When Nelson Mandela walked out of his final prison, after ~10,000 days in captivity, the first thing he wanted to do was thank and greet the prison staff who guarded him.
Why?
Three things come to (my) mind:
1) Simple publicity stunt
2) His last prison (Victor Verster) was waaayyyyyy better than Robben Island, and he was just grateful
3) His time in prison convinced him that he wasn’t just a black freedom fighter, but a freedom fighter for all South Africans.
Perhaps obviously, the reason I’m writing about this today is that I think it’s the third one.
I just read Mandela’s autobiography (Long Walk to Freedom), looking for insights into conflict transformation and global community.
In a way, his battle to end apartheid prefigured much of the conflict we see in the 1st world today:
vast groups of people
linked by democratic governance
who don’t agree and can’t relate
When I look at large modern democracies, I see Unintentional Community.
If I were a black liberationist in apartheid South Africa, where I had no power, no rights, and 80% of the population, my main question would be:
“What do we do with the white people when we win?”
The different ethnic communities in South Africa — Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Afrikaner, Indian, Multiracial — were thrown together by colonial fiat and historical accident.
Nobody really wanted to live together.
As Mandela’s political consciousness slowly grew, he realized that his liberation was bound up in the liberation of others. First other Xhosas, then other South African blacks, then African blacks more generally.
Finally, he realized that the goal of liberation could never be a genocide or mass exodus of the Afrikaner population, but integration and reconciliation.
From my read, he learned this in prison through the actions of his jailers.
Some were barbaric, a few were sympathetic, and most were just doing their jobs for a system of oppression.
In his own words:
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards.”
That realization led Mandela to a sense of being inextricably connected to his oppressors.
They were bound together by history
Escaping the relationships was impossible.
They could only reconstruct their relationship together.
Once again, in Mandela’s words:
“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.”
Do you ever feel that?
I just imagine this balloon inflating, the balloon of the Self slowly expanding… transcending my body, my room, my house, my garden, my friends, my enemies, my ball-point pens, my town, my nation, my bioregion, my planet…growing bigger and bigger and more and more translucent.
To me, that expanding balloon explains Mandela’s insistence on thanking his captors and dedicating himself to reducing tensions and strengthening racial harmony.
Not an easy experience to have. Mediation retreats help out. So do well-organized psychedelic trips. And 10,000 days in an apartheid jail, apparently.
Everybody has their own way.
Ankur Shah Delight: Community and Conflict 