to the conservation of seabird species that are at risk. </p>
<p>Future studies combining fish surveys with marine predator tracking can provide better understandings of marine dynamics. Technological advances will improve our capacity to follow foraging behaviour and animal movements at sea.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Campbell received funding from Ma-Re Marine Research Institute of Cape Town University and the Leiden Conservation Foundation. The South African Research Chair in Marine Ecology and Fisheries also provided bursary funding. She now works as a Conservation Biologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada, Government of Canada.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Sherley works for the University of Exeter. He receives funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Earthwatch Institute, the Zoological Society of San Diego, Bristol Zoological Society and the European Commission. </span></em></p>
How African penguins and their chicks’ respond to fish availability informs marine conservation.
Kate Campbell, Researcher, University of Cape Town
Richard Sherley, Research Fellow, Bristol Zoological Society and University of Exeter, University of Exeter
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112439
2019-03-04T13:33:49Z
2019-03-04T13:33:49Z
Letters reveal Africanist hero Robert Sobukwe’s moral courage, and pain
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262378/original/file-20190306-48438-1ny6tjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Between 1963 and 1969 Robert Sobukwe spent six years of near-complete solitary confinement on Robben Island.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Book cover</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>On 21 March 1960 the apartheid police <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">opened fire on unarmed marchers</a> protesting against a law that forced black people to carry identity documents. Over 200 were injured and 69 killed. The following edited excerpt is from a new book featuring the prison letters of Robert Sobukwe, who organised and led the march.</em></p>
<p>In a letter of condolence written on 5 August 1974 to Nell Marquard, a friend who he had been corresponding with since his time on Robben Island, South African pan-Africanist leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a> made a telling observation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I learnt some time ago that one cannot put oneself in another’s position. We may express sympathy, feel it and even imagine the pain. But we cannot feel it as the one who suffers it. They have a saying in Xhosa that the toothache is felt by the one whose tooth is aching.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sobukwe, who clearly knew about suffering, loneliness and the impossibility of ever fully communicating one’s pain to another, was writing just after the death of Nell’s husband, the noted Cape liberal, author and historian, Leo Marquard. Given that Leo was a prominent liberal, and that white liberals had not always been friendly to the aims and agendas of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) – the organisation that Sobukwe led from 1959 until his arrest in 1960 – one might have expected coolness from Sobukwe. Not at all. He, as always, was gracious:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am thankful that I was able to talk to you two years before Leo’s death and more thankful that he died knowing how much his contribution had been appreciated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Touching as this acknowledgement of his contribution would have been for Marquard, the real poignancy of Sobukwe’s letter comes a little further on, when he starts speaking of the myriad difficulties he has faced since leaving <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/916">Robben Island</a>, where most of South Africa’s liberation struggle leaders were jailed. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It has not been a good year for me. I had planned to leave [from Kimberley] … by car on the 31st May and make straight for Cape Town. But these boys [apartheid security police] beat me to it. They came on the 30th May, 1974 to serve the fresh lot of bureaucratic output. Well it’s good to know that our security is entrusted to such alert people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite the fact that he makes light of it, one senses in Sobukwe’s letter that the constant surveillance and harassment of the security police was taking its toll. Behind the ironic salute to the astuteness of the police, there is also a disturbing foreshadowing. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a>, in many respects Sobukwe’s most direct political heir, would be stopped and arrested on a not dissimilar road trip from Cape Town four years later, an event which would lead directly to his death at the hands of the Security Police. Sobukwe continues: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Veronica (Sobukwe’s wife) has had a major operation as you probably read in the papers. She should have had this operation last year, but did not and the condition got worse. She has made a remarkable recovery, thanks to my very efficient and tender nursing, and has now gone back to Joh’burg for a check up. From there she will be in Durban to spend a week or so with her sister before proceeding to Swaziland to see the children.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261212/original/file-20190227-150728-13uhl5s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Between May 1963 and May 1969 Sobukwe was to spend six years of near-complete solitary confinement on Robben Island.</p>
<p>These circumstances had their origins in a momentous historical event organised by Sobukwe himself. On 21 March 1960, he had led the Pan Africanist Congress in what he called a “positive action” campaign, protesting against the oppressive pass laws that governed the movements – and indeed the lives – of black South Africans. </p>
<p>This mass action resulted in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> later that same day, in which at least 69 people were killed when the South African police opened fire on a crowd of protesters. This event, which drew international attention to the injustices and brutality of apartheid, was a watershed moment in the history of South Africa. It led to a three-year jail sentence for Sobukwe for inciting people to protest against the laws of the country.</p>
<p>Not content that by 3 May 1963 Sobukwe would have served his sentence, the apartheid government passed an amendment to the General Law Amendment Act, the notorious <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mangaliso-sobukwe">“Sobukwe Clause”</a>, which enabled the Minister of Justice to prolong the detention of any political prisoner year after year.</p>
<p>He was then relocated to Robben Island, and kept apart from other prisoners, where he remained for six years. The clause – never used to detain anyone else – was renewed annually by the Minister of Justice.</p>
<p>Sobukwe, in a very significant sense, was never a free man again after his 1960 imprisonment. The apartheid government unleashed a series of bureaucratic cruelties upon him after his May 1969 release from Robben Island. They forced him to live in the geographically remote town of Kimberley – far removed from any friends, family or associates. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261245/original/file-20190227-150705-uun26y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The house where Sobukwe was held on Robben Island .</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flcker/Daniel Mouton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They insisted he take on a low-ranking job that would have made him complicit in the apartheid policies that he went to jail protesting. He refused. They repeatedly refused to allow him to leave the country to take up job offers he had received from the United States; and they obstructed his attempts to get the medical treatments that he needed, and that would have extended his life (he died of lung cancer on 27 February 1978).</p>
<p>This then is the background to the consolations that Sobukwe sought to offer Nell Marquard in his 1974 letter. It’s only on the last page of that letter that he seemed to finally find the words that suited both his emotions and the note of commiseration that he wished to convey to Nell:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Xhosa have standard words of condolence. They say
<em>Akuhlanga lungehlanga lala ngenxeba</em> (There has not occurred what has not occurred before … lie on your wound).
God bless you. Affectionately, Robert.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This resonant phrase – which also appears in Sobukwe’s letters to his friend Benjamin Pogrund – applies equally, if not more so, to Sobukwe himself. “Lie on your wound(s)” is a call to bide one’s time, to heal, and to reconstitute one’s self despite evident suffering. It is a call to have courage, to bear the moral burden of pain, and it provides an apt title for what was the most difficult period of Sobukwe’s life, namely his time on Robben Island, which the selection of letters collected in this <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/lie-on-your-wounds-2/">book</a>, published by Wits <a href="http://witspress.co.za/">University Press</a>, represents.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112439/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek Hook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A collection of prison letters provides a peek into the suffering of South African liberation hero, Robert Sobukwe.
