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This research aims to explore the concept of resistance against the apartheid regime in South Africa. The theoretical framework of the research concentrates on Edward Said's theory of cultural imperialism and his perspectives on resistance during colonialism, then it negotiates the culture of resistance according to the mentality of the South African citizens, especially the black majority. The theory is derived from the tough practices of the imperial powers that invaded South Africa for decades. Accordingly, the movement of resistance in this country during the apartheid system was established by the freedom claim of pioneer fighters who took upon themselves to start the resistance movement. The research also focuses on the heroic role Nelson Mandela and his remarkable effort to regain South African dignity and put an end to colonial oppression. The research further discusses the impact of resistance on Peter Horn's poetry, and how he manages to portray the crisis with its possible solution and the way out of the maze of colonialism and subjugation. Unlike many South African poets who reflected the dilemma of the apartheid regime, Horn was the one who declared many solutions to put an end to the harsh policies implemented by the South African governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on original archival research and oral history interviews, this article examines how the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) adapted to the evolving circumstances during South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy between 1990 and 1994. It argues that the successful framing and impact of the Free Nelson Mandela Campaign (FNMC) of the 1980s, inadvertently created a series of challenges for the AAM in the years after Mandela's release from prison in February 1990, as many in Britain came to associate this moment with the end of apartheid. The pervasive sense that apartheid was over, coupled with the complexity, uncertainty and violence of South Africa's political transition, created a difficult campaigning environment for the AAM, who found it hard to maintain the momentum generated through the FNMC. Despite encountering numerous (trans)national and local challenges which inhibited its impact after 1990, this article concludes that the AAM's persistent campaigning presence allowed it to capitalise following renewed British interest in South Africa following the announcement in June 1993 of a date for the first non-racial democratic election. This enabled the AAM to make a tangible contribution, primarily through fundraising, to the African National Congress' successful election victory in May 1994. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to give voice to freedom fighters who died during the struggle for independence in Africa. Due to their untimely deaths, they could not self-narrate their encounters with colonial subjectivity. Taking cues from Patrice Lumumba and Steve Biko, it argues that the unlikely documents of these nationalists can be (re)constructed as autobiographies by reawakening their muted self and deploying them as anti-memory to de-centre colonial grand narratives. Through Howarth's autobiographical elements, Ngugi's history typologies, and postcolonial autobiography, the article contends that the absence of autobiographies of some African nationalists creates gaps in anti-colonial historical memory and African freedom fighting literature. It affirms the significance of updating the colonial archive, considering the exclusion of overriding historical contingencies from its memory. The article also asserts the importance of constructing self-narratives for African social activists and using the narratives as countervailing texts against dominant univocal narratives in colonial archival memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africans are very quick to accuse one another of having been very bad in the past. Afrikaners are accused of severe race discrimination in the form of apartheid. They are portrayed as uniquely evil, almost as bad as the Nazi’s in the Second World War. At the same time, especially the ANC/SACP is accused of severe transgressions, such as terrorism in the name of a freedom struggle, support for a totalitarian system in the form of Marxism-Leninism, and extreme intolerance of deviant viewpoints in the liberation movement. It would be wrong to view the matter in a simplified way, as the problem of historical guilt is a complex one. In this article, the problem is, firstly, examined from an ethical perspective. Apartheid must be recognised as – when viewed from a Christian viewpoint – immoral and wrong. The policy is examined in detail, with the conclusion that, while there were fleeting moments in which things could have developed more positively, these moments were still-born. Subsequently, the accusation that apartheid was akin to Nazism is examined. It is concluded that, while there were superficial similarities, the differences were too deep, in principle, to be taken seriously. Another aspect that should be seriously considered is why the Afrikaners actually acted in a particular way. Without defending what they had done, it is clear that they, in their own minds, were convinced that the very survival of Afrikaners as a people was at stake amidst threatening historical circumstances exemplified by the political, cultural and economic onslaught of British imperialism, as well as the looming shadow of a vastly superior