[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 30 (Thursday, March 16, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E345-E347]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             NELSON MANDELA

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. LAMAR S. SMITH

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 16, 2000

  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, at the suggestion of the 
distinguished former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee, the Honorable Charles Percy, I am pleased to request that 
the following two part series on Nelson Mandela, recently published in 
The Christian Science Monitor, be submitted into the Record.

          [From The Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 10, 2000]

                                MANDELA

                          (By John Battersby)

       Ten years after Nelson Mandela walked out of prison on 
     Robben Island, and seven months after stepping down as 
     president of South Africa, he reflects, in an interview with 
     the Monitor, on his legacy and the lasting influence his 27 
     years in prison had on him.
       ``Whatever my wishes may be, I cannot bind future 
     generations to remember me in the particular way I would 
     like,'' Nelson Mandela says.
       Despite peace missions, a blistering schedule of overseas 
     travel and stepped-up philanthropic activities, Mr. Mandela 
     has begun to reflect on how he wants to be remembered both in 
     an interview and at functions to pay tribute to him.
       And despite his reluctance to be singled out and discuss 
     his personal qualities, there is consensus in South Africa 
     that without Mandela's personal commitment to reconciliation, 
     his moral authority, integrity, and intense compassion, the 
     country's transition to democracy might not have gone as 
     smoothly.
       Mandela is at pains to ensure that he is remembered as an 
     ordinary mortal with qualities that are within the reach of 
     ordinary people. ``What always worried me in prison was [that 
     I could acquire] the image of someone who is always 100 
     percent correct and can never do any wrong,'' he told one 
     audience of 500. ``People expect me to perform far beyond my 
     ability.''
       He expanded on these reflections for the first time in a 
     recent interview with the Monitor, which probed his 
     philosophy of reconciliation, the origins of his moral 
     integrity, and the experiences and influences that forged the 
     qualities which have made him one of the heroes of the 20th 
     century.
       He also spoke about the importance of religion in his life 
     and the crucial role of reflection and ``the time to think'' 
     during his 27 years in jail.
       History will remember Mandela for having the strength of 
     conviction to risk engaging his jailers--and thereby 
     humanizing them--from inside prison and eventually setting 
     the stage for the ANC to negotiate them out of power. Mandela 
     sees the success of the ANC in mobilizing both domestic and 
     international opinion against the apartheid government as the 
     key factor.

[[Page E346]]

       In the interview, Mandela insisted that he wanted to be 
     remembered as part of a collective and not in isolation. On 
     his release from jail 10 years ago tomorrow, he made it clear 
     that he regarded himself as a ``loyal and obedient servant'' 
     of the African National Congress (ANC), the liberation 
     movement he headed before becoming South Africa's first 
     democratically elected president in May 1994.
       ``I would like to be remembered as part of a team, and I 
     would like my contribution to be assessed as somebody who 
     carried out decisions taken by that collective,'' Mandela 
     says, adding that even if he wanted to be remembered in a 
     specific way that was not a realistic option.
       Mandela was speaking in the living room of the house he 
     shares with his second wife Graca Machel, whom he married in 
     1998. It is a doubly-story house in the plush Johannesburg 
     neighborhood of Houghton.
       ``As prisoners, we used our individual and collective 
     positions to make friends with some of our jailers. But this 
     must be understood against the bigger picture of what was 
     happening outside--an organized and disciplined struggle by 
     our organization and the


