8 Free Mandela

Chapter 8 Free Mandela The years at Robben Island never broke Nelson's spirit. He never stopped believing that South Africa could change. He exercised each morning and read every evening. He studied law through the mail. He learned Afrikaner history and language. The darkest time for him in prison was when he was forbidden to study. This lasted four years. But Nelson was determined, and he passed his intermediate law exams when he was forty-five years old. There was one joyful thing about prison life: friendship. Prisoners were forbidden to talk, but they found ways. They whispered as they worked in the quarries and passed secret notes hidden in the dirty dishes. They even organized work slowdowns and went on hunger strikes. Mandela might be in prison, but he was still a tree shaker!

Of all his friends in prison, Walter Sisulu was the person he relied on the most. Sisulu was Nelson's sounding board. He discussed all his ideas for

achieving black equality with him. Mandela once said, "We walked side by side through the valley of death, nursing each other's bruises, holding each other up when our steps faltered." Mandela also wrote a five-hundred-page autobiography on smuggled paper. He buried the pages, wrapped in plastic and hidden in cocoa containers, all over the prison courtyard. He encouraged other prisoners to study and learn, too. And although Nelson was a leader, younger prisoners were amazed at his humility.

Prison life was very difficult for Nelson. When illness prevented him from working in the quarry he was locked in a wet, cold, solitary cell apart from his friends. All he was given to eat was rice and water. Meanwhile, Oliver Tambo was still traveling around the world telling everyone about Mandela and the fight against apartheid. He met with civil rights groups and government leaders. He set up international chapters of the ANC. World leaders who recognized him as the face of the new South Africa began to call for Mandela's release. Tambo also organized revolutionary fighters from training camps in nearby Tanzania and Zambia. He moved the fighters to Angola, on the border of a province controlled by South Africa. This sent a message to the white government of South Africa: The ANC was willing to go to war.

In 1976 the minister of prisoners offered to reduce Mandela's sentence if he would support the government's latest project, the Homeland System. They hoped to use Mandela's influence to support their own agenda. Mandela said no. The government

tried to tempt him with better deals if he abandoned his friends. Again, Mandela said no. Mandela was fifty-eight when the government passed a law declaring that all schools had to teach difficult subjects like math and science in the Afrikaans language. Most black children couldn't even understand Afrikaans, and had come to think of it as the language of their oppressors. So how did they have a chance of learning anything? Once again, the government was finding ways to further deny black students a decent education. THE HOMELAND SYSTEM IN 1970 THE SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT DIVIDED SOUTH AFRICA INTO SEPARATE STATES BY RACE. UNDER THE NEW ARRANGEMENT, CALLED THE HOMELAND SYSTEM, BLACK PEOPLE WOULD NO LONGER BE CITIZENS OF SOUTH AFRICA. THEY WOULD COME INTO SOUTH AFRICA ON TEMPORARY WORK PERMITS TO DO THEIR JOBS. BLACK PEOPLE WHO REFUSED TO LIVE IN THE HOMELAND ASSIGNED TO THEM—PLACES THEY HAD OFTEN NEVER EVEN BEEN TO BEFORE—WERE MOVED AGAINST THEIR WILL. BUT THESE "INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES" WOULD NEVER BE OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZED BY THE REST OF THE WORLD.