Derek Hook, Associate professor of Psychology, Duquesne University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100046
2018-07-17T10:12:54Z
2018-07-17T10:12:54Z
Centenary of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s birth: a tribute in poems
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227842/original/file-20180716-44103-1robmra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nelson Mandela's legacy in poetry can re-familiarise us with the values he embodied.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The centenary of the birth of <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela</a> offers a rich
opportunity to reflect on the life of South Africa’s extraordinary political leader and on the legacies of the struggle against apartheid that he and his cohort of fellow activists shaped. Mandela’s life-writing offers a great deal of inspiration for such reflection across a range of themes, including as scholars have pointed out, the question of Madiba’s own <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-05-00-the-mortality-of-nelson-mandela">mortality</a>. </p>
<p>Poetry is an under-explored source of additional reflection. Across the arc of Mandela’s defiant resistance to apartheid, through his incarceration, release and presidential term, his life became poetry. The scope of this corpus is enormous, spanning decades and continents alike. </p>
<p>One major anthology, <a href="http://www.apartheidmuseum.org/halala-madiba-nelson-mandela-poetry">Halala Madiba: Nelson Mandela in Poetry</a>, contains 96 poems from 25 countries. Published in 2005, it includes work by two Nobel laureates, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1986/soyinka-bio.html">Wole Soyinka</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1995/heaney-bio.html">Seamus Heaney</a>. In addition, it features the work of the black revolutionary Cuban poet <a href="https://www.smith.edu/poetrycenter/wp/morejon/">Nancy Morejón</a>, the Jamaican dub-poet <a href="https://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/linton-kwesi-johnson">Linton Kwesi Johnson</a>, the Barbadian poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/kamau-brathwaite">Kamau Brathwaite</a>, rapper <a href="https://2pac.com/us">Tupac Amaru Shakur</a>, and <a href="https://mg.co.za/tag/zindzi-mandela">Zindzi Mandela</a> — Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s daughter. </p>
<p>South African poets, including the late poet laureate <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/keorapetse-william-kgositsile">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a>, also contribute searing local perspectives. Their texts derive from established traditions of oral poetry, protest poetry and prison poetry in South Africa.</p>
<h2>The Island</h2>
<p>During the apartheid years, many of the poems in which Mandela appears, imagine or remember him on <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/916">Robben Island</a>. The island, about 9km west of Cape Town, was used between the 17th and 20th centuries as a prison. Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years behind bars imprisoned on it.</p>
<p>For poets detained as a result of their political activism, the place of incarceration is also the place of writing. Poets imprisoned on Robben Island alongside Mandela, like <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/frank-anthony">Frank Anthony</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dennis-brutus">Dennis Brutus</a>, take the Island as their subject. </p>
<p>Dennis Brutus (1924-2009), the coloured (mixed race) political activist pivotal to promoting the ban on South Africa’s participation in the Olympics, was arrested and imprisoned on Robben Island between 1963 and 1965 where he occupied the cell next to Mandela. Brutus invokes Mandela directly as both fellow prisoner and figurehead of the struggle. In the poem “Robben Island” written from exile in 1980, the Island becomes a potent site of memory. The poem begins with a slowly unfolding recollection as details of the past move into focus like a replayed, unspooling film. </p>
<p>Brutus initially evokes the deep intimacy of labouring men bent over the stones in the quarry. The speaker is “anonymous”, while the prisoners recalled are initially “faceless”. Their names and faces only materialise gradually: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I see the men beside me </p>
<p>Peake and Alexander </p>
<p>Mandela and Sisulu </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the memory sharpens and gains momentum, so too does the speaker’s apprehension of the historic role of the men he names: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The will to freedom steadily grows </p>
<p>The force, the power, the strength </p>
<p>steadily grows. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Brutus’s poem, Mandela is not differentiated from the other prisoners and is only one of the “marvellous men” whom the poem celebrates. </p>
<p>Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian poet, playwright and Nobel Prize laureate who was himself a political prisoner in Nigeria, addresses the figure of Mandela on Robben Island in the 1988 volume <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/822368.Mandela_s_Earth_And_Other_Poems">Mandela’s Earth</a>. In his poem “No! He Said”, Mandela assumes mythic status. </p>
<p>The Island is both a geographic location and an imagined space of resistance. In this poem, Mandela is Atlas shouldering the universe, part Colossus, part Prometheus, part Christ.</p>
<p>The poem takes as its starting point Mandela’s <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/president-p-w-botha-offers-nelson-mandela-conditional-release-prison">refusal</a> in 1985 to accept release from jail in exchange for renunciation of the legitimacy of the armed struggle against apartheid. In Mandela’s obdurateness and unwillingness to break faith with the struggle, he becomes an emanation of the granite fixedness of the island itself. </p>
<p>The poem rejects any sense that the Island has subdued Mandela, as these lines suggest: “<em>No!</em> I am no prisoner of this rock, this island,/ No ash spew on Milky Ways to conquests old or new./ I am this rock, this island.” </p>
<h2>Outpouring of poetic celebration</h2>
<p>Mandela’s release in 1990 was met by an outpouring of poetic celebration both within South Africa and globally. The Irish poet Seamus Heaney recorded his fierce opposition to the apartheid regime as early as the 1960s. In 1990, he published his play <em>The Cure at Troy</em> – a reworking of Sophocles’ <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199672783.001.0001/acprof-9780199672783-chapter-3"><em>Philoctetes</em></a>. The concern in the play with injury, betrayal, suffering and reconciliation was widely seen to mirror the conflict in Ireland. </p>
<p>Inspired by Mandela’s release, Heaney later added a chorus to the play, dedicating it to Mandela. In an <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/seamus-heaney-hope-is-something-that-is-there-to-be-worked-for-141727.html">interview</a> with South African journalist Shaun Johnson in 2002, he makes Mandela’s relevance explicit: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It seemed to me to mesh beautifully with Mandela’s return. The act of betrayal, and then the generosity of his coming back and helping with the city – helping the polis to get together again.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although Mandela’s name is not directly mentioned, he is evoked in the now well-known lines: “History says, <em>Don’t hope/ _On this side of the grave.</em>/ But then, once in a lifetime/ The longed-for tidal wave/ Of justice can rise up,/ And hope and history rhyme.”</p>
<p>The chorus celebrates Mandela’s release but it does so through the lens of political extremity in Ireland. Mandela’s example is held out as one of miraculous possibility attesting to the possibility of conciliation and reparation.</p>
<p>Mandela is no longer with us. Routine invocations of his miraculous or even quasi-messianic status that became part of public discourse following his release have themselves dimmed and lost their usefulness. But, attending to Mandela’s legacy in poetry can help to re-familiarise us with the values he embodied, renewing engagement with the ongoing imperative to oppose racism in the name of political equality, constitutional democracy and economic justice in South Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100046/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Bethlehem receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / European Research Council grant agreement 615564. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karin Berkman receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / European Research Council grant agreement 615564. </span></em></p>
Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990 was met by an outpouring of poetic celebration both within South Africa and globally.