majority of black people. Lastly, there is the question as to whether the ANC/SACP also has historical guilt to carry. In the light of the way in which the very Kremlin-loyal SACP during the years took over the leadership of the alliance, the answer must be yes. The alliance wanted to replace apartheid with Communism, a policy which has as severe ethical problems as may be ascribed to apartheid. Also, the alliance handled dissenters in an extremely intolerant way by locking them up in concentration camps, where they were treated very cruelly. It is hoped that a nuanced treatise like this could promote a public debate in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Congress movement in South Africa was transformed in the early 1960s from a movement committed to the exclusive use of non-violent means in the struggle against apartheid to one focused on rural guerrilla warfare as a free-standing and sufficient first step towards 'all-out war' and the armed seizure of power. But few, if any, of the participants in the Congress movement's deliberations in 1960–61 on whether to 'turn to violence' had believed that this was the strategy that they were endorsing when they authorised the abandonment of exclusive reliance on non-violence. The choice facing the Congress movement after 1960 was not between mutually exclusive alternatives of 'non-violence' on the one hand and 'violence' or 'armed struggle' on the other. Rather, Congress leaders contemplated a range of different forms of violent action and considered their relationship to various forms of non-violent activity and to the kind of transition from apartheid that these actions could and should be intended to produce. This article analyses the range of strategic options that were canvassed within the Congress leadership in the early 1960s and the decision-making process by which those options were gradually narrowed. That process was shaped by ambiguity, unilateral action, unintended consequences and state repression, with the result that the Congress movement's 'turn to violence' ultimately took a form that few Congress leaders had initially desired or anticipated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although political apartheid in South Africa ended in 1993, racial and economic inequity persisted. The end of White minority rule in government prompted the birth of the multicultural/non-racial “Rainbow Nation,” promising freedom and equality for all South Africans. However, the shift in political representation to Black majority rule in 1994—led by the African National Congress (ANC) and former president Nelson Mandela—failed to confront and reverse the vast inequities produced by the former apartheid state. This paper contextualizes the current state of affairs by tracing the histories of occupation and racial capitalism in colonial South Africa.

Bram Fischer was born in 1908 in South Africa to an eminent Afrikaner nationalist family. Like his father and grandfather before him, Bram became a lawyer and seemed destined for eminence as a future Prime Minister or Chief Justice. His path, however, took a different turn. Emerging from the nationalism of his family, he took up a Rhodes Scholarship in the early 1930s, travelling on the Continent and witnessing the rise of Hitler; he also travelled to the Soviet Union. Some time after his return to South Africa, he joined the Communist Party. Thereafter, his life was synonymous with the struggle against apartheid as he worked on key political trials and collaborated closely with leading figures in the liberation movement. In 1964 he led the defence of Nelson Mandela and the other accused at the Rivonia Trial. Then, after a series of dramatic developments in which he went underground in disguise, he was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment. Ultimately, he died of cancer as a prisoner in 1975. Fischer's is a story of commitment, suffering and heroism, and it is why we remember him today. Yet it may seem as if his time and place were very different from ours. Many of the things he believed in have crumbled; some of the things he fought against have sadly endured. Ours is an era of displacement, of refugees, of authoritarianism, populism, climate change. Still, Fischer's life serves as a template for us now, not only in a South African context but in the global arena. His underlying codes regarding identity and responsibility, dwelling and home, refuge and hospitality are central to our life on the planet. This is the relevance of Bram Fischer in our times. What follows is the text of the Bram Fischer Memorial Lecture, presented at the University of Oxford, 24 October 2019. The lecture was dedicated to the memory of Arthur Chaskalson and Lorraine Chaskalson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land redistribution in post-apartheid South Africa is a problem that has caused division and violence in the country. Particularly, the dispossession of land suffered by many Africans in South Africa and the failure of land redistribution programmes has led to a variety of protests. In this article, we analyse whether, in light of Nelson Mandela's thought, these protests are morally justified. The point is not to contend that Mandela's thought is correct. Instead, it is to understand what the implications of Mandela's ideas are for the land question in South Africa today. According to Mandela's political thought, we maintain that some forms of protest could be morally justified even if they involve property violation and symbolic