MY ROAD TRIP WITH NELSON MANDELA

---

---

MY ROAD TRIP WITH
NELSON MANDELA

Nelson Mandela’s book “Long Walk To Freedom” is not stunning prose. It doesn’t really need to be. The fact that Mr. Mandela tells his story so simply, in such an unadorned style, somehow makes his accomplishments, and South Africa’s, even more remarkable. If an adventurer writes, “I dove off the boat into the gathering school of sharks,” he need not describe the opalescent quality of the water.

After you read “Long Walk To Freedom,”, then try to imagine Mr. Mandela telling you his story personally, while driving with him through the stunning South African countryside. You pass black South Africans walking on the side of the highway, hiking perhaps twenty kilometers to a medical clinic. You pass decrepit shacks, mansions, snake through deep sandstone gorges, and over mountain passes where clouds drape the silver peaks like smoky shawls. You motor through ostrich farms, and past waves exploding in enormous balls of foam against black submerged rocks.

Imagine doing this, as I did, with five of your best friends, Americans of the Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On” generation, while Mr. Mandela tells you all about his incredible journey, about the journey of modern South Africa itself. He was held for 27 years as a political prisoner, tortured, yet somehow he emerged free of hatred. What’s going on? Indeed.

“…we would fetch our picks, shovels, hammers and wheelbarrows from a zinc shed at the top of the quarry. Then we would assemble along the quarry face, usually in groups of threes or four. Warders with automatic weapons stood on raised platforms watching us. Unarmed warders walked among us, urging us to work harder. ‘Gaan aan! Gaan aan!’ (‘Go on! Go on!’), they would shout, as if we were oxen.”

The questions of my friends (“The ‘Fleetian Five”) regarding the complexities of this country multiply in direct proportion to the audible gasps we make at every turn in the road. They often pose them to me, as if my five-month residence in South Africa qualifies me as any kind of expert.

It does not.

So we carefully debate the possibilities while motoring on in a suspended state of wonder and awe.

Occasionally we let Mr. Mandela rest his voice while Vusi Mahlasela sings “Pata Pata” for us. Or we attempt to answer our questions based on our limited knowledge of this fascinating and magnificent country. But the fact is we are like astronauts circling a planet and guessing at its makeup from a distance. When we land we step onto the sand like Neil Armstrong.

“One small step for Wellfleet. One giant step for Cape Cod.”

In Buffalo Bay, while Johan the Great braais (barbecues) lamb chops and boerwoers (farm sausage), we drink Black Labels and listen to a version of South African history from Johan the Small. The Johans are two Afrikaaner young men, descendants of the Dutch farmers who pushed east from Cape Town across South Africa to escape the capitalist stranglehold of the Dutch East India Company, and to search for the openness and freedom that the vast expanse of this country provides. However, this land was not unoccupied, and soon the Afrikaaners met the Xhosa, the black South Africans of the “Eastern Cape,” the tribe to which Nelson Mandela belongs. We hear what we also hear often in the United States - truth wrapped in sweeping generalizations. Here it includes an implication that all black South Africans need a white father figure, or that all coulored South Africans (mixed race) drink too much to make them dependable workers. The “truth” is that perhaps most of South African blacks are indeed under-educated and currently unprepared. The sweeping generalization is that they are innately childlike and not intelligent. The “why” that struts below all of Johan’s discussion is painfully absent. The fear that white South Africans feel now about black dominance, and potential white disenfranchisement, is patently present. Democracy is newborn in South Africa, like a mottled baby, and we tell him that we all feel amazed and honored to be here. It leaves a questioned look in his eyes.

Lest we throw stones, we remind Johan (and ourselves) that the United States endured a savage Civil War over these things, and despite the Emancipation Proclamation and Civil Rights Act, the playing field is anything but level.

Johan the Great, who owns the Buffalo Bay Backpackers, lifts the meat from the grill. The beer and wine flow. The place sits right on the beach with the Indian Ocean stretching southward. The dunes march in the door. Stars shine like nothing I have ever seen before. The Milky Way is splashed across the sky above us and sparkles as loudly as an Elvis Presley sequined pantsuit. A couple from England, beginning a year long trek around the world, are starting a cooking fire outside. A dreadlocked Israeli couple smoke next to the pool table. A few tents are scattered on the sand. Reggae music is in the air.