                          Please, no sainthood

       At the launch, late last year, of a book to commemorate 
     him, written by South African journalist Charlene Smith (due 
     out in the US this April, New Holland/Stuik), Mandela 
     insisted that he not be elevated to some kind of sainthood.
       The paradoxical side of the man is that he has sometimes 
     taken on superhuman tasks such as his shuttle last October to 
     Iran, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Gaza, and the United States in a 
     bid to broker a comprehensive Middle East peace.
       Despite what Madela described as ``positive and cordial'' 
     meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President 
     Ezer Weizman, Israel rejected his intervention. But Mandela 
     was not unduly discouraged.
       ``There are bound to be setbacks,'' he says.
       Mandela was greatly encouraged by the eventual outcomes of 
     his interventions in East Timor and the handing over by Libya 
     of those accused of the bombing of the Pan Am flight over the 
     Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. He spent seven years 
     mediating the behind-the-scenes negotiations with Saudi 
     Arabia.
       He says it is important that leaders should be presented to 
     people with their weaknesses and all. ``If you come across as 
     a saint, people can become very discouraged,'' he says. ``I 
     was once a young man and I did all the things young men do,'' 
     Mandela says, to drive home the point of his human 
     fallibility.
       Biographers and commentators have been intrigued by 
     Mandela's extraordinary focus and unity of purpose during his 
     years as a young ANC activist and later as its spiritual 
     leader from behind bars.
       ``If you have an objective in life, then you want to 
     concentrate on that and not engage in infighting with your 
     enemies,'' he says in the interview. ``You want to create an 
     atmosphere where you can move everybody towards the goal you 
     have set for yourself--as well as the collective for which 
     you work.
       ``And, therefore, for all people who have found themselves 
     in the position of being in jail and trying to transform 
     society, forgiveness is natural because you have no time to 
     be retaliative. . . . You want to mobilize everybody to 
     support your cause and the aims you have set for your life,'' 
     he says.
       Asked about the origins of his passionate belief in 
     reconciliation and forgiveness, Mandela goes into a lengthy 
     explanation of how the launched he Mandela Children's Fund 
     after a personal encounter with homeless children in Cape 
     Town who had come to see him to explain their plight. He was 
     so moved that he vowed in that moment to launch the fund, 
     which has collected more than $25 million and has helped 
     hundreds of children. Mandela donated a third of his 
     presidential salary to the fund during his five years in 
     office. Many business executives matched his example and some 
     bettered it.


                       What price reconciliation?

       Mandela is sensitive to criticism from certain black 
     leaders that he has leaned over too far toward whites in his 
     efforts to achieve reconciliation and forgiveness. He becomes 
     emotional when defending his impressive campaign over the 
     past few years to get business leaders to donate funds for 
     the building of schools and clinics in the rural areas.
       ``Why would anyone say that I am leaning too much towards 
     whites? Tell me the record of any black man in this country 
     who has done as much as that [for black people] . . . I am 
     not aware of any other black man who has spent so much time 
     addressing the problems of poverty, lack of education, and 
     disease amongst our people,'' Mandela says, adding that he 
     had nothing but cooperation and support from the white 
     business community.
       When it comes to his moral authority and achievement in 
     persuading his jailers and their political bosses to 
     negotiate with him, Mandela again stresses the moral high 
     ground of the ANC cause.
       ``When you have attained the moral high ground, it is 
     better to confront your people directly and say: Let's sit 
     down and talk. So, it is not something that just comes from 
     me. It is something that was worked out by the organization 
     to which I belong.''
       Mandela speaks of the influence that veteran ANC leader 
     Walter Sisulu had had on him while in prison and how he was 
     instrumental in taking care of fellow prisoners regardless of 
     their political background.
       Mandela has in turn been praised by Eddie Daniels, a former 
     Robben Island prisoner from a rival anti-apartheid 
     organization, who has told how Mandela befriended him and 
     kept his cell clean when he was ill.