Louise Bethlehem, Associate professor in Cultural Studies and English, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Karin Berkman, Post-doctoral researcher, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100042
2018-07-16T14:09:42Z
2018-07-16T14:09:42Z
Blame politicians, not Mandela, for South Africa’s unfinished business
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227818/original/file-20180716-44097-192wazu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nelson Mandela, arriving for Thabo Mbeki's inauguration in 2004.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Jon Hrusa</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>July 2018 marks Nelson Mandela’s <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/nelson-mandela-100">centenary year</a>. Why is he still so revered across the world? The answer simply is that he is widely regarded as the personification of values which he spent much of his life fighting for. These included social justice, democracy, and freedom. </p>
<p>At the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/nelson-mandelas-statement-dock-rivonia-trial">Rivonia Trial</a> in 1964, he asserted that it was these values for which he hoped to live, but for which he was “<a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/i-am-prepared-to-die">prepared to die</a>”. He would spend 27 years in prison before he could realise his dream of a South Africa freed from repressive and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/07/apartheid-south-africa-cape-town-police-protests">brutal racial segregation</a>.</p>
<p>In prison, Mandela’s stature and mythology was carefully nurtured by his movement, the African National Congress <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/">ANC</a>, and the <a href="http://africanactivist.msu.edu/organization.php?name=Anti-Apartheid+Movement">anti-apartheid movement</a>. This established him as the focus for the global struggle against apartheid. </p>
<p>By the 1980s, Mandela was the world’s most famous political prisoner. He was celebrated at <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/nelson-mandela-freedom-rally">rallies</a>, featured on <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/05/world/africa/Mandelas-Struggle-in-Posters.html">protest posters</a>, and immortalised in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNpfJu1CVyc">popular culture</a>.</p>
<p>Mandela’s conviction and adherence to <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/the-freedom-charter">non-racialism and democratic ideals</a> came to symbolise the intrinsic moral nature of the struggle against white minority rule. </p>
<p>In the world’s current international climate of conflict and political cynicism, Mandela’s legacy continues to serve as a rare example of a principled politician who represented an indefatigable commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation. </p>
<p>Mandela commanded respect and moral authority at home and abroad for his strong convictions, humility, and courageous actions that ensured all South Africans could live in a democratic society. These achievements in the face of enormous challenges should not be underestimated.</p>
<p>As South Africa’s first democratic president there was a clear emphasis on transformation for the majority. This came about through political action under the slogan “<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/a-better-life-for-all">a better life for all</a>”, the introduction of a progressive and liberal <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996">constitution</a>, stabilising the economy, and enshrining the ideals of democracy by stepping down from the presidency after one term in office.</p>
<p>Yet there is mounting disquiet and frustration about the slow pace of South Africa’s transformation in the democratic era. This is characterised by stubborn <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/Overcoming-Poverty-and-Inequality-in-South-Africa-An-Assessment-of-Drivers-Constraints-and-Opportunities">economic inequality</a>, <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11129">growing unemployment</a>, missed opportunities and the failure to establish the form of “new” society articulated by Mandela.</p>
<p>What would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago is a growing and vocal criticism of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africa-should-undo-mandelas-economic-deals-52767">Mandela’s legacy</a>. The primary target of this frustration is the compromises and reconciliation efforts of the early 1990s, which so endeared Mandela to the world. But for many South Africans the outcomes were too accommodating to the white minority.</p>
<p>Is the mounting criticism of Mandela fair? I would argue not. South Africa currently faces many challenges, but it isn’t Mandela who failed people’s expectations. The blame for that must be put squarely at the door of the country’s politicians.</p>
<h2>Is criticism of Mandela fair?</h2>
<p>First of all its deeply unfair and highly problematic to prescribe South Africa’s current travails on one person. Part of this problem stems from the perception that Mandela single-handedly delivered freedom for South Africa and led the negotiation process. </p>
<p>This is simply not true. And the “single story” is a disservice to the multitude of organisations and activists that fought apartheid including the ANC, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-steve-bikos-remarkable-legacy-often-overlooked-82952">Black Consciousness Movement</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/congress-south-african-trade-unions-cosatu">trade unions</a>, and the <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/udf/origins.htm">United Democratic Front</a>.</p>
<p>In addition it was the collective leadership of the ANC, not Mandela alone, that negotiated with the National Party during the transition process to seek a political compromise. </p>
<p>The ANC should certainly have pushed for more concessions. In reality the party effectively sacrificed wider economic and social change for political power. </p>
<p>It is the lack of substantive change enacted during the transition that has prompted the emerging reevaluation of Mandela’s legacy.</p>
<p>To argue that Mandela “sold out” through these compromises is a misreading of the situation and fundamentally ignores the challenges and constraints of the period. These included: escalating violence across the country; the ANC negotiating from a position of structural weakness; the National Party remaining undefeated; the impossibility of overthrowing the apartheid regime by force; and a fundamentally altered post-Cold War political and economic environment. </p>
<p>Most important of all, 1994 was not supposed to be the final stage for transformation. Rather, it was a platform for future efforts. But the ANC has not succeeded in doing enough to initiate wider-societal transformation since 1994 based on the unfinished business of the negotiations. </p>
<h2>ANC failures</h2>
<p>The party’s inability to implement sustained policy changes for the benefit of the majority is evident from a number of ongoing political debates. These include anger about unemployment, land <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-06-05-south-africa-has-all-legislative-and-policy-tools-for-land-redistribution-politics-patronage-and-governance-paralysis-have-made-it-impossible-so-far/#.W0m4CGfGs7w">expropriation</a> without compensation, and <a href="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1964643/sa-is-shocked-the-anc-is-shocked-about-corruption/">corruption</a>. </p>
<p>In addition, the ANC appears to have lost its sense of direction. The political elite has been badly mired by <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2018/02/15/south-africa-s-divisive-president-zuma-s-many-scandals">scandals</a>, most notably under the former presidency of Jacob Zuma.</p>
<p>There is no doubt Mandela was a complex and flawed individual, but his vision still matters. What is required in this centenary year is for people from all sections of society to work together to embody Mandela’s values and convictions to keep the country moving forward to overcome the deeply ingrained legacies and injustices of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100042/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Graham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Mandela continues to serve as a rare example of a principled politician committed to forgiveness and reconciliation.
Matthew Graham, Lecturer in History, University of Dundee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/97277
2018-06-06T13:59:07Z
2018-06-06T13:59:07Z
Biography of an ancestral river: a call to arms against exploitation in South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221173/original/file-20180531-69511-eb3ovr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Kowie River follows a ‘horseshoe bend’ between Port Alfred and
Bathurst.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAI</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Respected South African academic and author <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jacklyn-cock-201078">Jacklyn Cock’s</a> deep love for the Kowie river is the key thread that runs throughout her new book, <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/writing-the-ancestral-river/">“Writing the Ancestral River”</a>. The 94 kilometre long river snakes through South Africa’s Eastern Cape province and flows into the Indian Ocean at the small town of Port Alfred.</p>
<p>Part of Cock’s love for the river derives from deep connections that have lasted a lifetime and stretch to her ancestry in the area. This love has always involved the physical sharing of the river with her friends, giving them glimpses into nature and history that can be both exhilarating and disquieting. </p>
<p>In essence her book involves a braver and more comprehensive sharing of her thoughts on the river with a wider public. Cock’s luminous literary style, her historical sensitivity, and her ecological expertise all serve to delight the reader. </p>
<h2>A history retold</h2>
<p>Her analysis ranges over two centuries marked by colonial dispossession and despoliation of the environment, with disparate events linked to the river providing a prism through which they can be understood and connected. Part of the story involves colonial military repression of the Xhosa in the Zuurveld, through which the Kowie is the main watercourse. </p>
<p>Part of it looks at the story of William Cock, the author’s great-great-grandfather. He was leading member of the 1820 settler community, sent by the British authorities to become a buffer between themselves and the Xhosa on the contested eastern colonial frontier. </p>
<p>A third focus is the building in 1989 of a private holiday marina on the fragile Kowie estuary. This construction has been ecologically destructive and has only served the interests of the venal rich in one of the country’s poorest localities. </p>
<p>The book’s timely publication may draw attention to how South Africans choose to commemorate the bicentennial of the Battle of Grahamstown (1819) and the arrival of the main body of settlers the following year.