The following morning we leave, driving through pine forest that pushes against the sea. It’s both idyllic and over developed, and we slip in and out of these two juxtaposed worlds while Mr. Mandela speaks soothingly to us.

“From an early age, I spent most of my free time in the veld playing and fighting with the other boys of the village. A boy who remained at home tied to his mother's apron strings was regarded as a sissy. At night, I shared my food and blanket with these same boys. I was no more than five when I became a herd-boy, looking after sheep and calves in the fields. I discovered the almost mystical attachment that the Xhosa have for cattle, not only as a source of food and wealth, but as a blessing from God and a source of happiness. It was in the fields that I learned how to knock birds out of the sky with a slingshot, to gather wild honey and fruits and edible roots, to drink warm, sweet milk straight from the udder of a cow, to swim in the clear, cold streams, and to catch fish with twine and sharpened bits of wire. I learned to stick-fight--essential knowledge to any rural African boy--and became adept at its various techniques, parrying blows, feinting in one direction and striking in another, breaking away from an opponent with quick footwork. From these days I date my love of the veld, of open spaces, the simple beauties of nature, the clean line of the horizon.”

In the late afternoon we arrive at Storms River Mouth, an encampment of beautiful chocolate colored log cabins managed by the South African National Park Service. They are set along a narrow cusp of land between the ocean and the mountains. Move them south fifty meters and they would float away. Lift them north fifty meters and they would tumble down the hills. We occupy three of these cabins - one for sunset cocktails, one for dinner, and the third for morning coffee.

As required by South African law, we prepare to braai lamb and sausages. All around us, in the adjoining and nearby cabins, the fires are lit and flames are dancing skyward. We are using charcoal, an accepted but less preferred method. Wood is really the only authentic way to sear your sausage. The use of a gas grill in South Africa is grounds for deportation. We drink Pinotage and Cabernet, and soon the puns spill forth with painful fluidity.

“Braai me to the moon and let me…”

“If at first you don’t succeed, braai, braai again.”

“In braai we trust.”

The following day we walk the first short leg of the Otter Trail here in Tsitsikamma National Park, to a magnificent waterfall. The trail hugs the coast, and is the beginning of a 42 km hut-to-hut hike to Nature’s Valley. On paper it’s only 3 km one way to the falls, where day hikers must turn around, but the trail crosses long boulder-strewn stretches of “beach” that involve hopping from one perch to the next more. It is described as “Difficult” at the Trail Head. We doubt that at the beginning, but underscore it at the end. We pass one cove where a twenty-foot wave is rolling in, arched and foaming, onto the jagged rocks. At a deep cave a black African tour guide sits outside waiting for his charge. He won’t go in himself, lest he disturb the ancestors.

At the falls, tea colored water spills out from the forest a few hundred feet above us, cascading over terraced rock. In the lagoon below we swim up to the face of the dark polished stone while the blue ocean foams behind us. A braaithtaking experience. Another “cuspy” place where worlds intermingle, like the edge of our familiar home in Wellfleet where dunes and woods meet. We lounge on the shadow-less rocks for a short while until the South African sun forces us to retreat and hop home. Another braai awaits.

The following day we pile in the van and drive off inland. Our road, Route 62, is a rugged, lightly traveled, two-lane ribbon that cuts through the semi desert and spectacular land known as the Klein Karoo (Little Karoo). We are now in the region known as the “Eastern Cape,” somewhat west of Mr. Mandela’s birthplace. The land lifts and falls like a gentle wave, while larger mountains, jacked up billions of years ago by tectonic forces, wall us in at times. Mr. Mandela talks to us as the clouds spill over the tops of the peaks to the north.

“It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.
“When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. 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.
“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But 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.”

It the town of Oudtshoorn we stop briefly so that E.G. can ride an ostrich. She and E.L. hold the photographic evidence. It exists. I have seen it. We buy feather dusters and ostrich eggs. We eat ostrich burgers. In an odd ceremony we are officially ordained tourists by a group of these long-necked bug-eyed ambassadors. Again, the evidence exists.