                        Transformation in prison

       Mandela says, ``I can tell you that a man like Sisulu was 
     almost like a saint in things of that nature.
       ``You would really admire him because he is continually 
     thinking about other people.
       ``I learned a great deal from him--not only on that respect 
     but also, politically, he was our mentor. He is a very good 
     fellow . . . and humble. He led from behind and put others in 
     front, but he reversed the position in situations of danger. 
     Then he chose to be in the front line.''
       In ``Mandela: The Authorized Biography'' (Knopf), Anthony 
     Sampson notes the remarkable transformation in the Mandela 
     that emerged from jail compared with the impulsive activist 
     with a quick temper he knew in the late 1950s (reviewed Sept. 
     30, 1999).
       Mandela does not dispute Mr. Sampson's judgment and 
     acknowledges the importance of mastering his anger while in 
     prison. ``One was angry at what was happening [in apartheid 
     South Africa]--the humiliation, the loss of our human 
     dignity. We tended to react in accordance with anger and our 
     emotion rather than sitting down and thinking about things 
     properly.
       ``But in jail--especially for those who stayed in single 
     cells--you had enough opportunity to sit down and think. And 
     you were in contact with a lot of people who had a high 
     education and who were widely traveled. When they told of 
     their experiences, you felt humbled.
       ``All those influences changed one,'' Mandela says. Sampson 
     quotes from a letter that Mandela wrote to his then wife, 
     Winnie, in 1981 after she had been jailed.
       Mandela noted that there were qualities ``in each of us'' 
     that form the basis of our spiritual life and that we can 
     change ourselves by observing our reactions to the unfolding 
     of life.
       He urged Winnie in the letter ``to learn to know yourself . 
     . . to search realistically and regularly the processes of 
     your own mind and feelings.''
       In the interview, Mandela says that one of the most 
     powerful forces that changed him was thinking about how he 
     had behaved and reacted to generosity and compassion 
     expressed toward him in the past.
       ``For example, when I arrived in Johannesburg [as a young 
     man], I was poor, and many people helped me get by. But when 
     I became a lawyer and I was in a better position 
     [financially], I became too busy with legal affairs and 
     forgot about people who had helped me.
       ``Instead of going to them and saying: Look, here's a bunch 
     of flowers or a box of chocolates and saying thank you, I had 
     never even thought about these things. I felt that I had 
     behaved like a wild man . . . like an animal and I really 
     criticized myself for the way I had behaved.
       ``But I was able to do this because I had time to think 
     about it, whereas outside jail--from morning to sunset--you 
     are moving from one meeting to the other, and there is no 
     time to think about problems. Thinking is one of the most 
     important weapons in dealing with problems . . . and we 
     didn't have that outside.''
       Peter Ustinov, the veteran actor, author, and international 
     citizen, met Mandela in South Africa two years ago and was 
     struck by the importance Mandela attached to the long period 
     of solitude in prison.
       ``I had a most inspiring meeting with Nelson Mandela,'' 
     Ustinov told this reporter in an interview in the Swiss 
     Alpine town of Davos. ``He told me with a certain amount of 
     irony and wickedness: `I am grateful for the 27 years I spent 
     in prison because it gave me the opportunity to meditate and 
     think deeply. . . . But since I came out of prison, I haven't 
     had the time.' ''


                        Make time for reflection

       How has Mandela made time to think since his release from 
     jail in 1990? He says that he has tried to emulate the 
     practice of businessmen who take a complete break from their 
     work over weekends. Mandela says he consciously has tried to 
     make time for reflection.
       After his separation from Winnie, Mandela used to spend 
     long periods in retreat in the home of a wealthy Afrikaner 
     businessman, Douw Steyn, who ran an open house for the ANC to 
     hold meetings during the negotiations with the government. It 
     was here that Mandela proofread the script of his 
     autobiography: ``Long Walk to Freedom'' (Little Brown).
       In November last year, Mandela accepted an invitation to be 
     the guest speaker at a gala evening to mark the 
     transformation of the house into a super-luxury guest house, 
     retreat, and conference center.
       In an impromptu speech, Mandela waxed philosophical and 
     introspective in paying tribute to the warmth and hospitality 
     of his Afrikaner hosts.
       ``It has been said that difficulties and disaster destroy 
     some people and make others,'' Mandela began. It was a phrase 
     he had last used in a letter to Winnie in 1975. ``Douw Steyn 
     is one of those who has turned disaster

[[Page E347]]

     into success,'' he said of the wealthy businessman who had 
     formerly supported apartheid.


