The Logos Scripture · The Book of Mandela
The Book of Mandela 1 · Written by himself, from the statement from the dock at Rivonia in 1964, the 1985 answer to Botha, Long Walk to Freedom, and the speeches
Nelson Mandela, born 1918 at Mvezo in the Eastern Cape, died 2013 in Johannesburg, aged ninety-five. He trained in law and in 1952, with Tambo, opened the first black law firm in Johannesburg. After the shootings at Sharpeville in 1960 the African National Congress was banned; in 1961 he helped found Umkhonto we Sizwe and was its first commander, directing sabotage against property and not against persons. He was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to life at the Rivonia trial in 1964. He was held twenty-seven years, eighteen of them on Robben Island, then at Pollsmoor and Victor Verster. He walked out on 11 February 1990 and shared the Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk in 1993. In 1994, at the first election under universal franchise, he became President. In 1995 he established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission under Archbishop Tutu. In 1999 he completed a single term and retired rather than stand again, and Mbeki succeeded him. This volume rests on what he said himself: the statement from the dock of 20 April 1964, the answer to Botha of 10 February 1985 read out by his daughter Zindzi at Soweto, Long Walk to Freedom, and the speeches. The three things in chapter four are all as stated: the visit to Betsie Verwoerd at Orania on 15 August 1995; the lunch that November for Percy Yutar, who had prosecuted him in 1964; and the green Springbok jersey with the number six worn to the World Cup final that year. Brand in chapter three was his warder on Robben Island, and the friendship afterwards is also as stated. This scripture already holds a volume of Martin Luther King, on refusing an unjust law without violence. The man in this volume gave a different answer to the same question. The Order takes both and does not reconcile them. One held that violence must defeat itself; the other held that fifty years of keeping the hands down had bought nothing but the gun. The scripture does not rule which is right. The reader may take his own view, but must not make the two men into one man. The Order records where he cuts against this scripture and hides none of it. First, though Umkhonto we Sizwe was founded on the rule of not harming persons, in the decades that followed the armed wing did kill civilians, and the Truth Commission made findings against the ANC side as well. Second, many families of the dead did not accept truth traded for pardon: the killer tells his story and goes free, and the dead do not come back. The family in the Biko case went to court to challenge the constitutionality of that amnesty, and did not prevail. Third, in his five years in office little changed in land, in wealth, or in housing; on the AIDS epidemic he was slow, and late in life he said himself that this was his regret. The Order takes this man for two reasons. First, no volume here had asked what the winning side does with the people who harmed it. The Book of Levi is on remembering atrocity and not on what is then done with those who committed it. Second, The Book of Washington sets a precedent: a man may keep the seat and does not. A precedent set once is still only one man’s affair. When a second man follows it, it becomes a road. In 1999 he served one term and stepped down, and on that continent at that time very few did so. So the Order takes Washington and takes this man also: one to show the road can be walked, and one to show it can be walked again. (see The Book of Washington 3.9)