Just west of the town of Calitzdorp we turn off Route 62 onto a gravel road that winds and descends for 9 kilometers into the old Afrikaaner village of Matjiesvlei (pronounced - Mat-keys-fly). Here we inhabit an old farmhouse built in 1860 by our host’s great-great grandfather. The Afrikaaner settlers followed the Gamka River into this deep fold in the mountains and still farm the ground, although the vibrancy of the original settlement has somewhat diminished. The old schoolhouse is now a guesthouse. The post office is defunct. But Selma Nel and her husband Benny still operate a dairy farm here.

Selma, all six-foot-six of her, greets us in her white gumboots, and shows us around the old homestead. She sparks up the “donkey” wood fired water heater and lights the kerosene lamps. Selma, we discover, also teaches in the rural “coloured’ elementary school nearby. She manages 43 youngsters in her class and tells the familiar story of scholastic poverty and need.

We braai marinated meat bought in Oudtshoorn. Ostrich, pork and lamb. We do it the “real” way, on wood, in the braai that is beautifully set into a wall in the farmhouse’s kitchen. What else has been cooked in this kitchen in the past 150 years? What has been discussed within these walls? The house whispers its secrets as we sip wine and laugh ‘til we cry.

In the morning we somehow find ourselves in the yard of a neighbor while a pig is being butchered. Language is a barrier, but not much else. We discover that Selma drives these kids to school each day. The “butcher,” who oversees the project, receives the head and the entrails for his services. They are all summarily dumped into a bucket so he may tote them home.

We leave Selma’s keys under a rock and drive out of Matjiesvlei to rejoin Route 62. We turn west towards Cape Town.
Mr. Mandela now tells us about his last day in prison and his own drive to Cape Town to address the country after his release. Before he leaves the prison he asks to meet all the warders and their families to thank them. Thank them!

He drives into Cape Town a free man after 27 years of imprisonment and speaks to all South Africans. My hair stands on end.

