Page 3691 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 October 1990
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complicated issues in the whole area. It might be appropriate if some background to Mr Mandela and his struggle for freedom is placed into the record.
Born in the Transkei, Mr Mandela was the son of an hereditary chief of the Xhosa tribe. He entered a black university but was expelled for leading a student strike. He moved to Johannesburg, worked as a guard at a gold mine, and then got a law degree by doing correspondence courses. During World War II, he and his friend Oliver Tambo joined the ANC, the African National Congress, which had been formed to seek redress of black grievances by peaceful means.
Members of the South African Communist Party took over many ANC leadership positions in the 1940s and 1950s. According to a US State Department source, at least half of the ANC's governing congress are communists. While Mandela says that he is not a communist, he has strongly allied himself with communists at home and abroad. In 1959 black members who objected to being used as pawns by Moscow broke away to form the Pan Africanist Congress, the PAC, which remains to this day a major rival of the ANC.
A year later, police opened fire on black demonstrators in Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, killing 69 persons - a day of shame. The Government banned both the ANC and the PAC. At that time, Oliver Tambo set up the ANC in exile; Mr Mandela remained behind and organised the Spear of the Nation, the ANC's military wing. After eluding police for over a year, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage and seeking to overthrow the Government with violence. That was some 27 years ago, and we know of the state of justice in South Africa at that time.
For the first 10 years of that sentence, Mr Mandela broke rocks in a limestone quarry on Robben Island, just off Cape Town. At that time he carried himself with quiet dignity. I have read that white guards took the unheard of step in those days of addressing him as "Mr Mandela", which I think is an indication of the aura of the man and the way in which he conducts himself.
Over the years, Mr Mandela has become the symbol of black aspirations. In 1989 he wrote to high government officials that the time had come to negotiate a political settlement with blacks and whites in South Africa. The idea appealed to the then State President, Mr Botha, and also to his successor, Mr de Klerk.
By that time Mr Mandela had been moved to the Victor Verster prison farm, some 56 kilometres from Cape Town, and installed in a house. There he received a constant stream of black leaders and white officials from all over the world. The Government repeatedly offered to release him if he would renounce revolutionary violence, but Mr Mandela refused. Finally, on 11 February this year, the South
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