destruction. However, excessively violent and radical protests would not be considered legitimate. The more violent and radical protests violate Mandela's principles of a gradual increase of violence and of preserving future-friendly race relations. In contrast, some of the property violation and symbolic destruction protests do not disregard these principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the period when the ANC operative Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, there were not only verbal calls from other countries for the release of the world's best-known political prisoner; at the very latest since Mikhail Gorbatchev proposed an end to the Cold War in the Soviet Union, there was at least one definite and direct attempt to release him. One of the conceptionally most advanced plans was that of the East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel. Having been appointed by the GDR's head of state, Erich Honecker, as Personal Representative for Humanitarian Affairs, he had already arbitrated the exchange of roughly 150 captured spies from 23 countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain; he had also organised the release of tens of thousands of prisoners. The plan was to exchange Nelson Mandela for the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, or to include him in a large-scale international exchange of political prisoners and agents. It was for this reason that Wolfgang Vogel visited South Africa in March 1986, one of only a few GDR citizens to do so, to effect the release of Mandela – and failed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the period when the ANC operative Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, there were not only verbal calls from other countries for the release of the world's best-known political prisoner; at the very latest since Mikhail Gorbatchev proposed an end to the Cold War in the Soviet Union, there was at least one definite and direct attempt to release him. One of the conceptionally most advanced plans was that of the East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel. Having been appointed by the GDR's head of state, Erich Honecker, as Personal Representative for Humanitarian Affairs, he had already arbitrated the exchange of roughly 150 captured spies from 23 countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain; he had also organised the release of tens of thousands of prisoners. The plan was to exchange Nelson Mandela for the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, or to include him in a large-scale international exchange of political prisoners and agents. It was for this reason that Wolfgang Vogel visited South Africa in March 1986, one of only a few GDR citizens to do so, to effect the release of Mandela – and failed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1986, the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. This article considers the role of the Nobel Prize in the construction, promotion and cementing of literary celebrity, addressing the ways in which the prize augments Soyinka's literary and political renown, already substantial at the time of the award. The article takes as its focus Soyinka's Nobel Prize lecture and his decision to leverage the global platform afforded him to highlight the struggle against apartheid. The lecture is structured around a refusal to concede the exceptionalism of the South African state, and around a framing of apartheid as a pan-African catastrophe. In the Nobel Prize lecture, Soyinka levels a comprehensive accusation against European racism which he conceives as directly implicated in the ideological underpinning of apartheid policies. Dedicating the address to Mandela and taking his life as a paradigm, Soyinka uses his own presence in Stockholm as a subversive supplement to Mandela's absence and addresses the crimes of apartheid both within their particular temporal and geographical context and as a means to expose the global scourge of racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1963–64 trial of Nelson Mandela and other leading members of the liberation movement was a political trial par excellence. In the courtroom, the Apartheid government was trying the accused for the crime of sabotage but in the court of public opinion, it was using the event of the trial to produce images and ideas aimed at slandering and discrediting the African National Congress (ANC) and the movement for a free and democratic South Africa. The defendants, on their part, used their trial to denounce the racist policies of Apartheid and to outline their vision of a post-Apartheid society. In this article, I want to read Nelson Mandela's counter-historical mobilization of lived experiences and memories of Africans – the scars, chains, the rage and Apartheid's unlivable juridical bind – as an act of epistemic resistance that re-opened epistemic battles and effected epistemic renegotiations. By submitting himself to the very law he denounces, strategically positioning himself at law's aporetic sites and moments – those most fragile frontiers that are so heavily policed from transformative interventions – he bears witness to Apartheid's rotten foundation. Drawing on modes of critique that are performative and genealogical, those that are possible within law's frameworks and categories, Mandela both obeys and defies the law, uses and critiques it, resists and claims authority, at the very site he is called to account for charges of sabotage. The article will show, how, by