Cock calls the battle “a turning point in South African history”. </p>
<p>The book raises important questions about the destructive impact of colonialism in relation to pre-existing culture and nature. It makes a new contribution to debates about how capitalism developed on the colonial frontier. It also focuses on how the ecology of the river has been disturbed, disrespected and sacrificed across time. </p>
<p>The conflict on the eastern Cape frontier was a classic land grab of the Zuurveld by British forces. It was an area known for its palatable grazing. Today we would call it ethnic cleansing. </p>
<p>Xhosa groups had been farmers there for over a century. A series of colonial military actions resulted in their expulsion, the destruction of their livelihoods – including crops and cattle – and their exclusion from the district. </p>
<p>The 1819 Battle was an attempt by the Xhosa under the leadership of Makhanda to recuperate previous losses. Cock movingly describes Makhanda’s bravery and subsequent incarceration on Robben Island, from which he died trying to escape. </p>
<h2>Taming the river</h2>
<p>Another strong character in the history of the Kowie was Cock’s Cornish forbear, William. He was a complex colonial politician and entrepreneur. William Cock was involved in coastal and inter-colonial trade. He saw opportunities in taming the Kowie for these ends, in order to create from its estuary a safe haven for his fleet of cargo boats. </p>
<p>Port Alfred reached its apogee in the 1870s, but sedimentation of the river mouth required constant dredging. Harbour development saw increasing use of convict labour, and ultimately failed because of political infighting and the introduction of steamships, too large to enter the narrow estuary. William Cock turned to other pursuits, like banking, and embodied what Jacklyn has bravely termed “settler capitalism”.</p>
<p>The book brings us up to date by considering the impacts of the construction of a marina in the estuary, largely a holiday playground of the owners of second homes. The author’s appraisal of this project shows how it came to fruition during the democratic transition, at a time of fragile and biddable local regulatory institutions, prior to any strengthening of the apparatus for environmental protection. </p>
<p>Her words have had to be chosen with caution, owing to the potentially litigious bent of the marina developers. Despite this, the project is fully and eloquently critiqued. She has exposed it as a massive assault on riverine ecology and an utter failure to deliver on the promises of prosperity in the region. </p>
<h2>Warning signals</h2>
<p>Jacklyn Cock has proved brave in marshalling the history of the Kowie to illustrate not just her deep personal connections to the terroir, but also to rehearse the warnings provided by destructive colonial and post-colonial attitudes to the natural environment. </p>
<p>Her fluid biography urges readers not remain silent. Instead we should be inspired by the shapes and sounds of the river so that we can better speak out for its, and, in the end, our common survival.</p>
<p><em>“Writing the Ancestral River” is published by Wits University Press.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Fig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The analysis of the Kowie River rehearses the warnings provided by the colonial and post-colonial destruction of culture and nature.
David Fig, Honorary Research Associate, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/94314
2018-04-03T13:03:03Z
2018-04-03T13:03:03Z
South Africa’s ‘mother of the nation’ who was never first lady
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212946/original/file-20180403-189813-1mypncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Winnie Madikizela-Mandela carved her own political identity in the struggle for freedom.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winnie-madikizela-mandela">Winnie Madikizela-Mandela</a> – doyen of South Africa’s liberation struggle and the matriarch who was dubbed ‘the mother of the nation’ – took the apartheid system head-on, at the huge personal cost. Her life typified the courage to stand up against injustice. It inspired hope during moments of adversity and hardship. She personified tenacity to a just cause in the face of a political system that demeaned those she represented as sub-humans. </p>
<p>Hers was a struggle for humanity, often times waged in an inhuman way. Her legacy is that of antinomies. Profound because it was complex. It outstripped the simple narratives of villainy and righteousness. She was, after all, only human and therefore fallible. Her demeanour was that of a feisty <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winnie-madikizela-mandela">Iron Lady</a> with Thatcherite streaks, but immersed in the tradition of revolutionary pursuit. </p>
<p>She did not bask in the glory of her revered husband <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a>. She was never simply his wife. Instead she carved out her own political identity in the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/african-national-congress-anc">African National Congress</a>. The outcome was that she was loved and loathed. </p>
<p>She kept the flame of the struggle inside the country burning while many in the leadership of the liberation movements were consigned to Robben Island or exiled. But her <a href="http://www.storiadelledonne.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Hassim2014.pdf">endorsement of violence</a> to fight the brutality of the apartheid system did not go down well with the ANC leadership. </p>
<p>The apartheid state failed in its many attempts to break her. This included arrests, detentions, solitary confinements and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/winnie-mandela-banished-brandfort">banishment</a> to a small town in the Free State called Brandfort.</p>
<h2>Indiscretions and accountability</h2>
<p>Etched in everyone’s memory is the historic picture of her – clenched-fist salute symbolising black power – walking alongside her husband Nelson Mandela who had just been released from prison after 27 years. It was a power couple whose travails personified a country at the brink of redemption, the moment marking the beginning of a new dawn. </p>
<p>As Mandela’s wife many thought that she would become South Africa’s First Lady – a title that had been appropriated to her for a long time in the mass democratic movement. Unfortunately, fate had its own way. Madikizela-Mandela was the mother of the nation who never became the first lady.</p>
<p>And residues of her indiscretions began to demand accountability. She had run-ins with the law. An indelible blemish in her biography is certainly her implication in the death of the 14-year-old child activist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/stompie-seipeis-murderer-goes-jail">Stompie Seipei</a>, who was a member of the Mandela Football Club, which she had established to disguise her political mobilisation of young people in the township. <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media%5C1997%5C9711/s971128r.htm">Jerry Richardson</a>, the coach of the club who was later exposed as having spied for the apartheid government, apportioned some blame on her. Richardson was sentenced to life imprisonment for the abduction and murder of Seipei. He <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Stompies-killer-dies-in-prison-20090407">died in prison</a>.</p>
<p>Madikizela-Mandela denied culpability in Seipei’s death and accused Richardson of lying. She was nevertheless convicted of abduction and assault. A six year prison sentence was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/winnie-nomzamo-madikizela-mandela-sentenced-six-years">commuted to a fine</a> on appeal. </p>
<p>She later shouldered some responsibility for Seipei’s death in a grudging admission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media%5C1997%5C9712/s971204v.htm">things went horribly wrong</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This followed a desperate attempt by the TRC’s chairperson Desmond Tutu to extract a confession – and remorse – from her. She apologised to the Seipei family, but maintained her innocence. </p>
<p>The TRC’s finding against her was that she was <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=h2qhAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=WINNIE+WAS+politically+and+morally+accountable+for+the+gross+violations+of+human+rights+committee+by+members+of+the+Club.&source=bl&ots=IZQAQ0D79K&sig=r3CCwJ5RgfohIediBMbJFHPe14I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-pMjXjZ7aAhXKCsAKHQKcCy0Q6AEISDAG#v=onepage&q&f=false">“politically and morally accountable</a> for the gross violations of human rights committed” by members of the Club. </p>
<p>The TRC was established to <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">promote unity and reconciliation</a>, bore witness to, recorded, and in some instances granted amnesty to the perpetrators of human rights violations either in defence of, or fighting against, apartheid. It offered rehabilitation and reparations to the victims of violence.</p>
