No Easy Walk to Freedom

In these four chapters, Mandela continues to build on the themes of mass mobilization and the shift in strategies and tactics, as well as to emphasize the government’s violent response to the movement’s nonviolent tactics. By recapitulating the course that the movement has taken from the All-In African conference forward, he builds to the address at the PAFMECA conference, where he explained the shift to more forceful tactics as well as the importance of international support as new tactics were implemented. 

While the resistance movement was in full swing prior to the All-In conference, the conference nevertheless constituted a marked shift in the movement. Although the discussion of the All-In conference shares some important similarities with the discussion of the COP and Freedom Charter in earlier chapters (particularly in terms of the emphasis on multiracial, multiclass, and multi-party solidarity), the discussion of the All-In conference stresses a more action-oriented route for the movement going forward. The resolutions adopted indicate this more action-oriented route:

Conference resolved that if the Government failed to call this convention by 31 May, country-wide demonstrations would be held on the eve of the Republic in protest against this undemocratic act [. . .] 

Conference further resolved that, in the event of the Government failing to accede to this demand, all Africans would be called upon not to cooperate with the proposed Republic. All sections of our population would be asked to unite with us in opposing the Nationalists. 

The resolution went further and called upon democratic people the world over to impose economic and other sanctions against the Government. A National Action Council was elected to implement the above decision (72). 

Where earlier iterations of the struggle tried constitutional means and hoped that government officials would integrate the voices of the masses into the representational apparatus, the All-In resolutions make clear that “hard and swift blows should be delivered with the full weight of the masses of the people” since the Government refused to meet the people’s demands (99). 

Those “hard and swift blows” aimed especially at the South African economy because (99), Mandela argues, it was primarily through an unequal economic situation that the government consolidated and perpetuated its power. In Chapter 12, he writes that “[v]arious forms of industrial and economic action will be employed to undermine the already tottering economy” of South Africa (89). In addition to the call for other countries to impose and continue economic sanctions in Chapters 10 and 12, Mandela notes in Chapter 11 that a survey conducted by the South African Congress of Trade Unions reported that “the clothing, textile, laundry and dry-cleaning, food and canning, and the furniture industries were severely hit” by the general strike (79), indicating the efficacy of the action-oriented strategy. He also concludes Chapter 11 by reiterating the movement’s primary tactic of slowing the South African economy:

We shall ask our millions of friends outside South Africa to intensify the boycott and isolation of the Government of this country, diplomatically, economically, and in every other way. The mines, industries, and farms of this country cannot carry on without the labour of Africans imported from elsewhere in Africa. 

We are the people of this country. We produce the wealth of the gold mines, of the farms, and of industry. Non-collaboration is the weapon we must use to bring down the Government. We have decided to use it fully and without reservation (87).

Mandela’s discussion of hitting the South African economy builds on earlier chapters where he identifies non-Europeans, and the working class in particular, as the lifeblood of the country’s economy. Thus, mass refusal to continue laboring for the country’s white-owned industries, as well as the call for international economic sanctions, indicates not only a continued emphasis on mass mobilization as the primary strategy for the movement but also demonstrates one of the tactics that the movement employed in that mobilization. 

However, Mandela argues that the economic focus is not the only shift necessary to win the freedom struggle. In Chapter 13, he emphasizes that concrete conditions call for the implementation of armed struggle. After identifying South Africa as “a land ruled by the gun” (100), he justifies the people’s turn away from nonviolence: “They feel that peace in our country must be considered already broken when a minority Government maintains its authority over the majority by force and violence” (100). The essential idea is that because the government’s response to peaceful demonstration was violence and force, and because violence appeared to be the only language that the government understood, the South African masses were justified in employing less peaceful means of resistance. 

Throughout the chapters, there is ample evidence of the government’s violent and forceful tactics. In Ato Quayson’s editorial note for Chapter 9, he contextualizes the essay by noting the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, as well as the government banning and arresting of PAC, ANC, and other organization members (71). By the time of the All-In conference, Mandela had already been banned from gathering for nine years (71). In Chapter 11, Mandela asserts that the government resorted to “naked force” in the face of the strike organization:

A special law had to be rushed through Parliament to enable the Government to detain without trial people connected with the organization of the stay-at-home. The Army had to be called out, European civilians armed, and the police force deployed in African townships and other areas [. . .] More than 1,000 innocent Africans were arrested and jailed under the pass laws and terror and intimidation became widespread (76).

In Chapter 13’s address to the PAFMECA attendees, Mandela explains the violent situation in South Africa. For example, he describes the massacres in Queenstown, Sharpeville, and Bondelswart, which included the use of “aeroplanes, heavy machine-guns, artillery, and rifles” on unarmed civilians and peaceful strikers (93). Mandela also notes the “merciless persecution of all political leaders and [. . .] total repression of political opposition” (93), including himself. At the time of his “Letter from Underground” and the address to PAFMECA, he was an outlaw, having had to separate himself from his family, close his businesses, and live in poverty (90). Mandela’s discussion of his outlaw status in these chapters bears on his later discussion of how the government criminalized him and other political leaders. 

Articulating the government’s violent and repressive tactics justifies the ANC decision to create Umkonto we Sizwe, which Mandela explains in Chapter 13 in the PAFMECA address. After explaining why the ANC initially adopted a nonviolent strategy and his experience as an outlaw touring the country and amassing support over the past several months, he writes:

It dawned on me quite clearly that the situation had become explosive [. . .] Then on the night of 16 December last year the whole of South Africa vibrated under the heavy blows of UMKONTO WE SIZWE (The Spear of the Nation). Government buildings were blasted with explosives in Johannesburg, the industrial heart of South Africa, in Port Elizabeth, and in Durban. It was now clear that this was a political demonstration of a formidable kind, and the Press announced the beginning of planned acts of sabotage [. . .] [P]lanned acts of sabotage against Government installations introduce a new phase in the political situation and are a demonstration of the people’s unshakeable determination to win freedom whatever the cost may be (101).

The explanation and excerpt not only illustrate that the tactical shift came as a response to the concrete situation in South Africa but also lay the foundation for an in-depth discussion of Umkonto’s strategic creation and implementation in subsequent chapters. 

Thus, Chapters 10 through 13 provide detailed reflection and analysis of events and planning that led to the movement’s shift from legal, constitutional, and peaceful means towards a more active and forceful strategy to defeat the government. They emphasize the dynamism of Mandela’s activism, demonstrating the careful consideration and planning aimed at making the government feel the impact of economic and armed resistance.