attending to contradictions, discursive dynamics, and points of tension, Mandela the accused creates conditions of possibility for forms of critique that register without being co-opted or domesticated by the discourse and the system it resists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1952, when Nelson Mandela received his first banning order, the apartheid government attempted to remove the African National Congress leader from public life through issuing successive banning orders, censoring the publication of his words and image and finally sentencing him to life imprisonment in the maximum security prison, Robben Island. The notorious prison – a site of brutality, quarantine and resistance – was subject to the Prisons Act of 1959, which further shrouded it in secrecy. At the same time, the post-war growth of humanitarian and human rights law resulted in increasing global concern about conditions in prisons and, in turn, in the rise of activist organisations such as Southern Africa: The Imprisoned Society (SATIS), which advocated the release of apartheid's political prisoners. In order to prove that its prisons were humane, the state was pressured to allow human rights organisations and, increasingly, the media to have access. It was also pressured to permit access to Mandela, the country's most famous political prisoner. This article analyses four media visits to Mandela on the island (two in 1964, one in 1973 and one in 1977), when Mandela was interviewed and/or photographed, looking at the context that led to the authorisation of such visits, complex behind-the-scenes negotiations between journalists and the authorities, Mandela's attempted curation of his image, and the subsequent framing, publication, censorship and dissemination of information. The article argues that the state's attempts to control the discourse around Mandela and Robben Island grew increasingly less successful – particularly in overseas reports – and that Mandela's incarceration on the mysterious island contributed to his mythologisation. Even from a position of imprisonment, Mandela was careful to anticipate his reception abroad, establishing an irrefutable moral authority from the confines of his prison cell. His comments reveal his consistent appeal to western democratic sensibilities, his utilisation of human rights discourse and his careful negotiation of the issue of prison conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two trajectories of two individuals in the fight against apartheid are juxtaposed; two narratives with a diachronic relationship put in train. In both Nelson Mandela's and Ruth First's cases, the expected and self-written arcs of the individuals are disrupted by (our noticing) a neglected or written-out aspect of their lives. In both cases, the new or eclipsed information is gendered in an awkwardly askew way. They both underline the unsettled nature of their times. For Mandela, a source points to his infidelities, dissimulation, and violence in his home, as a vector strangely paralleling his increasing radicalism. For Ruth First, a long-time Communist, the evidence suggests that in the immediate aftermath of the arrests in July 1963, she briefly became the determining political authority - a white woman in charge during the death throes of the internal sabotage and guerrilla movement, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), even though she never represented herself in writing as such. The silences of these two persons about these matters intersect in a zone from which we may, perhaps, glimpse the history of the mobilisation of the ANC freshly, in three dimensions as it were, even if only fleetingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vic Alhadeff was chief sub-editor of The Cape Times, Cape Town’s daily newspaper, during the apartheid era. It was a staunchly anti-apartheid newspaper, and the government had enacted a draconian system of laws to govern and restrict what media could say. The effect was that anti-apartheid activists such as Mandela were not 'merely’ imprisoned, they were also banned, as was the African National Congress. Under the law, it was illegal to quote a banned person or organisation. This meant if there was to be an anti-apartheid rally in the city – and we reported it – it could be construed as promoting the aims of a banned organisation. As chief sub-editor, I had to navigate this minefield. In addition, most English-language newspapers were anti-apartheid and had a resident police spy on staff (one of our senior journalists); on a number of occasions I would receive a call from the Magistrate’s Office after the newspaper had gone to print at midnight, putting an injunction on a story. We would have to call back the trucks and dump the 100,000 copies of the newspaper and reprint. The challenge was to inform readers as what was happening and to speak out against apartheid – without breaking the law. South Africa had its own Watergate equivalent. The apartheid government understood that English speakers generally were anti-apartheid, so it siphoned 64 million rands from the Defence budget and set up the Information Department. The aim was to purchase media outlets overseas which would be pro-apartheid, and it set up an English-language newspaper in South Africa, to be pro-apartheid. It was called The Citizen – and I was offered a job as deputy editor at double my salary, plus an Audi. (I declined the offer, for the record). Two journalists uncovered the scandal, and brought down the Prime Minister.