<p>Some people were uneasy about the TRC process as it related to Madikizela-Mandela. Did the ANC abandon her? The ANC took <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media%5C1997%5C9712/s971202i.htm">collective responsibility</a> for the human rights violations during the struggle against apartheid. But Madikizela-Mandela was left to take personal responsibility for the atrocities related to the activities of the Mandela United Football Club. </p>
<p>Her troubles didn’t end there. She was charged with fraud and theft in relation to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/24/southafrica">bank loan</a>. She was convicted and given a five-year jail sentence. But she appealed and the sentence was set aside.</p>
<p>Her biographer Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrop, in the book Winnie Mandela: a Life, <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/winnie-mandela-life/9781868729265">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the worldwind of events following Mandela’s release from prison and the start of negotiations designed to ensure a peaceful transition rather than a bloodbath in South Africa…no one bothered to find out what Winnie needed and wanted, how her life had changed or what her aspirations might be…From the moment she was implicated in the serious crimes involving the football club, it was though her entire past had been erased from the public mind. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Unanswered questions</h2>
<p>There are many questions that relate to the role of this colossal in the liberation struggle – and post-apartheid South Africa – that historians should critically examine. They go beyond simple biographical narratives. </p>
<p>For example, how would events have unfolded if she hadn’t taken the action she did? What lay behind her penchant for military inspired and violent approaches to the liberation struggle? Was it because she found the ANC too moderate relative to the violence the apartheid system was unleashing? Or was it because of the torture she endured at the hands of the apartheid regime?</p>
<p>And why did she continue to show preference for radical approaches to policy choices even in the post-apartheid South Africa, when her party was in charge? </p>
<p>In expressing her displeasure at what happened to her after Mandela’s release, it was as though, having fought bitterly against apartheid, she was fighting a struggle within a struggle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94314/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF). He is the Chief Editor of the Journal of Public Administration and a member of the South African Association of Public Administration and Management(SAAPAM)</span></em></p>
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s struggle was for humanity, oftentimes waged in an inhuman way.
Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85289
2017-10-12T12:59:40Z
2017-10-12T12:59:40Z
Spike Island: the Irish ‘Alcatraz’ and the growth of dark tourism
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189784/original/file-20171011-9777-qhq1fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Spike Island</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.spikeislandcork.ie/">http://www.spikeislandcork.ie/</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.spikeislandcork.ie/">Spike Island</a> – the former fortress and prison off the coast of County Cork in Ireland – has been named Europe’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41472151">leading tourist attraction</a> at the World Travel Awards. The island beat off competition from Buckingham Palace, the Eiffel Tower and Rome’s Colosseum to win what is described as the “Oscars” of the travel industry. It is a win for the community and also a win for so called “dark tourism”, whereby travellers seek something a tad more macabre than the traditional trip to the seaside.</p>
<p>There is no doubt Spike Island has a fascinating history. Situated in <a href="http://www.corkharbourmarina.ie/Home.html">Cork Harbour</a>, one of the largest natural harbours in the world, it has been home to a monastic settlement, a military fortress and a prison. Since the fortress reopened to visitors in June 2016, it has become a popular tourist destination, attracting over <a href="http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/spike-island-beats-buckingham-palace-and-eiffel-tower-to-secure-europes-no-1-tourist-attraction-460091.html">45,000 visitors</a> this year.</p>
<p>Visitors travel by boat from the <a href="http://www.visitcobh.com/">town of Cobh</a> to the island where they can explore the star-shaped fort which was home to thousands of soldiers and prisoners from the late 18th-century until 2004. There they learn about the <a href="http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/spike-island-opens-to-the-publictoday-and-welook-back-at-its-darkest-history-403278.html">history of the island</a>, from its place as a home to early Christian monks, through the key strategic role it played during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Era, to its reincarnation as an island prison in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189672/original/file-20171010-19989-ye2v0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189672/original/file-20171010-19989-ye2v0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189672/original/file-20171010-19989-ye2v0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189672/original/file-20171010-19989-ye2v0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189672/original/file-20171010-19989-ye2v0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189672/original/file-20171010-19989-ye2v0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189672/original/file-20171010-19989-ye2v0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Interior of the old shell store which tells the story of the transportation of prisoners.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Hill</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The growth of ‘dark tourism’</h2>
<p>Spike Island is one of a growing number of attractions in Ireland that can be called “dark tourism” sites. <a href="https://theconversation.com/dark-tourism-can-be-voyeuristic-and-exploitative-or-if-handled-correctly-do-a-world-of-good-81504">Dark tourism</a> is closely associated with death, suffering and the macabre. The concept is far from new – Madame Tussaud became famous in Paris during the French Revolution when she cast waxwork death masks of the guillotined and by the 1830s she was exhibiting waxworks of murderers in London. </p>
<p>Sites associated with death and suffering have long been commercialised. In my book, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00SLVOLWI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">Blood Runs Green</a>, I wrote about the public fascination with death, and particularly brutal death, in <a href="http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/gilded/jb_gilded_subj.html">Gilded Age America</a>. In Chicago in 1889, thousands of “dark tourists” paid a dime to visit the house where a man had been bludgeoned to death and a further dime to take away souvenir shards of blood-stained wood (no one seemed to notice that far more splinters of wood were sold than had been necessary to build the house). </p>
<p>Academic studies of <a href="http://193.40.254.28/public/k/Kuressaare-kolledz/Kolledz/Summer_school/Miles_2002_Auschwitz_Museum_Interpretation_and_Darker_Tourism.pdf">“dark tourism”</a> have tended to focus on sites associated with the holocaust – particularly concentration camps such as Auschwitz. But <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738302001020">some research</a> has been conducted on prison islands, notably <a href="http://www.robben-island.org.za/">Robben Island</a> off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, which was home to Nelson Mandela for 18 of his 27 years in prison.</p>
<p>Other studies looked at <a href="https://www.nps.gov/alca/index.htm">Alcatraz</a>, the famous prison island in San Francisco Bay. Both sites have key dominant stories – the image of Alcatraz is dominated by Hollywood visions of the island prison, while <a href="http://www.robben-island.org.za/map">Robben Island</a> is most closely associated with the political prisoners of the apartheid regime. Both sites make efforts to expand the visitor experience beyond these narrow histories, but with limited success in the public perception. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189785/original/file-20171011-9757-qmih84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189785/original/file-20171011-9757-qmih84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189785/original/file-20171011-9757-qmih84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189785/original/file-20171011-9757-qmih84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189785/original/file-20171011-9757-qmih84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189785/original/file-20171011-9757-qmih84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189785/original/file-20171011-9757-qmih84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tourists listening to an audio tour on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?src=4VJNol4bWx2I2DZUAVpQcQ-1-37">Supannee_Hickman/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Responsible tourism</h2>
