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“As long as poverty, injustice, & gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest”: Nelson Mandela’s First TV Interview of 1961, where Mandela explores the complex relationship between peace and violence as protest and negotiation tactics
The year was 1961. Nelson Mandela was already a wanted man.
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In 1962, Nelson Mandela was arrested on allegations of sabotage and other charges and sentenced to life in prison, where he spent 27 years before becoming South Africa’s first president elected in a fully democratic election. His story, among modern history’s most profoundly inspirational, is beautifully and poetically captured in Clint Eastwood’s 2009 gem, Invictus. But what Eastwood’s account leaves out are the events that preceded and led to Mandela’s arrest.
Apartheid would not end for 33 years. Mandela would not be removed from the U.S. terrorist watch list for 47 years. And Mandela would live 52 more years, becoming the head of his nation, and one of the most respected leaders in the world.
But in May 1961, Mandela was only an increasingly powerful opposition leader hiding from the government in the aftermath of a peaceful campaign for non-cooperation with the government, which South African authorities responded to by arresting 10,000 people and mobilizing the military.
A reporter with the British television network ITN, Brian Widlake, arranged to meet with Mandela. It was Mandela's first TV interview, and he took the opportunity to declare that methods beyond non-violence and non-cooperation would be considered by the ANC.
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But first, Mandela laid out his group's simple demand. "The Africans require the franchise on the basis of one man, one vote. They want political independence," he told Widlake, who responds with a question about whether Mandela wants to boot the Europeans out of South Africa. "We have made it very clear in our policy that South Africa is a country of many races," Mandela responds. "There is room for all the various races in this country."
Then the reporter asks, "Are there many educated Africans in South Africa?" Which was a way of questioning whether Africans could truly "want" political independence without schooling, as Mandela recognizes in his answer (throughout the interview, the reporter asks coded questions and Mandela gives decoded answers).
"We have a large number of Africans who are educated and are taking part in the political struggle of the African people. The question of education has nothing to do with the question of the vote. On numerous occasions, it has been proven in history that people can enjoy the vote even if they have no education or quality of education. And I think it is a good thing," Mandela said. "You don't have to have education to want certain fundamental rights. You have got aspirations, you have got claims. It has nothing to do with education."
Finally, Widlake asks about the "possibility of violence," by which he meant African-on-European violence, as European-on-African violence was a constant repressive force.
Mandela gave the following considered response.
There are many people who feel that the reaction of the government to our stay at home, ordering a general mobilization and arming the white community, arresting ten thousand Africans, the show of force throughout the country. Notwithstanding our clear declaration that this campaign is being run on peaceful and non-violent lines close a chapter as far as our methods of political struggle are concerned. There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and nonviolence against the government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people. And I think the time has come for us to consider, in the light of our experiences in this stay-at-home, whether the methods which we have applied so far are adequate.
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But perhaps more interesting is the dialogue towards the end of the interview, where Mandela explores the complex relationship between peace and violence as protest and negotiation tactics. We’re left wondering whether his seemingly sudden shift from a completely peaceful campaign strategy up to that point towards considering violence as a possibility may be the product of South African police going after him with full force that week. Violence, it seems, does breed violence even in the best and noblest of us.
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