Any subject dealing with the study of Autobiography brings into question the meaning or origin of the word and its definitions. The word Autobiography is derived from three Greek words: autos, bios, and graphein meaning 'self', 'life' and 'write' respectively. This style of life writing has been around for centuries and it was not classified as a literary genre until the late eighteenth century. Every autobiographical work tends to be a cry for the expression of identity and every autobiographical study yearns to understand the evolution of the individual. Anyone familiar with the life story of Nelson Mandela will know that his very name is synonymous with the word 'resilience'. Nelson Mandela spearheaded the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and emerged victorious after spending 27 years in prison. His is no ordinary story and the human soul cannot fathom how Mandela stood by his ideals and liberated his people from oppression and suppression. It seems inconceivable to maintain sanity, dignity, hope and a reason for existence under severe oppressive forces, that taxed the spirit, body and mind of political prisoners. But Mandela possessed an inner strength that could not be diminished, it shone forth brightly, enlightening this great man and ensconcing him in its powerful aura. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a critical reflection on Nelson Mandela’s changing idea of South Africa as reflected in his widely known autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. It seeks to understand how he worked towards laying down a profound post-racial humanism based on a broader inclusive South African nationalism that transcended the narrow and exclusionist racial apartheid idea of South Africa. His autobiography is intertwined inextricably with the complex and ever-changing idea of South Africa. The formation of Mandela’s political consciousness from that of a rural Thembu boy in Eastern Cape, to an urban nationalist fire-brand in Johannesburg, a prisoner of conscience at Robben Island, a pragmatist and voice of reason during the Convention for South Africa Democracy (CODESA) negotiations, and right up to his one-term presidency (1994-1999) reflects the life of an active politician and an embodiment of the contested idea of South Africa. While Mandela never stopped seeking to understand the complex aspects of the contested idea of South Africa, his idea was also influenced by instances of mass action, the influence of friends, work and political colleagues, the ANC and his experiences during the 27 years of his imprisonment. Therefore, if his life of struggle embodied the complex and ever-changing idea of South Africa, it is not surprising that his political actions are blamed as the source of the present crisis engulfing the country. However, this article posits that South Africans who remained stuck in racial adversarial politics failed Mandela in his decolonial endeavour to set afoot a new humanism. Based on a platform that radically transcended the colonial/apartheid paradigm of difference, Mandela’s vision depended on a successful metamorphosis of the erstwhile ‘white/black’ dichotomy as an essential pre-requisite for the rebirth of a new political community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1994, in his first speech to the parliament of South Africa, Nelson Mandela quoted the Afrikaner poet Ingrid Jonker and read The child who was shot dead by soldiers at Nyanga. This unorthodox choice was in fact politically fine-tuned and had an emotional impact both on the new-born Rainbow Nation and on Mandela’s stature as a 20th century-icon. A passionate reader of poetry, Mandela is one of the contemporary figures to whom the highest number of lines has ever been dedicated. Poets have celebrated him in in the forms of elegy, song, ballad, epistle, epic, ode, tribute, sonnet, rap, dub poetry, haiku and so forth. Poets started fashioning his public persona as early as the mid-Sixties when, banned and sentenced to life imprisonment, he became the world’s most famous invisible prisoner. Transformed into metaphors, blended with virtues, identified with private and collective historical events, associated with specific spaces, Mandela is above all identified with the prison where he spent eighteen years: Robben Island. In poetry, the osmotic intercourse between Mandela and Robben Island is a persistent topic with a strong symbolic function as the island catalyses issues which makes it a synecdoche of South Africa itself: a segregated place where brutality and injustice ruled but also a laboratory where resistance and hope developed. This article will examine a series of poems on Mandela and Robben Island starting from Dennis Brutus’ compositions on the subject, the first of which dates from 1963, up to post-apartheid lyrics.