<p>Part of my role as the historical advisor for the Spike Island Project was to consider issues associated with representing incarceration, punishment and execution. History should be neither sanitised nor sensationalised. Dark tourist sites are often tempted to provide the gory details of executions, highlight escape attempts and focus on the brutality of jailers. But it is also important to consider the victims of crime and the ways in which their experience might be marginalised when sites focus on the sensational.</p>
<p>Our project identified four key narratives that would allow the social, political and military histories of the island to be told: Cork Harbour, the Island Fortress, the Island Prison and the Island Home. Our intention was not to privilege one theme or story, but to offer visitors a multi-layered experience that revealed a diversity of voices ranging right across the island’s past. </p>
<p>Tourism is a business and commercial realities are a factor in developing any tourist site. Sites need to make money and it is the responsibility of the design team to make the content as accessible and as interesting as possible. Unlike Alcatraz, Spike Island had few famous prisoners and has not been <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079116/">immortalised in Hollywood films</a>. As the historian responsible for researching and writing the island’s story, this was a good thing, as it enabled me to tell the whole story of the island as a place of refuge, defence and of incarceration. </p>
<p>Visitors can wander through the remains of the island village and imagine growing up on an island complete with its own school, church, fortress and prison. They can walk the corridors of the prison and stand in the cold, damp cells. They can patrol the perimeter of the fortress and imagine defending Cork harbour from a flotilla of invading ships. These are the types of experiences that cannot be replicated in a purpose-built museum. </p>
<p>The challenge of telling complex and diverse stories in a compelling and attractive way is a considerable one and involves input from a lot of people. But I believe that Spike Island successfully treads the fine line between education, entertainment and sensation. It is neither exploitative nor does it shy away from its difficult past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85289/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I was the historical consultant for the development of Phase I of Fortress Spike Island. However, as the project is complete, I am no longer working on this project so don't have any vested interest in Spike Island </span></em></p>
The former prison, Spike Island, is now one of the world’s top ‘dark tourism’ destinations.
Gillian O'Brien, Reader in Modern Irish History, Liverpool John Moores University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80236
2017-06-29T15:01:56Z
2017-06-29T15:01:56Z
Tribute to a Namibian icon: Andimba Toivo ya Toivo
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176187/original/file-20170629-16091-hkdmay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Filckr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On June 9, 2017 Namibia became poorer. A moral beacon left the people, for whose freedom he lived most of his 92 years. Active until the end, Andimba (Herman) Toivo ya Toivo had just returned from a trip to Robben Island with his <a href="http://www.namibian.com.na/index.php?id=127229&page=archive-read">fellow inmate Helao Shityuwete</a> – one of the other truly selfless, most underrated freedom fighters. Hours later he fell asleep forever at home.</p>
<p>Ya Toivo had been a torchbearer of the determination for freedom from foreign rule. He embodied a generation – many of whom left behind the values they claimed had guided their struggle after independence. In contrast, Ya Toivo remained loyal to what made him the personification of the desire to live in an independent country governed by and for its people in decency.</p>
<p>The loss of Ya Toivo should encourage others to become the torchbearers of his values.</p>
<h2>Road to Robben Island</h2>
<p>Brought up in the northern Namibian region then called Ovamboland, he was trained as an artisan and volunteered to fight for South Africa in <a href="http://www.parliament.na/index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact&id=723:toivo-ya-toivo-andimba-ca&catid=118&Itemid=1375">World War II</a>. After leaving school in the early 1950s he worked on contract in Cape Town where he became politically aware through African National Congress (ANC) activists.</p>
<p>He started to mobilise his fellow Namibian contract workers. These were Namibians from the northern parts of the territory who were contracted for periods of time to work (without their families) in mines and industry. They were restricted to the workplace and accommodated in compounds if they weren’t living as domestic workers with their employers. </p>
<p>He founded the <a href="https://books.google.se/books?id=Mls4H1mnN_0C&pg=PA333&lpg=PA333&dq=Ovamboland+People%27s+Congress&source=bl&ots=_FKyvEPMFA&sig=T3_66PPsmb17hEJTEuhHMDNyOFI&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Ovamboland%20People%27s%20Congress&f=false">Ovamboland People’s Congress</a>, which demanded the abolition of contract labour and an end of South African administration over his country. In 1958 he managed to dispatch a tape-recorded petition to the United Nations and was subsequently deported back to Ovamboland. There he became involved in the formation of the South West African People’s Organisation <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-west-africa-peoples-organisation-swapo">(Swapo)</a>.</p>
<p>Ya Toivo helped the first liberation fighters who had been trained abroad to prepare for the armed struggle. On August 26, 1966 the first military encounter <a href="http://www.namibian.com.na/index.php?id=113326&page=archive-read">occurred</a> with the South African regime. Ya Toivo and hundreds of others were arrested.</p>
<p>He was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/andimba-herman-toivo-ya-toivo">put to trial in Pretoria</a> along with Eliaser Tuhadeleni (as accused No 1) and 34 others. Ya Toivo’s speech <a href="http://www.namibian.com.na/56028/read/Toivos-message--to-Namibia--and-the-world#">from the dock</a> on February 1, 1968 became a lasting document of Namibian aspirations for freedom:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are Namibians and not South Africans. We do not now, and will not in the future, recognise your right to govern us, to make laws for us in which we have no say; to treat our country as if it were your property and us as if you were our masters. We have always regarded South Africa as an intruder in our country. This is how we have always felt and this is how we feel now, and it is on this basis that we have faced this trial.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thanks to international pressure, the accused were spared the death penalty. Ya Toivo and several others were sentenced to long imprisonment of which they served up to <a href="http://www.sabracelets.org/messack-victory.html">nearly 20 years</a>. </p>
<p>On Robben Island, Ya Toivo’s defiance, stubbornness and resilience made him the most respected among the Namibian prisoners, who developed close ties with the ANC inmates. Andimba and Madiba (Nelson Mandela’s clan name) had more in common than a striking similarity of the letters in their names. They remained friends for the rest of their lives. As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/27/andimba-toivo-ya-toivo-obituary?CMP=share_btn_tw">remembered by Denis Herbstein</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In prison Toivo was unbending, seizing every opportunity to show his disdain for his jailers. A fellow prisoner described the scene when Toiva [sic] responded to his treatment by a young warder: Andimba unleashed a hard open-hand smack on the young warder’s cheek, sending [his] cap flying and [the warder] wailing (in Afrikaans), ‘The kaffir hit me’. The inevitable spell of solitary confinement followed. When Toivo was released in March 1984, short of his full term, he refused to leave his fellow prisoners and had to be coaxed out of his cell.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Into exile and Namibian independence</h2>
<p>Back home in Namibia, Ya Toivo refused to accept a South African initiated transitional government and left for exile. The Swapo leadership created the post of secretary-general for him, a niche to keep him away from the consolidated inner circle of power. He humbly accepted what was mainly a symbolic position to represent Swapo internationally without influencing its policy.</p>
