Rhodes University mourns and lowers its flag on the passing of Tatomkhulu Rolihlahla Nelson Dalibhunga Mandela. We knew that he would eventually leave us, but Madiba’s passing still fills us with great sorrow. Few people in our time have symbolised the spirit of freedom and courage so well as this figure of monumental integrity and humanity.
Tatomkhulu Mandela was an alumnus of Rhodes University, by virtue of receiving an honorary doctorate from Rhodes on 6 April 2002. We observed that ‘although no medal or award could compare with the gift he has given to the world’, but nonetheless requested our late Chancellor, Prof Jakes Gerwel, a close confidante of Madiba, ‘to present to this most gracious of men who has shown us how to accept suffering without bitterness and to face the future with courage and optimism, the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.’
Inspired by him, we named a dining hall in 2002 that serves four residences the Nelson Mandela Hall, with a bust of him at the entrance to the hall. In order to celebrate and honour the spirit, leadership and humility that Madiba embodied, the preamble to the Nelson Mandela Hall constitution reads:
We the students of the Nelson Mandela Hall, inspired by the values personified by Nelson Mandela, acknowledge the challenges facing us as a diverse community with varying backgrounds, cultures and histories.
Working together, we will strive to build a community of fellowship and equality...based on the principles of non-racism, non-sexism and democracy.
By striving to live up to the legacy of Nelson Mandela we seek to fulfil the Rhodes University maxim "Where leaders learn".
Rhodes was also blessed with Mandela’s approval of the Nelson Mandela Chair in Politics, which today is awarded to outstanding visiting professors. Madiba spent a few days at Rhodes in 2007, accompanying his wife Graca Machel when she received an honorary doctorate from the University. His last visit was in 2009, when he attended his grandson’s graduation ceremony. He encouraged Rhodes to continue connecting respectfully with local communities and the Eastern Cape.
Leaders like Madiba are all too rare: famous political prisoner, number 46664; irrepressible freedom fighter; revered political leader; Nobel prize winner; first president of free South Africa; statesperson; social activist; alumnus of scores of universities; champion of learning and education, and humanitarian. Few individuals have touched and inspired as many people as has Madiba.
Nelson Mandela was born in 1918 into the royal family of the Thembu in Qunu in the Eastern Cape. There, in the family kraal of white-washed huts, young Nelson spent a happy childhood, and listened eagerly to the stirring tales of the community elders. His Xhosa name, Rolihlahla, has the colloquial and rather prophetic meaning ‘trouble?maker', and he only received his more familiar English name, Nelson, on his first day at Healdtown, a mission boarding school.
The 1930s were troubled times in South Africa, when forced removals, pass laws and other segregation bills were passed. Mandela went to Fort Hare University to do a BA, but it wasn’t long before his strong will and indignation at injustice got in the way, and he was expelled in 1940 for leading an SRC strike with Oliver Tambo.
At age 22, he found himself working as a mine policeman, knopkierie and whistle in hand, at Johannesburg's Crown Mines. Contrary to his expectations of grandeur, the Mine offices were rusted tin shanties in an ugly, barren area, filled with the harsh noise of lift-shafts, power drills, and the distant rumble of dynamite. Everywhere he looked he saw tired-looking black men in dusty overalls. The contrast from his rural life must have been a rude shock, and he rapidly learned the reality of the grinding poverty and inhuman exploitation of his fellow workers.
Now, politics began to play a very significant role in his life. Stirred up at the humiliation and suffering of people, and outraged at the increasingly unjust and intolerable laws of the country, in 1944, he, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo formed the ANC Youth League, and within a few years, Mandela became its president. Fired with determination, he completed his law degree through UNISA, and with Tambo set up South Africa's first black law firm. Thus began the dangerous and dedicated life of fulltime struggle against apartheid. Mandela involved himself wholeheartedly in leading a non?violent campaign of civil disobedience, helping to organise strikes, protest marches and demonstrations, encouraging people to defy discriminatory laws.
Inevitably, as oppressed people’s rage increased and repression also increased, Mandela was arrested for the first time in 1952, and experienced the other side of the dock, no longer an attorney, but now the accused. He was acquitted, but further harassment, arrests and detention followed, culminating in the infamous Treason Trial in 1958. A full four years after the trial began, Mandela gave his impassioned and articulate testimony, was found not guilty and discharged.
Until this time he had somehow managed to maintain his legal practice, but after the trial, with heightened repression and the banning of the ANC, armed struggle was embraced. Thus it was that he sacrificed his personal family life and his legal practice and took up armed struggle. He went abroad for military training, and on his return he formed the ANC's military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, taking on life as a hunted fugitive, constantly on the move, sometimes disguised as a chauffeur, sometimes as a labourer, evading his enemies so successfully that he earned the title ‘The Black Pimpernel.
In 1962 Mandela was arrested for treason again, and sentenced to five years in prison. He made it quite clear that he was guilty of no crime, but had been made a criminal by the law, not because of what he had done but because of what he believed in. While serving this sentence, he was again charged with sabotage, and the Rivonia trial began. His eloquent and stirring address, lasting 4 hours, ended with his famous words: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony ... It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs be it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die”.