“Friends, comrades and fellow South Africans.
“I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all.
“I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.
“On this day of my release, I extend my sincere and warmest gratitude to the millions of my compatriots and those in every corner of the globe who have campaigned tirelessly for my release.
“I send special greetings to the people of Cape Town, this city which has been my home for three decades. Your mass marches and other forms of struggle have served as a constant source of strength to all political prisoners.
“I salute the African National Congress. It has fulfilled our every expectation in its role as leader of the great march to freedom.
“I salute our President, Comrade Oliver Tambo, for leading the ANC even under the most difficult circumstances.
“I salute the rank and file members of the ANC. You have sacrificed life and limb in the pursuit of the noble cause of our struggle.
“I salute combatants of Umkhonto we Sizwe, like Solomon Mahlangu and Ashley Kriel who have paid the ultimate price for the freedom of all South Africans.
“I salute the South African Communist Party for its sterling contribution to the struggle for democracy. You have survived 40 years of unrelenting persecution. The memory of great communists like Moses Kotane, Yusuf Dadoo, Bram Fischer and Moses Mabhida will be cherished for generations to come.
“I salute General Secretary Joe Slovo, one of our finest patriots. We are heartened by the fact that the alliance between ourselves and the Party remains as strong as it always was.
“I salute the United Democratic Front, the National Education Crisis Committee, the South African Youth Congress, the Transvaal and Natal Indian Congresses and COSATU and the many other formations of the Mass Democratic Movement.
“I also salute the Black Sash and the National Union of South African Students. We note with pride that you have acted as the conscience of white South Africa. Even during the darkest days in the history of our struggle you held the flag of liberty high. The large-scale mass mobilisation of the past few years is one of the key factors which led to the opening of the final chapter of our struggle.
“I extend my greetings to the working class of our country. Your organised strength is the pride of our movement. You remain the most dependable force in the struggle to end exploitation and oppression.
“I pay tribute to the many religious communities who carried the campaign for justice forward when the organisations for our people were silenced.
“I greet the traditional leaders of our country - many of you continue to walk in the footsteps of great heroes like Hintsa and Sekhukune.
“I pay tribute to the endless heroism of youth, you, the young lions. You, the young lions, have energised our entire struggle.
“I pay tribute to the mothers and wives and sisters of our nation. You are the rock-hard foundation of our struggle. Apartheid has inflicted more pain on you than on anyone else.
“On this occasion, we thank the world community for their great contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. Without your support our struggle would not have reached this advanced stage. The sacrifice of the frontline states will be remembered by South Africans forever.
“My salutations would be incomplete without expressing my deep appreciation for the strength given to me during my long and lonely years in prison by my beloved wife and family. I am convinced that your pain and suffering was far greater than my own.
“Before I go any further I wish to make the point that I intend making only a few preliminary comments at this stage. I will make a more complete statement only after I have had the opportunity to consult with my comrades.
“Today the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognise that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaign of defiance and other actions of our organisation and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy. The destruction caused by apartheid on our sub-continent is in- calculable. The fabric of family life of millions of my people has been shattered. Millions are homeless and unemployed. Our economy lies in ruins and our people are embroiled in political strife. Our resort to the armed struggle in 1960 with the formation of the military wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe, was a purely defensive action against the violence of apartheid. The factors which necessitated the armed struggle still exist today. We have no option but to continue. We express the hope that a climate conducive to a negotiated settlement will be created soon so that there may no longer be the need for the armed struggle.
“I am a loyal and disciplined member of the African National Congress. I am therefore in full agreement with all of its objectives, strategies and tactics.
“The need to unite the people of our country is as important a task now as it always has been. No individual leader is able to take on this enormous task on his own. It is our task as leaders to place our views before our organisation and to allow the democratic structures to decide. On the question of democratic practice, I feel duty bound to make the point that a leader of the movement is a person who has been democratically elected at a national conference. This is a principle which must be upheld without any exceptions.
“Today, I wish to report to you that my talks with the government have been aimed at normalising the political situation in the country. We have not as yet begun discussing the basic demands of the struggle. I wish to stress that I myself have at no time entered into negotiations about the future of our country except to insist on a meeting between the ANC and the government.
“Mr. De Klerk has gone further than any other Nationalist president in taking real steps to normalise the situation. However, there are further steps as outlined in the Harare Declaration that have to be met before negotiations on the basic demands of our people can begin. I reiterate our call for, inter alia, the immediate ending of the State of Emergency and the freeing of all, and not only some, political prisoners. Only such a normalised situation, which allows for free political activity, can allow us to consult our people in order to obtain a mandate.
“The people need to be consulted on who will negotiate and on the content of such negotiations. Negotiations cannot take place above the heads or behind the backs of our people. It is our belief that the future of our country can only be determined by a body which is democratically elected on a non-racial basis. Negotiations on the dismantling of apartheid will have to address the over- whelming demand of our people for a democratic, non-racial and unitary South Africa. There must be an end to white monopoly on political power and a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed and our society thoroughly democratised.
“It must be added that Mr. De Klerk himself is a man of integrity who is acutely aware of the dangers of a public figure not honouring his undertakings. But as an organisation we base our policy and strategy on the harsh reality we are faced with. And this reality is that we are still suffering under the policy of the Nationalist government.
“Our struggle has reached a decisive moment. We call on our people to seize this moment so that the process towards democracy is rapid and uninterrupted. We have waited too long for our freedom. We can no longer wait. Now is the time to intensify the struggle on all fronts. To relax our efforts now would be a mistake which generations to come will not be able to forgive. “The sight of freedom looming on the horizon should encourage us to redouble our efforts.
“It is only through disciplined mass action that our victory can be assured. We call on our white compatriots to join us in the shaping of a new South Africa. The freedom movement is a political home for you too. We call on the international community to continue the campaign to isolate the apartheid regime. To lift sanctions now would be to run the risk of aborting the process towards the complete eradication of apartheid.
“Our march to freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way. Universal suffrage on a common voters' role in a united democratic and non-racial South Africa is the only way to peace and racial harmony.
“In conclusion I wish to quote my own words during my trial in 1964. They are true today as they were then:
“’I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.’”

We drive on in silence.

** “Long Walk To Freedom” is read by Danny Glover

---

Photos

MR. MANDELA
Public domaine photo