• In the 1950s the white South African government responded to the growing popularity of Nelson Mandela and the ANC with tear gas and repression. Betrayed by an informer in 1962, Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment. The first excerpt is from his opening statement at his trial. In 1995, during the transition out of apartheid, white South African novelist Mark Behr published the novel The Smell of Apples, which relates eleven-year-old Marnus Erasmus’s loss of faith in the midst of a dark betrayal by his father, a general in the South African Defense Force. The second excerpt, taken from this book, illustrates the mentality of many members of the white minority.

Nelson Mandela, Opening Statement at Trial

“At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion made by the state in its opening that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did, both as an individual and as a leader of my people, because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said. . . .

It is true that there has often been close co-operation between the ANC and the Communist Party. But co-operation is merely proof of a common goal — in this case the removal of white supremacy — and is not proof of a complete community of interests. . . .

South Africa is the richest country in Africa, and could be one of the richest countries in the world. But it is a land of extremes and remarkable contrasts. [audio interference] The whites enjoy what may well be the highest standard of living in the world, whilst Africans live in poverty and misery. Forty per cent of the Africans live in hopelessly overcrowded and, in some cases, drought-stricken reserves, where soil erosion and the overworking of the soil makes it impossible for them to live properly off the land. Thirty per cent are labourers, labour tenants, and squatters on white farms and work and live under conditions similar to those of the serfs of the Middle Ages. The other thirty per cent live in towns where they have developed economic and social habits which bring them closer in many respects to white standards. Yet most Africans, even in this group, are impoverished by low incomes and the high cost of living. . . .

The only cure is to alter the conditions under which Africans are forced to live and to meet their legitimate grievances. Africans want to be paid a living wage. Africans want to perform work which they are capable of doing, and not work which the Government declares them to be capable of. We want to be allowed to live where we obtain work, and not be endorsed out of an area because we were not born there. We want to be allowed and not to be obliged to live in rented houses which we can never call our own. We want to be part of the general population, and not confined to living in our ghettoes. African men want to have their wives and children to live with them where they work, and not to be forced into an unnatural existence in men’s hostels. Our women want to be with their men folk and not to be left permanently widowed in the reserves. We want to be allowed out after eleven o’clock at night and not to be confined to our rooms like little children. We want to be allowed to travel in our own country and to seek work where we want to, where we want to and not where the Labour Bureau tells us to. We want a just share in the whole of South Africa; we want security and a stake in society.

Above all, My Lord, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy.”

Mark Behr’s character Marnus in The Smell of Apples

“Dad tells the General that the rest of the world is against South Africa because we have all the gold and diamonds and other minerals. . . . He says the outside world hides behind the thing with the Bantus [black South Africans] — but at least we didn’t kill off all our blacks like America did to the Red Indians and the Australians to the Aborigines. Dad says you can say a whole lot of things about the Afrikaners [white Dutch settlers], but no one can say we’re dishonest. We don’t hide our laws like the rest of the world.

Dad says one of the problems is that all the best blacks were taken away by the slave merchants. The blood that was left in Africa was the blood of the dumber blacks — that’s why you won’t find an educated black anywhere. Have you ever heard about a Bantu inventing something like a telephone or a wheel or an engine? No. Dad says it’s because all the clever ones and the strong ones were shipped out of Africa to America. Now America has all the clever blacks and they think they can come and teach the Republic how to deal with ours. The rest of the world is stirring up our natives to make them think the Republic actually belongs to them. . . .

But America is just as stupid. With all their threats of not selling arms and ammunition to the Republic, they play right into the hands of the Communists. The other day, after twelve drunk blacks were killed by police at Western Deep Levels gold-mine, some countries said they were going to stop selling arms to South Africa. They . . . don’t really understand the problems we face in this country. Dad says it doesn’t matter that much what the rest of the world says, anyway.”

Sources: I Am Prepared to Die: Nelson Mandela’s Statement from the Dock at the Opening of the Defence Case in the Rivonia Trial, official transcription from Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, http://db.nelsonmandela.org/speeches. Reprinted by permission of the Nelson Mandela Foundation; Mark Behr, The Smell of Apples (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), pp. 66, 70. © 1995 by Mark Behr. Reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press. All rights reserved.

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