In 1964 Nelson Mandela was convicted of sabotage and treason and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Islad. There, on a grim, overcast day with the cold winter wind whipping through him, he was met by tense armed guards, ordered to strip naked while standing outside the old stone jail, and to put on the plain khaki uniform of the maximum security prison. Apartheid's regulations extended even to clothing: in order to remind the black prisoners that they were "boys", they received short trousers, a thin jersey, a canvas jacket and shoes without socks.
At 46 years of age, he first entered the small cramped cell in Section B that was to be his home for many years. It had one small barred window, and a thick wooden door covered by a barred metal grille. He could walk the length of the cell in three paces and when he lay down, he could feel the wall with his feet and his head touched the concrete at the other side. The cell was perpetually damp, with a small pool of water forming on the cold floor most nights, which, the guards told him, his body would absorb.
Robben Island was without question the harshest, most iron?fisted outpost in the South African apartheid penal system. Permitted to write and receive only one letter and one visitor every six months, prisoners were isolated in a private hell. They were given hard labour to fill their days, crushing wheelbarrow loads of stones into gravel with large four?pound hammers, and later slaving in the heat of the nearby lime quarry, blindingly white in the sun. No talking was allowed, and whistling was a punishable offence. Life was irredeemably grim, and a new and different fight began, a fight to improve the appallingly unjust and inhumane prison conditions.
Despite over two decades in jail, in 1985 Mandela refused an offer of release from PW Botha. He wrote: ‘I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom…I am not less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell my birthright, nor am I prepared to sell the birthright of the people to be free….Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts. I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated. I will return.’
With great mass resistance within South Africa and the international isolation of South Africa, in 1990 the apartheid government unbanned the ANC and other banned political organisations, permitted exiles to return and freed political prisoners, including Mandela. Nobody had seen him or his photograph for 27 years, and the sight of this tall, slim, distinguished man overwhelmed the great crowd who came to greet him.
At his first public on the Grand Parade in Cape Town on 11 February 1990, after 27 years of imprisonment, Mandela He greeted the large crowd ‘in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all’. He stood before the crowd ‘not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of the people’. He stated that ‘your sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.’
Madiba concluded his speech with a compelling vision: ‘Universal suffrage on a common voters' roll in a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa is the only way to peace and racial harmony…I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.’
On becoming president in 1994, Madiba commented: ‘We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom. We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world.’
Madiba called on us: ‘Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfil themselves.’
He urged that ‘Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. Let freedom reign.’
In Long Walk to Freedom Tatomkhulu Mandela wrote: ‘The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning’. He added that ‘I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended’.
Madiba has commented that ‘there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children’. Considering the number of child-headed homes as a consequence of AIDS-related death, the extent of abuse of children in our society, the lack of adequate nutrition, security and housing and the grave shortcomings of schools for the poor, our South African soul is greatly in need of healing.
Lack of leadership and poor public services undermine the dignity of the poor, retard the educational development of millions of children and youth, thwart the realization of constitutionally goals and violate human and social rights. Our schools cry out for courageous and effective educational leadership from state departments and school heads.
Madiba writes that ‘there were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.’ Instead, we must remain optimistic, keep our ‘head pointed toward the sun, (our) feet moving forward.’
We can only draw inspiration from Madiba, who provided selfless leadership and paved the path to our democracy. He believed, as Emeritus Distinguished Professor Paul Maylam has noted, in the ‘innate worth and dignity of all human beings’. He had ‘an unwavering commitment to democracy and human rights,’ and was possessed of a ‘generosity of spirit,’ an ‘egalitarian spirit,’ and ‘a sense of obligation to further the common good’.
He had the courage to challenge the status quo and the passion to pursue change; was committed to service and knew that leading meant doing what was right rather than what might be popular among followers. A humble, down to earth man, but fallible. As he said: ‘I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying’.
Our greatest tribute to Madiba will be to ‘act together as a united people…for the birth of a new world’; to ensure ‘justice for all’; ‘peace for all’; ‘work, bread, water and salt for all’. Realising Madiba’s urging for us to ‘live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others’ should be our enduring monument to him, our most famous and outstanding alumnus.
The University expresses its deepest condolences to our alumnus Dr Graca Machel and the children, extended family and comrades of Tatomkulu Mandela.
The University and South African flags at Rhodes will fly at half-mast until after Madiba is laid to rest.
Hamba kakuhle Dlomo, Sopitsho, Ngqolomsila, ugqatso lwakho ulifezile (Go well Madiba, you have done your bit).
The University will enable staff members to take time off for mourning and commemoration of Mandela’s life. Some of the plans that have been agreed between the University administration, Deans, the SRC, and unions are:
- Staff members who wish to go home today will be allowed to do so. No leave will be deducted.
- Any public holidays for mourning and commemoration that are declared will be observed as University holidays.
- Staff may apply for leave in advance for the day of the funeral.
- Other days of leave will be at the discretion of line managers, with up to a maximum of 2 days subject to operational demands and recognising that departments/divisions/units will still need to be operational.
- Staff members will be invited to gather at the front of the Administration Building (Clock Tower) at 10.45 to be addressed by the Vice-Chancellor and other university staff.
- A Memorial service will be held to officially mourn the passing of former President Mandela.
- An official delegation will represent the University at the state funeral.
Photo: By Sophie Smith