This article reviews attempts by Britain and the Commonwealth to secure the release of Nelson Mandela from imprisonment in South Africa in the 1980s. It does so by drawing upon a recently published collection of documents compiled by Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as well as on interviews conducted recently for the London-based Commonwealth Oral History Project. Despite her staunch opposition to the further sanctions that the rest of the Commonwealth wished to impose on South Africa, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, is shown to have tried doggedly to persuade the South African Prime Minister, then President, P.W. Botha, to release Mandela unconditionally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article gives a personal perspective on the importance of the Commonwealth in the international campaign against apartheid, particularly in pushing for economic and financial sanctions, in the face of the truculent and sustained opposition of the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. It covers the attempt to assist a negotiated end to apartheid through the mission of the Eminent Persons Group. It also recounts Mandela’s relationship with the author after his release from prison and the phased lifting of sanctions as change in South Africa became irreversible. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author, the fourth Secretary General of the Commonwealth and a former Foreign Minister of New Zealand, reflects on his encounters with Nelson Mandela. He sums up Mandela’s relationship with the Commonwealth in three phrases borrowed from Mandela’s biographer, Anthony Sampson: ‘a master of symbolic images’; determined ‘to lead from the front’; and when emerging from gaol as an overwhelming icon presented himself ‘as a fallible human being’. The author also considers New Zealand’s attitude to apartheid South Africa, and Mandela’s Commonwealth role after apartheid when, as South Africa’s new President, he made a powerful contribution to the development of the Commonwealth as a values-based association, upholding democracy and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article draws on the author’s personal relationship with Nelson Mandela over many years. It offers insights into the author’s role in assisting the negotiations that ended apartheid and into Mandela’s relationship with the Commonwealth as a whole, both in the apartheid era and in the years after 1994 when, as South Africa’s President, Mandela played a leading role in Commonwealth affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the 1990s, decades of disinvestment caused by Bantu Education prohibited Inanda Seminary from competing equally with other previously advantaged Whites-only private and former public ‘Model C’ schools within South Africa’s new democratic dispensation. In December 1997, after decades of institutional corrosion, the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa decided to close the Seminary. Yet, the Seminary opened in January 1998 under new management composed entirely of middle-class alumnae determined to breathe new life into the school still teetering precariously. This article chronicles three years, 1999 to 2001, thereby documenting the school’s ultimate defeat over and recovery from Bantu Education. Though Inanda Seminary’s middle-class alumnae saved it from closure, its more elite graduates did not initially feature prominently in the school’s financial stabilisation. Rather, men, both serving the church and government (most notably, Nelson Mandela), intervened and provided the crucial financial and infrastructural impetus to salvage the school from the wreck of ecclesiastic decay and establish it as a Section 21 private company. The article explores if and why gender and class dynamics likely played a role in the events leading to the school’s resuscitation. Today, the Seminary is again an extraordinary pioneering school providing quality education to black South African girls.

The stability of the apartheid system and the Afrikaners’ monopoly of power have been the subject of exhaustive scholarly analyses; by contrast, there have been few in-depth analyses of the unexpected transfer of power by the National Party government between 1989 and 1994.There is a strong tendency to present the Afrikaner leadership from Hendrik Verwoerd to PW Botha as being so beholden to the apartheid ideology and so intransigent that they missed all opportunities to negotiate a more balanced political settlement. Virtually no attention has been given to the informal attempts the leadership on both sides made to initiate talks about an alternative to white supremacy. The treatment of Nelson Mandela in the literature represents almost the complete opposite to that of the NP leaders. He has been presented as strongly committed to a non- racial democracy and a market-oriented economy. A reassessment of Nelson Mandela’s career has only just begun.