                         Change yourself first

       ``One of the most difficult things is not to change 
     society--but to change yourself,'' he said. ``I came to stay 
     here at some of the most difficult moments, and the way Liz 
     and Douw treated me has left me with fond memories.''
       Mandela said that Douw Steyn had changed and was now part 
     of the white business community that was sharing its 
     resources with the poor. That gave him a feeling of 
     fulfillment.
       ``It enables me to go to bed with an enriching feeling in 
     my soul and the belief that I am changing myself [by 
     reconciling with former adversaries],'' Mandela said.
       Mandela has spoken on other occasions of the importance of 
     giving. When he received a bag of some 20,000 postcards in 
     September from children who were invited to wish him well for 
     his retirement, he said that there was nothing more important 
     in life than giving. Tolerance is forged when people look 
     beyond their own desires, he said.
       Mandela said that religion had played a very important role 
     in his life. He has tended to avoid talking about the subject 
     in the past.
       In December, Mandela addressed a gathering of religious 
     leaders from the world's major faiths in Cape Town. He spoke 
     publicly about his views on religion for the first time.
       ``I appreciate the importance of religion. You have to have 
     been in a South African jail under apartheid where you could 
     see the cruelty of human beings to each other in its naked 
     form. Again, religious institutions and their leaders gave us 
     hope that one day we would return.''
       Mandela said that real leaders were those who thought about 
     the poor 24 hours a day and who knew in their hearts that 
     poverty was the single biggest threat to society.
       ``We have sufficient cause to be cynical about humanity. We 
     have seen enough injustice, strife, division, suffering, and 
     pain, and our capacity to be massively inhuman. But this 
     gathering counters despairing cynicism and reaffirms the 
     nobility of the human spirit,'' Mandela said.


                           Power of religion

       Mandela went on to say, ``Religion is one of the most 
     important forces in the world. Whether you are a Christian, a 
     Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew, or a Hindu, religion is a great 
     force, and it can help one have command of one's own 
     morality, one's own behavior, and one's own attitude.''
       ``Religion has had a tremendous influence on my own life. 
     You must remember that during our time--right from Grade 1 up 
     to university--our education was provided by religious 
     institutions. I was in [Christian] missionary schools. The 
     government [of the day] had no interest whatsoever in our 
     education and, therefore, religion became a force which was 
     responsible for our development,'' he said.
       The discipline of jail also played a role in his 
     transformation, he said.
       ``It was difficult, of course, to always be disciplined 
     before one went to jail except to say that I have always 
     liked sport. And to that extent I was disciplined in the 
     sense that four days a week I went to the gym for at least 
     two hours.
       ``Also, I was a lawyer, and I had to be disciplined to keep 
     up with events in the legal field, and to that extent I was 
     disciplined,'' he said.
       But Mandela said there were many respects in which he and 
     his colleagues were not disciplined when they went to jail.
       ``In prison, you had to follow a highly disciplined regime, 
     and that, of course, influenced your behavior and your 
     thinking,'' he said.
       Mandela said there was also a personal discipline. ``We 
     continued to do our own exercises, and we continued with 
     study and conversing with others to gain from their 
     experiences.''
       He said that reading the biographies of the great leaders 
     of the century also had a major impact on him. Mandela said 
     it was through reading and biographies that he realized that 
     problems make some people and destroy others. Mandela said 
     that the prison experience taught him to respect even the 
     most ordinary people. ``I have been surprised a great deal 
     sometimes when I see somebody who looks less than ordinary, 
     but when you talk to the person and he (or she) opens his 
     mouth, he is something completely different.
       ``It is possible that if I had not gone to jail and been 
     able to read and to listen to the stories of many people . . 
     . I might not have learned these things.'' (c) Copyright 
     2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society
                                  ____


          [From the Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 11, 2000]

                     How Well They Remember The Day

                          (By Corinna Schuler)