<p>He soon met the US-American lawyer Vicky Erenstein. They married a week into Independence in 1990. In 1993 they became the parents of twin daughters Mutaleni and Nashikoto. They also adopted two of Ya Toivo’s nephews. The children <a href="http://www.namibian.com.na/55944/read/Ya-Toivos-children-pay-tribute-to-family-giant">remember</a> their father as youthful, “fun-loving, yet strict, attentive, playful and loving”.</p>
<p>He raised them to be loyal to fundamental principles such as honesty and modesty.</p>
<p>Maybe his biggest moral challenge (and failure) was when Swapo gave him the task in 1989 to monitor the release of several hundred so-called ex-detainees who had survived a Swapo purge in exile. During the 1980s thousands were kept near the <a href="http://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/85/Strategic%20Review/Vol%2038(1)/melber-review-2-pp-143-146.zp89618.pdf">southern Angolan town of Lubango</a> where they were tortured by a terror regime of “securocrats”. Many were executed or didn’t survive. Ya Toivo’s credibility was abused to downplay – if not to justify – the atrocities. He accepted the dubious role and never openly corrected the injustice and violation of human rights he certainly condemned.</p>
<p>On the evening of March 20, 1990, before the official independence ceremony at midnight, the Swapo leadership gathered for a banquet with local VIPs in the German club in central Windhoek. Not so Ya Toivo. He spent most of the evening with local activists and members of the international solidarity movement who had come together at a venue on the outskirts of the city. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176068/original/file-20170628-31302-jjpdw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176068/original/file-20170628-31302-jjpdw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176068/original/file-20170628-31302-jjpdw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176068/original/file-20170628-31302-jjpdw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176068/original/file-20170628-31302-jjpdw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176068/original/file-20170628-31302-jjpdw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176068/original/file-20170628-31302-jjpdw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andimba Toivo ya Toivo and Jack and Ray Simons, toasting to Namibian Independence on March 20, 1990.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Henning Melber</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Loyalty to true liberation</h2>
<p>Since Namibian independence Ya Toivo served three terms in cabinet as minister. As before, he put the party’s interest above his personal ambitions. Or rather, he acted in accordance with what he understood as being in the best interests of the country.</p>
<p>Power politics were a strange thing for him. What mattered were the party and the people. But he realised that the two are not identical. As a result, he displayed the wisdom one would expect from a true leader. Speaking for the last time in the <a href="http://www.namibian.com.na/56028/read/Toivos-message--to-Namibia--and-the-world#">National Assembly</a> on March 16, 2005 he reminded his comrades:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Being a member of parliament or even a minister should not be seen as an opportunity to achieve status, to be addressed as ‘honourables’ and to acquire riches. If those are your goals, you would do better to pursue other careers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ya Toivo remained critically observant of the limits to liberation. As late as 2014 he commented on the values of South Africa’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/kids/freedom-charter">Freedom Charter</a> and the current leadership of the governing ANC. He quipped in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j2xcFEJK9U">video recorded interview</a>, that the people did not support the struggle for them just to fill their pockets and to loot the country.</p>
<p>Just as the ANC needs moral guardians who will enforce its core values to <a href="https://theconversation.com/anc-take-heed-even-big-brands-die-if-they-abandon-their-founding-values-79506">save its brand</a>, so does Namibia’s Swapo. </p>
<p>If there is a positive meaning to patriotism – all too often abused for inventing heroic narratives by those holding political power and celebrating themselves – then it can be identified with Toivo ya Toivo, a true Namibian patriot departed from this world. </p>
<p>Hamba Kahle, Andimba. You left behind a lasting legacy to the Namibian people who share your belief in true liberation as emancipation from greed and social injustice and a life in human dignity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80236/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber joined SWAPO in 1974 and met Andimba Toivo ya Toivo for the first time in 1984. </span></em></p>
Andimba (Herman) Toivo Ya Toivo remained loyal to what made him the personification of the desire to live in an independent country governed by, and for, its people.
Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75361
2017-03-29T07:25:39Z
2017-03-29T07:25:39Z
Ahmed Kathrada: a simple life full of love after 26 years of incarceration
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163089/original/image-20170329-1674-1fzeb0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ahmed Kathrada leaves a legacy filled with self-sacrifice and courage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kopano Tlape/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ahmed-kathrada">Ahmed Kathrada</a>, one of South Africa’s preeminent struggle stalwarts who has died at the age of 87, was best known to many as Kathy or Uncle Kathy. He was a most unassuming man. Shy and non-imposing, he would walk through his neighbourhood and if approached it would be like meeting an old family friend. He was warm and gentle, always leaving you with a smile. That’s how I came to know and love him. </p>
<p>His quiet demeanour belied a sharp and inquiring mind. Until his last days he was interested in politics always referring to himself as a political animal. He requested a meeting with <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?q=rhodes+must+fall">Rhodes Must Fall</a> activists, exchanging notes on history and activism.</p>
<p>Often he would remind me that “saints are sinners”. Part of being human we had a margin of error, allowing ourselves the right to self-correct but also to forgive. In many ways, he maintained a childlike innocence – always seeing the best in everyone. </p>
<p>Surrounding himself with strong and opinionated people, he married the fierce and courageous <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/barbara-anne-hogan">Barbara Hogan</a> whom he adored. She was also an anti-apartheid activist. He was most animated with Barbara and his godchildren, Mateo and Hari, sharing stories of domestic bliss including the famous “mouse in the house” that kept eating bits and pieces of his chocolates. Barbara entertained with good humour all his jabs, revealing a warm and tender relationship.</p>
<h2>A man who banished bitterness</h2>
<p>Kathrada <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/world/africa/ahmed-kathrada-dies-nelson-mandela.html?_r=0">spent 26 years</a> incarcerated by the apartheid regime, 18 of them on Robben Island, many alongside his friend Nelson Mandela. Barbara reminded me that his life after prison was good, simple but full of love and beauty. Surrounded by family and friends he kept his circle small and lived a humble life without seeking fame or fortune. </p>
<p>He was a role model for his nephews and nieces, never promoting family or friends because if you were worthy of that promotion you should earn it through good work. These values sometimes conflicted with other’s expectations of him. Yet he continued to maintain a strong hold on a simple freedom without being a slave to materialism or power. It was exactly this simple freedom that made his life exceptional.</p>
<p>He didn’t share many stories about the Island. But often he mentioned the unnaturalness of prison by measuring it against the lack of children’s voices. It was children and the youth that excited him. Especially his appreciation for beautiful young women, keeping everyone entertained and, in particular, the story of the young woman that pulled his face to show off her dimple for a selfie. </p>
<p>His hope for the future was a South Africa free of racism and poverty, talking about his wish to see every child in the country going to sleep in a warm bed, after eating a hot meal and waking up to go to school safely. Dignity was for him the cornerstone for human rights. Poverty and markers of marginalisation had to be eradicated so that dignity was ensured for all. </p>
<p>He was old fashioned but he knew that some principles such as the right to love whomever you chose was about restoring dignity. It was this approach that you recognised when you met him. He treated everyone with equal respect. </p>