This article recounts the struggle that those fighting for an end to apartheid in South Africa faced and the role that the Commonwealth played in that struggle. The author recounts the contribution of the Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke administrations in Australia in bringing down the apartheid regime but stresses that these leaders chose the Commonwealth as their primary vehicle for change. In the author’s view, the fight against apartheid was, arguably, the finest achievement of the modern Commonwealth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Amidst the violent upheavals of the end of empire and the Cold War, international organizations developed a basic framework for holding State and non-State armed groups to account for their actions when taking prisoners. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) placed itself at the very centre of these developments, making detention visiting a cornerstone of its work. Nowhere was this growing preoccupation with the problem of protecting detainees more evident than apartheid South Africa, where the ICRC undertook more detention visits than in almost any other African country. During these visits the ICRC was drawn into an internationalized human rights dispute that severely tested its leadership and demonstrated the troubled rapport between humanitarianism and human rights. The problems seen in apartheid South Africa reflect today's dilemmas of how to protect political detainees in situations of extreme violence. We can look to the past to find solutions for today's political detainees -- or "security detainees" as they are now more commonly called. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1990s, decades of disinvestment caused by Bantu Education prohibited Inanda Seminary from competing equally with other previously advantaged Whites-only private and former public 'Model C' schools within South Africa's new democratic dispensation. In December 1997, after decades of institutional corrosion, the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa decided to close the Seminary. Yet, the Seminary opened in January 1998 under new management composed entirely of middle-class alumnae determined to breathe new life into the school still teetering precariously. This article chronicles three years, 1999 to 2001, thereby documenting the school's ultimate defeat over and recovery from Bantu Education. Though Inanda Seminary's middle-class alumnae saved it from closure, its more elite graduates did not initially feature prominently in the school's financial stabilisation. Rather, men, both serving the church and government (most notably, Nelson Mandela), intervened and provided the crucial financial and infrastructural impetus to salvage the school from the wreck of ecclesiastic decay and establish it as a Section 21 private company. The article explores if and why gender and class dynamics likely played a role in the events leading to the school's resuscitation. Today, the Seminary is again an extraordinary pioneering school providing quality education to black South African girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Piet Strauss played an important part in the leadership of the Dutch Reformed Church from 1994 to 2011. This article focuses on important events and the role of the leadership of the Dutch Reformed Church which prepared the way for Strauss and his generation of leaders. It takes the acceptance of the important policy document Church and Society by the General Synod of 1986 and the Rustenburg Consultation of 1990 as points of departure. It then describes how the leadership of the church engaged with different political leaders between 1990 and 1994. By doing so, the leadership of the church, which became known for the Biblical foundation of the notorious policy of apartheid, played an important role while South Africa was on the brink of civil war. Their efforts contributed to a peaceful first democratic election in 1994. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s political life and legacy from the perspective of critical decolonial liberation ethics, which privileges a paradigm of peace, humanism and racial harmony and opposes the imperial/colonial/apartheid paradigm of war, racial hatred and separation of races. This system emerged in the 15th century and was driven by the desire to conquer, dispossess, colonise, exploit and segregate people according to race and, alongside imperatives of primitive accumulation, it informed the colonisation of South Africa and the imposition of apartheid. Mandela was a liberation fighter who provided an antidote to the colonial ideology of racial profiling and hierarchisation. What distinguished him from other freedom fighters was his commitment to the cause of human rights as early as the 1960s, long before it attained its status as a constitutive part of global normative order. When Mandela became the first black president of a democratic South Africa, his practical and symbolic overtures to whites and his reconciliatory politics aimed to call them back to a new inclusive humanity. Critical decolonial ethics logically enables a tribute to Mandela that privileges his commitment to a post-racial society and new humanism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A translation ot Jacques Derrida's "Admiration de Nelson Mandela, ou Les lois de la réflexion," first published in Pour Nelson Mandela (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), a collection of essays, fiction, and poetry conceived of and edited by Derrida and Mustapha Tlili, and later in Psyche: Inventions de l'autre, II (Paris: Galilée, 1987-2003), is given. In part a tribute to the iconic leader of the struggle against apartheid, "Admiration of Nelson Mandela" also presents a sustained analysis of Nelson Mandela's thought and practice through close readings of his speeches and writings, notably the statements that Mandela delivered in his own defense during his trial of 1962 and the Rivonia trial of 1963-64. In addition, "Admiration of Nelson Mandela" represents a significant articulation within the series of reflections that Derrida devoted throughout his career to questions of law and justice, ethics and politics, and democracy. The present translation includes a translator's introduction which situates the essay within this broader constellation of writings and elaborates a number of the problems and concepts central to Derrida's approach to legal theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper synthetizes Nelson Mandela's biography on the occasion of his 90th birthday. It retraces his formative years, his entry into politics and activism, his imprisonment by the apartheid regime, his triumphant liberation and his election as the first democratically elected president of South Africa. It shows how Mandela has been able to draw on various political traditions and Weberian types of domination. He embodied the anti-apartheid struggle, and has become a global icon.

