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WI like to look back on the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa, says Peter Hain – the activist who would become the prime minister of labor – “as one of the greatest success stories of protest and protest. Nelson Mandela as a global image, and rightly so. But Mandela was considered a devil. He was declared a terrorist by Margaret Thatcher a few years before he was released. We were mocked.” It was nothing compared to what black people in South Africa went through, he emphasized, but he was still targeted – a bomb was sent to him, and he was made into a bank. He said, “it was a difficult, dangerous struggle.”
A new documentary series, Free Nelson Mandela, covers three decades of campaigning until Mandela’s release in 1990 and his election as President of South Africa four years later. What emerges is an inspiring reminder of the power of resistance and perseverance – and the sacrifices many have had to make.
Dali Tambo grew up expecting the worst to happen to his father, Oliver Tambo, the The president of the ANC is abroad who brought his family to London in 1960. Other people who left South Africa were killed, including Ruth First, known as Tambo and “Auntie Ruth”, and later Dulcie September, with whom Tambo lived while studying in Paris. In London, the ANC offices were bombed.
“(My father’s) view was that ‘yes, one day the agents of apartheid will kill me but they will not stop me from doing my work.'” He was determined that even if these threats continued, he would continue to fight.
As a child, Tambo remembers his parents calling for help from the Algerian embassy to sweep their London home for bedbugs. “Two out of three times he found them.” When he was about 14 years old, he found a man hiding in the basement; trying to escape, the man pushed Tambo through the glass door and jumped the back fence. At his boarding school, some people considered him the son of a gangster.
Hain came to the UK with his parents in 1966 as a teenager, after a childhood of early morning police raids, telephone taps and his parents’ brief imprisonment. He remembers walking around Robben Island for a while, he went to the court that was celebrated in the corner, and he met Mandela – the brother of his wife – in the middle of the day, he opened it.
Britain’s anti-apartheid movement was crucial, says Hain. “It is true that the independent African countries were showing solidarity, and the US (group), especially the black community, was also suffering from great discrimination. Both Hain and Tambo used sports and culture. Hain led protests against the 1969 Springbok rugby tour of Britain and Ireland, and was successful in having the South African cricket tour banned the following year.
“A sports campaign caused millions of sports fans to suddenly realize: what is racism?” Hain later became a councillor, minister, and now sits in the House of Lords.
The artwork would also be very attractive. A 1983 concert at Alexandra Palace in London, with a group that included South African musicians Hugh Masekela and Julian Bahula, inspired Jerry Dammers of the Specials – who, as a teenager, demonstrated against the Springboks rugby tour – writing the song Free Nelson Mandelawhich became the band’s song. In 1986, Tambo and Dammers created Artists Against Apartheid – and it was welcomed by many British artists.
“If George Michael or UB40 or Sting is on your wall, and they say ‘we are anti-racism’, you have to ask yourself as a young person, ‘What is racism, why are they against it?’,” says Tambo. “The growth that took place, both socially and politically.”
A massive march in June 1986, at the time the world’s largest anti-apartheid demonstration, led to a free concert in London’s Clapham Common that featured stars including Gil Scott-Heron, Boy George and Sting. A concert at Wembley Stadium two years later, featuring Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder and Dire Straits, as well as performances by Lenny Henry and Billy Connolly, was broadcast on the BBC and reached an estimated 600 million people. Oliver Tambo, remembering his son, came to him after the concert. He said: ‘I can tell 1,000 stories and it will not be as powerful as what I have seen here today.'”
That concert, says Hain, “was a game changer.” The sports boycott did the same, “but this concert reached people that the politicians never got to. The concert helped to promote a change of opinion, he says, even if there was political pressure on the BBC not to broadcast it. “And then, of course, when Mandela was releasedinstead of the Devil incarnate, we had a holy grandfather who shocked the world.”
Hain met Mandela after his release, and later, when his job was to accompany the head of state to the 2000 Labor Party conference where he was a guest. On the way to the hotel, Mandela asked about Hain’s family, and Hain said that his mother was in the hospital after the fall. Mandela insisted on talking to him, and as Hain struggled to get his hospital ward number, Mandela was shaking hands with every hotel worker who followed him. “I finally got my mother on the line, and I gave her the phone, and she said, ‘This is Mandela from South Africa. Do you remember me?'” Hain smiles. “The thing that sets him apart from all the other famous people I’ve ever met is that he was a people person.” In all that he went through, the abuse and humiliation, that did not change.
“He was a strict leader, clear, but he always agreed with his followers. Sometimes he was able to go forward, which is what leaders should do, but he never forgot who his people were.”
Throughout Tambo’s childhood, Mandela took a folkloric role. “Your uncle Nelson is in prison, and once a year my mother is.” Aunt Winnie (Mandela’s wife and fellow activists) found a way to communicate, but mostly through telegrams or letters smuggled (including) from Robben Island. So he was a mystery. ” But he was also family, says Tambo. When he spoke for the first time on the phone, “what surprised me was that he seemed to know a lot about me, but it was a normal conversation.” They met while her father was recovering from a stroke at a hospital in Sweden. “Uncle Nelson, on one of his first trips abroad, came to Sweden to meet my father. He was very kind to her, and I know they had a very emotional first meeting when they met again 30 years later. It was amazing. We lived together, and he had a big family, guiding me.” Mandela was, adds Tambo, “a revelation. And only uncle.”
Free Nelson Mandela is on Channel 4 on 14 June at 9pm.