<p>I was once full of anger and resentment; life had knocked me badly. He invited me to tea as was his custom when he needed to talk. In a gentle manner he spoke about a conscious choice he made not to be bitter when he came out of prison. He said bitterness only affects the person carrying it. Making me laugh, he said you can always tell a bitter person. It’s written on their face.</p>
<h2>Self-sacrifice and courage</h2>
<p>On reflective moments he would share some of his errors in judgement. In 1951/52 while living for a year in Budapest and working for the World Youth Federation Congress he came upon political prisoners working on a bridge on a cold winter’s night not sufficiently clothed and how he shamefully felt disgust for them. </p>
<p>Later these thoughts would haunt him as he became a political prisoner. He shifted from being a forceful and irreverent youth to being a measured and thoughtful person, never shying away from the politics of the day. He encouraged difference in opinions and reflected on them. It was this openness to see things from a fresh perspective that he encouraged discussions with young people, respecting divergence in historical memory. </p>
<p>He supported the release of political prisoners in Palestine and <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/politics/2017-03-28-kathradas-letter-to-zuma-submit-to-the-will-of-the-people-and-resign/">spoke out</a> against corruption and bad governance in South Africa. </p>
<p>History will be written from varying perspectives. His life and times will be written about in years to come and will be contested and challenged. Unlike other Rivonia Trialists who were sentenced to life imprisonment, he could have had a lighter sentencing. He chose life imprisonment out of loyalty with his comrades. </p>
<p>One thing is certain, he leaves a legacy that is filled with stories of self-sacrifice and courage. Even though much of the country’s history of the struggle is beginning to be forgotten, his is a legacy I hope South Africans can use as an example for a good life. He leaves a gaping hole in many hearts and his unwavering courage to speak out in matters of national interest will be missed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75361/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nadira Omarjee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Amed Kathrada’s legacy can be used as an example for a good life. South Africans will miss his unwavering courage to speak out on matters of national interest.
Nadira Omarjee, Visiting scholar of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/44386
2015-07-09T04:20:05Z
2015-07-09T04:20:05Z
Endangered African penguins on the rebound, but not yet in the clear
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87677/original/image-20150707-1306-1hfl6lx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After curbing fishing, the African penguins of the Western Cape are on the rebound.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Davide Gaglio</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s good news and bad news for the threatened penguins of South Africa’s Western Cape, according to new <a href="http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/7/20150237">study</a> on the impact of fishing restrictions put in place near their breeding colonies.</p>
<p>The good news is that the prevention of fishing activity can lead to noticeable increases in chick survival. The bad news is that these measures may not, on their own, be sufficient to facilitate enough population recovery to remove the birds from the endangered species list.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/7/20150237">study</a> was the latest to take advantage of an experiment revolving around two pairs of islands off South Africa’s coast: <a href="http://www.raggycharters.co.za/page/st_croix_and_bird_island">St Croix and Bird Islands</a> to the south, and <a href="http://www.sailafrica.steerage.co.za/harbour_dassen.htm">Robben and Dassen Islands</a> to the west. Starting in 2008, one island from each was made off-limits to fishing activity, while the other was open for business as usual. After three years the restrictions were reversed. </p>
<h2>Competition between birds and fishermen</h2>
<p>The closure was suggested because marine ecologists hoped it would minimise competition between penguins and the fishing industry within the core foraging range for the birds. </p>
<p>Even in the absence of commercial fishing activity, forage fish populations naturally undergo large <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/21/6648">fluctuations</a>. The seabirds that rely on these species to feed themselves and their young typically respond to the occasional food shortages with short-term behavioural <a href="http://www.doc.govt.nz/Documents/conservation/native-animals/birds/sea-and-shore/factsheet-7.pdf">adjustments</a>, such as skipping a breeding season.</p>
<p>But recent fishing activity, coupled with eastward shifts of the forage fish spawning grounds, have decimated fish stocks. This has affected African penguins to the point that they are no longer able to cope merely by changing how they act during the breeding season. Adult survival rates have <a href="http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=3861">plummeted</a>, and the total worldwide population of the species has decreased by more than 90% since the 1930s.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Penguins feeding their young.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Sherley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Survival rates show solid increase</h2>
<p>The study used a dataset spanning 13 years – ten years prior to the closure and three years after. It was designed to investigate whether the fishery closures around Robben Island were improving penguin breeding success and might therefore be a way to help the species <a href="http://news.discovery.com/animals/endangered-african-penguin-population.htm">rebound</a>.</p>
<p>Over the course of the study, a total of 1501 nests were monitored to calculate chick survivorship during each year of the study. These data were used in two ways. First, to investigate whether survivorship was related to the closure of the nearby fishery. Second, to create larger demographic models predicting how large the penguin population would be after ten years under the two different fisheries management schemes. </p>
<p>These patterns are likely to be influenced not only by the actions of fishermen, but also natural fluctuations in forage fish population numbers. The models, therefore, also contained data on the availability of anchovies and sardines in the waters near Robben Island. Because fish are able to come and go between protected and unprotected waters, the researchers also collected information on the extent to which these two forage fish species were captured by fishermen operating within 30 nautical miles around the island.</p>
<p>The results are striking. During years when the fishery was closed, chick survival was just under 66%. During years when the fishery was open, it dropped to only 47%. This 19% difference suggests that chicks are benefiting from the greater amount of food that their parents are able to locate and bring back to the nest.</p>
<p>If the closure were to be made permanent, with chick survival maintained at approximately 66% per year, we could expect to see approximately 222 breeding pairs on Robben Island in a decade. If the fishery remained open, with only 47% chick survival, we could expect only 175 pairs. In other words, closing the fisheries would likely result in an approximately 27% better population number ten years down the line. </p>
<h2>But still not enough</h2>
<p>The problem is that both of these values are still not enough. That’s because even though fishery closure is an incredibly useful management tool, it only addresses one threat to the penguins and in only one of their habitats. </p>
<p>They face a number of other potential <a href="http://www.alertdiver.com/africanpenguin">hazards</a>, such as climate change, in the non-protected areas where they spend their time when they are not breeding.</p>
<p>While it is important to celebrate the effects of small-scale fishing closures, it is also necessary to think about it as only one tool in the conservation toolbox. Adopting different <a href="http://www.reefbase.org/gefll/pdf/ebm.pdf">regimes</a> could lead to more widespread reductions in fishing pressures in South African waters. It is important not to be reliant on fishing closures only but use a range of different techniques.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44386/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlin R Kight does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The curbing of fishing has helped African penguins rebound from close to extinction – but it is not enough.
Caitlin R Kight, Visiting Researcher, Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.