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At the beginning of the transition from apartheid to democracy, the African National Congress (ANC) was unprepared for foreign policy discussion, a lack of readiness magnified by the collapse of international Communism and the Cold War ideology. President De Klerk and the National Party controlled foreign policy in the early years of the transition and began the process of reintegration with the international community, The ANC initially struggled to adapt to the new international situation, whereas De Klerk was successful in wooing the international community. In the later stages of transition, the ANC developed a greater sense of direction and substance in foreign relations, although there were differences of opinion among and between the leadership and the rank and file. Already in 1994 there was evidence of tension between idealism and pragmatism. Post-apartheid foreign policy under Mandela was riddled with inconsistencies, which stemmed from the events of South Africa's transition [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although histories have been written about the transnational character of the anti-apartheid solidarity movement, thus far little has been written about the black voices raised in solidarity in Europe or in Britain, arguably the centre of the international anti-apartheid movement. There is a long history of pan-African sentiment from the late nineteenth century among Africans of the diaspora settled and transient in Britain. The deteriorating racial situation in South Africa throughout the twentieth century therefore attracted the concern of black communities living in Britain. People of African descent in Britain felt the insult of apartheid most keenly because of past and contemporary manifestations of racism in Britain. This empathy was transformed into acts of solidarity and material support. Black Britons viewed the African liberation struggle in Southern Africa with more than casual detachment. There was a willingness to identify with the liberation struggle whether through supporting the ANC or the PAC. However, there were ambivalent feelings in some quarters about the former. The following article will focus on aspects of black British anti-apartheid solidarity during the nearly 45 years of apartheid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nationalist narrative that Albert Luthuli received in December 1961 the Nobel Peace Prize for his unambiguous advocacy of strict non-violent methods to fight Apartheid and the next week supported the launch of the armed struggle is historographic oxymoron. Nationalist pundits decry that the acknowledgement of such a gross contradiction ‘distances Luthuli from his movement’. Or, they confess that ‘all nascent countries adopt myth’ in the interests of nation building. Or, they simply deny the contradiction exists by introducing ‘ambiguity’. The author asserts that Luthuli held and articulated an unambiguous stance against the use of violence within the South African context during the 1950s and 1960s. The author suggests that Nelson Mandela, at best, undermined Luthuli and, at worst, committed insubordination by launching uMkhonto we Sizwe without the ANC and Luthuli's knowledge or assent. The author utilises archival evidence to resolve irreconcilable differences in nationalist historiography and seeks to restore Luthuli's agency by resisting his absorption into Mandela's ‘cult of personality’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay examines the leading role adopted by the South African governments of Nelson Mandela, abo Mbeki, and Jacob Zuma to promote R2P between 1994 and 2010. In response to the sociopolitical oppression and devastation wrought by apartheid between 1948 and 1990, South African governments since 1994 have played an activist role in developing new norms in international affairs. Describing the South African posture on R2P as one of engagement and 'quiet diplomacy', the essay notes that the country has pushed for multilateral institutions to become the major repositories of the R2P norm. Within Africa, South Africa was instrumental in negotiating the continent's shift of position on the R2P norm from one of 'non-intervention' to one of 'non-indifference'. South Africa has also sought to implement R2P through political processes and negotiations rather than through sanctions and the use of force-an engagist stance that the country adopted during its controversial two years on the UN Security Council (2007-2008), contrary to the tougher approach recommended by powerful Western members of the Security Council. Emphasis is placed on the capacity constraints with which South Africa continues to struggle, as it seeks to operationalise its position on R2P. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]