       Ten years ago today, Nelson Mandela walked through the 
     gates of Victor Verster prison and, beaming, raised his right 
     fist in a power salute. The crowd roared.
       For black South Africans, it was a moment of triumph. For 
     many whites, it was a time of trepidation. But today, just as 
     Americans remember the assassination of President John 
     Kennedy, virtually everyone in this country recalls precisely 
     the instant when the world's most famous political prisoner 
     became a free man. It's hard to overstate the significance. 
     Everyone has a misty-eyed story to tell--from the television 
     cameraman who left his wedding reception to capture the event 
     to the lawyer who represented Mandela.
       ``Feb. 11, 1990, was the culmination of decades of struggle 
     against apartheid,'' recalls Rev. Alan Boesak, then the 
     leader of the United Democratic Front, who spent hours trying 
     to keep frenzied masses of well-wishers calm. ``It was crazy, 
     but it was glorious. * * * His release * * * set in motion 
     all other events that led to our reclaiming of the country.''
       The public had not seen Mandela since he was shipped to 
     Robben Island. He had spent 27 years in South African jails, 
     all the while fighting for the end of apartheid--the system 
     of segregating blacks from whites. He emerged triumphant and 
     went on to become the country's first black president.
       Hundreds of photographers and television cameramen raced to 
     see the man who emerged--thin, slightly grayed, and beaming-- 
     from his prison cell. ``Within 20 feet or so of the gate, the 
     cameras started clicking, a noise that sounded like some 
     great herd of metallic beasts,'' Mandela writes in his 
     autobiography, ``Long Walk to Freedom.''
       When a television crew thrust ``a long, dark furry object'' 
     at Mandela, he feared it was a newfangled weapon developed 
     while he was in prison. ``Winnie informed me that it was a 
     microphone.''
       This was the story of the decade, if not the century.
       ``I was at my wedding reception when I got a call, and they 
     said: `come to work,' '' television editor Kenny Geraghty 
     remembers. ``I had to cut a piece for [CBS journalist] Dan 
     Rather * * * I hardly saw my wife for three weeks afterward. 
     But there was no way I would have said no. We had been 
     waiting years for that moment.''
       From his home in Johannesburg, lawyer George Bizos choked 
     back tears as he watched the scene unfold on his television 
     set. Mr. Bizos had defended Mandela and his comrades at the 
     famous 1964 Rivonia trial. He lost that case, and dozens more 
     that followed, as Bizos stood up again and again in valiant 
     yet futile efforts to defend black activists.
       ``I had had nightmares that Mr. Mandela would die in 
     prison,'' Bizos says. ``His coming out was the most joyous 
     occasion for me.''
       Helen Suzman, the only member of the liberal Progressive 
     Conservative party in parliament and the lone voice of 
     political opposition to apartheid rulers, also watched from 
     her television. ``I knew this meant a total turn-around in 
     the political scene,'' she says today. ``I was exhilarated. 
     At last we would no longer be a pariah nation.''
       Mandela was whisked away from the prison gates to attend a 
     planned 3 p.m. rally at the city's Grande Parade. But the 
     anxious crowd went wild when they saw Mandela's car--
     surrounding the vehicle, shaking it, even jumping on top of 
     the hood.
       ``It looked as though they were going to eat up that car,'' 
     says Mr. Boesak. When several dozen marshals finally cleared 
     a path, the driver sped away from the square. ``Man, where 
     are you going?'' Mandela asked.
       ``I don't know!'' he responded. ``I've never experienced 
     anything like this before.''
       They ended up at the home of fellow activist Dullah Omar. 
     But soon, Archbishop Desmond Tutu phoned: Get back to the 
     Grande Parade, he said, or ``I think there is going to be an 
     uprising.''
       Among thousands who waited more than six hours to see 
     Mandela that day was Andre Odendaal, a local history 
     professor. ``I had been playing in a cricket match, but we 
     called it off half way when we heard the news that Mandela 
     was going to be released * * * I think it must have been like 
     Liberation Day in Europe at the end of World War II.''
       Dusk had fallen by the time Mandela was finally led to the 
     top floor of a stately building to see the cheering 
     supporters. He had forgotten his glasses in his hasty 
     departure from prison and was forced to read his speech with 
     a pair he borrowed from his wife.
       Mandela's main point was to stress that he was a ``loyal 
     and disciplined member'' of the African National Congress--
     something he has repeated again and again to argue that he is 
     not a saint, just one of many who fought in the struggle.
       But, like it or not, Mandela is a living legend. Ahmed 
     Kathrada, a man who was imprisoned with Mandela on Robben 
     Island in 1964, says he is never annoyed that his leader is 
     most famed for sacrificing freedom. ``Some people criticize 
     the so-called great-man theory of history,'' says Mr. 
     Kathrada. ``But Mandela as an individual really did play a 
     decisive role in the history of South Africa. We are all 
     proud.''
       Mandela is now deeply involved in the Burundi peace talks, 
     but he now gets to spend more time with his family. ``I scold 
     my grandchildren when I get tired of playing with them,'' he 
     said playfully this week.
       He realizes that South Africans may romanticize the day of 
     his release. But Bizos says the warm feelings people get--
     both black and white--whenever they think of that historic 
     moment deserves a purpose. ``A legend like Mandela is 
     important for building a nation. It is unifying. And that is 
     something South Africa needs as it goes through these 
     difficult times of transition.''